u/Natural-Education-26

Some time ago, I started an exercise of viewing life through three lenses, reflecting upon them whenever possible:

Memento vivere — on the importance of learning how to live, of understanding and accepting that life is fleeting, and that this impermanence grants us the opportunity to experiment, make mistakes, and learn. That loving the journey is the way to stay in the flow, to live each day understanding and accepting the weight of my decisions, and to be at peace with their consequences.

Memento amare — on living life with love: love for my wife, love for my friends and peers, love for my parents, and above all, love for myself—for my flaws even more than for my virtues. Love for my consciousness, which I call my "co-pilot," who stays with me through good days and bad, and who is, in the first and final instance, my eternal inner companion.

Memento mori — learning to respect and be grateful for the chance to be let go, to depart, and to finish what I started. Being grateful for the end and for death itself—for the unique gift of allowing me to experience the world in stages, for giving me a finite time of delight, for granting me the gift of creating meaning, and, in the end, thanking its arrival and departing hand-in-hand, out of respect for having waited patiently for me until that singular moment.

And finally, being grateful for the opportunity to understand and experience these mementos.

Man, right now I'm in my 4th semester of a mechanical engineering degree. I love solving long calculus problems and reading about the masters who created the formulas I use, but I have a funny difficulty remembering basic, fundamental math rules. Like, a few minutes ago, I was searching on YouTube how to do fraction subtraction because I simply couldn't remember how to do it without a calculator, hahaha. Sometimes I feel like my brain goes full speed recording new, interesting info while erasing the old stuff in an exponential way. Just curious if this situation applies to any of you too.

After playing compulsively for weeks, almost every single day whenever my free time shines, I was wondering about 3 things:

1. A literal PvP arena mode, something like 5v5 with open mic, locked loadouts, would be bonkers—like the Crucible from the Destiny games. A place to generate entertainment for Speranza, and a place to slow down the killing spree of assiduous PvP'ers.

2. Some type of vehicles that are rare and scattered around the map.

3. Some type of self-revive item that has only 1 unit per map, has a totally random spawn location (could be ARC, containers, safe rooms, etc.), is bound to the player, 1 for account only, and cannot be intentionally dropped—only dropped when killed by ARC or another player. That way, it will be a wild card, 1-use-only for when you think "That's THE raid"

I started playing ARC Raiders just under a week ago. Me and three of my friends decided to download a crossplay game so we could level up together, have some laughs, and basically just have a mid-week boys' night from the comfort of our own homes.

Since I started playing, I’ve run into players from all over the world, and the VOIP system is phenomenal. It gives the game a soul. You can team up during a raid with a total stranger from the other side of the planet and just laugh at the random stuff you find on the map inside this little 30-minute universe. I’ve lost count of how many times I've laughed until I cried, how many times I broke a cold sweat escaping with like 13 seconds left on the clock, or those tense solo moments when I ran into trios and we ended up in a Mexican standoff.

This game, all by itself, brought back that feeling of beating Resident Evil 4 for the 20th time during school break at my grandma's house. Just me and the neighborhood kids screaming and cheering in a cramped room, watching a blurry CRT TV in 100°F (39°C) heat. This is a game clearly made with love, one that nailed the "fun factor" instead of feeling like an unpaid second job.

Thank you, Embark Studios, for bringing back that "golden days that aren't coming back" feeling.