Arc Raiders is rebuilding Celeste with full motion capture ahead of the Frozen Trail update

Embark is overhauling Celeste — Speranza's de facto leader — ahead of the Frozen Trail update dropping October 6, replacing her current model with a full motion capture version built around voice actress Diana Gardner's real face and expressions.

Chief creative officer Stefan Strandberg explained in a blog post that Celeste has "never fully represented the depth of Diana's performance," with her limited facial expressiveness breaking immersion and failing to sell the weight of the story. The fix is a proper mocap pass: Gardner's face is now scanned and mapped so her expressions and emotions come through directly. Strandberg frames it plainly — "you're watching is the authentic performance of an incredibly talented actor, the real Celeste on screen for the first time." This is the first time Embark has used full motion capture for a character in Arc Raiders, and the studio says it plans to bring other characters in line with their real-world actors in future updates. The broader goal, as Strandberg puts it, is "finding more ways to integrate real human performances into every interaction."

Arc Raiders has always had strong world-building — the surface is genuinely compelling to explore — but its NPCs have been a weak point, functioning more as quest dispensers than characters with any real presence. The game has also drawn criticism for using AI-generated voicelines to pad out dialogue, which has made the cast feel even more hollow. Embark clearly recognises the problem, and the Celeste rework is the first concrete step toward fixing it. Frozen Trail is shaping up to be a significant update overall, with changes to anticheat, a potential PvE test, and loot hotspot adjustments also in the pipeline.

The Celeste overhaul lands with Frozen Trail on October 6. Whether the wider character rework programme moves fast enough to shift player perception of Arc Raiders' storytelling remains to be seen, but the studio's direction is at least pointed the right way.