The biggest part of ARC Raiders‘ 1.7.0 update was undoubtedly its Cold Snap weather condition, so it’s likely some players might have actually missed one of its best improvements to the game’s visuals. Around halfway through the long list of patch notes released on December 16, 2025, Embark informed players that ARC Raiders received a new “Cinematic” graphics setting that significantly enhances the extraction shooter’s visuals on high-end PCs.
One of ARC Raiders‘ best qualities has always been its immersion, and its visuals certainly help with that. Now, players with powerful PCs can take advantage of the graphics offered by its Cinematic preset. Before the update, players could only choose between Low, Medium, High, and Epic presets, but the Cinematic overall quality level now upgrades ARC Raiders‘ visuals more than Epic ever could.
How to Utilize ARC Raiders’ New Cinematic Preset
- When not in a round, press Esc on keyboard
- Click Settings
- Navigate to the Graphics tab
- Scroll down to Quality
- Change Overall Quality Level to Cinematic
The new Cinematic graphics preset is only available on PC, and it is recommended that players do not enable it during a round, as it can trigger additional shader preloading.
ARC Raiders PC players who wish to utilize the new Cinematic preset will need to first navigate to the Graphics tab in the Settings menu. From there, they can scroll down to the Quality section and click the right arrow until it reads “Cinematic.” This will upgrade everything from view distance to textures, though players can still customize each visual feature individually if their PC’s performance takes too much of a hit. No restart is required for the new preset to take effect either, but players will still want to ensure their graphics driver is up-to-date to cope with the changes.
Unfortunately, Embark hasn’t released specific system requirements for the Cinematic preset, so players will need to do a bit of trial and error to see what works for their machine and what doesn’t. As it is in almost any PC game, shadows have the most impact on performance, so if players experience considerable drops in frame rate, reducing the quality level of shadows alone can help. That way, everything else can potentially be left on Cinematic.
ARC Raiders’ Cinematic Preset Enhances the Game’s Visuals
Since it was released, some PC players have been taking advantage of ARC Raiders‘ new Cinematic graphics setting and sharing their experiences on Reddit. In this Reddit post by MrSlitherz, for example, the biggest takeaway from the update is that it increases the detail and crispness of textures when it’s active. However, other Reddit posts, like one from user n0tAgOat, claim the main difference is in view distance. Apparently, with the Cinematic preset enabled, visual quality is increased significantly the further out the environment is.
Again, if players experience too much of a decline in their PC’s performance with Cinematic mode enabled, they should at least target shadows as the main culprit for the hit. However, view distance and effects are also two other graphics settings that can be tweaked if players want to increase their PC’s performance while still increasing the quality of other visual features to Cinematic.
Important Cinematic Mode Takeaways
- Players with 16GB VRAM GPUs report little to no issue running Cinematic textures
- Texture quality itself seems to have minimal FPS impact if VRAM headroom is available
- Reduce performance by 40–60 FPS compared to Epic in GPU-bound scenarios
- Frame Gen can push FPS into extreme ranges, but several players disable it due to latency or PvP concerns
- Cinematic mode favors strong CPUs to avoid bottlenecks at high frame targets
- Cinematic mode requires willingness to trade raw FPS for clarity, especially at 1440p and 4K
In the end, ARC Raiders‘ new Cinematic PC graphics setting is best viewed as an optional upgrade rather than a must-use setting. It clearly offers sharper textures and improved view distance for players with high-end PCs, but it also asks for a real performance tradeoff that will not be worth it for everyone. At the same time, should players have a PC that can handle the upgrade, they should, without a doubt, enable Cinematic mode, as it takes the visual experience to the next level in a wide variety of ways.
- Released
-
October 30, 2025
- ESRB
-
Teen / Violence, Blood
