Arc Raiders' Frozen Trail Is a '2.0' Moment, Dev Says

Ever felt like a game you love is about to get a second life? That's exactly what's happening with Arc Raiders, as Embark Studios is calling the upcoming Frozen Trail update a "2.0" moment for the game.

In a press release covering today's Frozen Trail reveal, Embark buried the lede: "ARC Raiders' Frozen Trail 2.0 update will be available on October 8." This comes just after the release of update 1.47.0, so jumping to 2.0 is a big deal. It signals a new era for the game, almost like a soft relaunch. After an enormous launch last year, things had slowed down and deflated over several quiet months, leaving many players hoping for a major shift. Frozen Trail looks to deliver exactly that.

So what's in this massive update? A lot. There's a big new map, four new Arcs, two new guns, and 15 weapons updated with wild customization options. You'll also get an Outpost base to decorate, skill tree changes, and quite a bit more. It's easily the biggest content drop the game has seen.

Executive producer Aleksander Grøndal spoke about the scope of Frozen Trail and Embark's future plans at a preview event attended by GamesRadar+. "We're finalizing the update, I think the team is kind of sitting here working on that today," he said. "We have the end of polish today, which means that most of the things needs to be done today, so I think they're a bit stressed out. Things are looking good, though, and I think if you take a look at where we were when we did the monthly updates and where we are today, we feel a lot better about what we're putting out and what quality we're putting into the updates. I think the team feels good about that."

Grøndal also compared the launch of Frozen Trail to shipping the game all over again. "Of course, it's scary every time we do a big update. To me, the best way to describe it is that it almost feels like we're shipping the game again because I kind of get flashbacks to last year when we were in this very same position trying to make the game complete. So it becomes almost scarier in a way because the updates are larger and more complicated to execute. But overall I think the team is pretty happy and excited to share what we've been working on for, basically, since May of this year, and I'm also excited."

With Arc Raiders' new update cadence, you can expect roughly one Frozen Trail-sized update every six months. "That is approximately what we're targeting," Grøndal confirmed. "We haven't really set the dates for our next update yet, but we have planned it out, and we are starting the work on that. I think we want to keep that to roughly about the same as we said. That's the plan so far, and hopefully we can take great learnings from looking at how the reception is with Frozen Trail, and also include some learnings there [for] the next update. So we are feeling good about it."

So, are you ready to dive back into Arc Raiders when Frozen Trail drops on October 8? What feature are you most excited to try? Let us know in the comments!