I have a confession: I love watching a franchise finally stop pretending to be something it is not. In 2026, that feeling has a name, and the name is ARC Raiders. Embark Studios' extraction shooter launched in late 2025 and promptly reminded me why I fell in love with shooters in the first place. Meanwhile, Battlefield has spent years trying to chase whatever battle royale, hero shooter, or live-service bandwagon was currently on fire. The contrast is not subtle. It is like watching one kid build a weird robot in the garage while the other kid keeps buying the same homework online and forgetting to change the name.

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Embark Studios was founded by former EA, DICE, and Ripple Effect developers. That matters. When you work on Battlefield, you are working on a legendary, long-running FPS franchise. Legendary franchises are wonderful, but they are also giant ships with thousands of passengers screaming if you turn the wheel one degree. Battlefield is set in its ways. Change too much, and fans riot. Change too little, and fans yawn. It is a creative minefield. According to Tom Henderson, that pressure has led many developers to leave DICE in recent years. I get it. Nobody wants to spend their career iterating on a destruction engine while an executive asks if the game can have a battle pass, a hero shooter mode, and a cooking minigame.

ARC Raiders, by contrast, gave Embark room to breathe. The studio has been experimenting with machine learning to teach AI robots to walk with unscripted animations. In a blog post, Embark explained that the spider-like machines in ARC Raiders can react to their environment and obstacles naturally. I watched a video of one of these AI robots getting hit with a cube, stumbling to maintain balance, and then carrying on like a grumpy toddler with eight legs. It was genuinely impressive. That kind of tech gives rise to emergent gameplay, the holy grail of game design. Emergent gameplay means moments even the developers could not predict. It means stories that belong to the player. It means the game is alive.

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Now, let us talk about Battlefield. I am not mad. I am just disappointed. Battlefield 2042 is, for many longtime fans, the least Battlefield-like Battlefield game ever made. It abandoned features that were universally present in its predecessors. Its development was reportedly a mess, originally starting as a battle royale before a major mid-development shift into a regular Battlefield title. EA has now tried and failed to deliver a successful battle royale twice. Twice! That is not a strategy. That is a person trying to fit into jeans from high school and blaming the jeans.

EA keeps trying to morph Battlefield into something it is not for the sake of potential profit. Instead of iterating on what the series does best, like more thorough destruction, more vehicle chaos, more only-in-Battlefield moments, it stifles creativity to mimic popular trends. If 2042's battle royale mode had been completed, I suspect it would have been criticized as an Apex Legends clone. Devolving a game into profit-chasing mimicry is a disappointing strategy for consumers. And a Battlefield universe is the wrong answer too. Some ideas are just not meant to be.

By 2026, the dust has settled a bit. ARC Raiders has carved out its own identity as a tense PvPvE extraction shooter, and its robot enemies feel like actual inhabitants of the world rather than targets waiting for a scripted animation. Battlefield 6 launched in 2025 and wisely returned to modern combat, destruction, and the classic class system. That was a relief. But its free-to-play battle royale mode, REDSEC, still feels like EA checking a box on a spreadsheet. The company cannot help itself. It sees a trend and its eyes turn into dollar signs. It is like a magpie with a credit card.

Here is the thing: there is nothing wrong with an FPS franchise staying in its wheelhouse. Call of Duty is perennially successful with only minor changes year after year. Halo Infinite was celebrated for returning to form after Halo 5: Guardians. Consistency is not a crime. The crime is pretending to be something else while abandoning what made you special. Battlefield does not need to be Apex Legends. It does not need to be Fortnite. It needs to be Battlefield. Let that sink in.

Game Creative freedom Trend-chasing 2026 vibe
ARC Raiders High: ex-DICE devs with room to experiment Low: machine-learning AI, emergent gameplay Fresh, weird, alive
Battlefield 2042 Low: franchise expectations and mid-dev pivot High: battle royale origins, feature cuts Cautionary tale
Battlefield 6 / REDSEC Medium: return to form, but live-service pressure Medium-high: another battle royale attempt Better, but still haunted

The founding of Embark Studios allowed developers to work on ARC Raiders in a way that does not seem to be part of EA's business plan. That could well be a good thing for the final product. And it was. ARC Raiders did not need to copy homework. It did not need to chase a trend into a brick wall. It just needed to be itself. In 2026, that is the lesson I keep coming back to. Give creative people room to build something strange, and they might just build something unforgettable. Give them a spreadsheet instead, and you get Battlefield 2042. I know which one I am playing.