Raids Are The New Battle Royale. And That's A Good Thing.

I've made my position rather clear on what I think of Battle Royale modes in the past, and that really hasn't changed much. I'm just not a fan. I've played more of them, but they still lack something that I as a player needed: a purpose.

     

Battle Royale modes have dominated for a few years now. Popularized with Player Unknown Battlegrounds and since ripped and tricked out by other developers each with their own spin on the formula. The basics are simple: you all start the same, scrounge to find gear, and be the last one standing to win. And while winning may be enough for a lot of gamers to spend all that time running around digging for the best weapons and gadgets, for some, like myself, it just falls flat. 

     

Enter: Raids. For those of you not familiar with the game style here's a short breakdown of what they entail: You pick your guns, gear, armor, and equipment prior to the match, pick the map and find a game. You and your squad start the game in one location, have a single life to fight through the map and get to your exfil on the other side. For the more punishing versions of the raid style games: you lose the gear you brought with you if you die, and get to keep the gear you find on your enemies.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

     

     

The most prominent game to feature this style of high consequence, competitive/cooperative/pvp/pve space is Escape From Tarkov. The sandbox of the raid gives you the space to do what you want to do and play how you want to play all while creating an inherent tension because it's not so much about winning, as simply surviving.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

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The mode has essentially taken the most interesting parts of Battle Royale, skulking around with a team to loot and shoot, and amped up the consequences by adding persistent inventory and extracts. And while RPG elements like leveling and questing/tasks do make their appearance in some of the more popular versions, they aren't completely necessary for the mode to work.     
     

We're seeing more and more games launching that have fully embraced the game mode at their core, most notably The Cycle: Frontier. While others have created a game mode that falls somewhere in the between a Raid and a Battle Royale, as is the case with Battlefield 2042 Hazard Zone. But the writing on the wall is clear, Raids are the next big game mode in gaming. It's just waiting for the big breakout game that crosses over to the mainstream audiences on both Console and PC. So while games like Apex and Warzone still rely on their Battle Royale as a core experience, it would be a surprise if they weren't already deep in development of their own take on the mode. The coming years will be interesting to see what new take on the raid mode formula catches with the gaming public to create The Next Big Thing.