Ark 2 is the long anticipated sequel to Ark: Survival Evolved. A highly successful sandbox survival game. Whilst Ark 2 builds on its predecessor. Studio Wildcard has boasted a long list of changes to the content of the base game, from: a new souls-like combat system to modifiable weapons that will give the player the option of “millions of variations in weaponry”. Perhaps this could be the open-world MMO version of Souls-like games that we have been craving? But with dinosaurs roaming the world to top it off.
Ark 2 is set to take place after the events of Genesis – a popular DLC from Survival Evolved – The game is located on a planet called “Arat” and will feature the clones dropped from the Genesis.
First watch the trailer to see what we are excited about:
Ark 2 Trailer
Ark 2 Breakdown
As we can see from the trailer, the game will feature Vin-Diesel. Whilst this is exciting for some fans, we hope that this will not affect your ability to customise your character to ridiculous extremes. The first game became interesting, as you’d see characters of all shapes and sizes running round the beach in their cloth armor. Having the addition of Vin-Diesel, it is possible that it could become more story-based driven for those who prefer singleplayer/co-op games.
We are currently unsure how this will affect the multiplayer experience when playing on official/unofficial servers. Hopefully, it will work in a similar way to Ark Survival Evolved and still allow for practically seamless story advancements in the way of boss battles and technology unlocks as reward.
Ark has always had a good mixture of content for both PvE and PvP. We hope this continues as the PvP community has been the lifeblood that has kept Ark: Survival Evolved official servers populated for so long!
We hope Ark 2 will follow suit with Ark Survival Evolved by enabling modders and mod developers to create their own content for the game. Popular mods like S+ (A Quality of life mod that took unofficial servers by a storm). There are still popular mods used today, such as ‘Primal Fear Mod‘, which completely changes the in-game world by adding a whole new tier set of weird and wonderful looking dinosaurs. This creates a wildly different and more hardcore experience to the game. Thanks to Ark Content Creators, this mod can still be seen in action to this current date.
We can only hope that these mod developers will create similar mods for the Sequel.
So What Should We Expect?
In essence, we should expect the core gameplay to be Ark: Survival Evolved but with more content, better visuals and textures and fewer bugs! It should be a fun interactive survival sandbox game with dinosaurs there to ruin your day! The game will offer lots of large learning curves and lots of bosses to defeat. We hope to have the ability to completely customise our own journey in the game by taming different dinosaurs, wearing different armor sets and using different weapons.
Ark 2 Release Date
Ark 2 release date is still unconfirmed. It was originally planned for 2022. However, it was pushed back due to Unreal Engine 5 being released and the pandemic. We are now expecting it to be late 2023 as seen in the latest trailer, but sadly, there has not been no gameplay released yet, so this could potentially be heading into Q4 or even 2024.
Ark 2 Final Thoughts
Whilst expecting this game to be the next big thing, we should also keep our expectations fair for release as the scope of the game is huge and Studio Wildcard definitely have their hands full with this one!
Please see our FAQ page on ARK 2 for more information!
Let us know if you would like to see a deep dive into what Ark 2 could and will be, or if you have any questions about the game.
When the game releases, be sure to check back here for interactive maps to find where resources will spawn, much like the one we made for Sons of the forest.
Alternatively, check out other games we are excited about, like Thrones&Liberty, Pax Dei or Nightingale.
