Studio Wildcard has announced thatArk 2will face major delays, but on the upside, it’ll treat fans to a next-gen version of the first game. Even better news, the upgradedArk: Survival Evolvedwill arrive with new and exciting features this year.
Ark: Survival Evolvedofficially released in 2017. The game received mixed reviews with a lot of critics bringing up how punishing the experience can be, yet most stillpraisedArk: Survival Evolvedfor its engaging setting. However, even in its Early Access stage, the game enjoyed a high number of sales. Within a month of the Early Access release,Ark: Survival Evolvedhad sold over one million copies, and by August 2016, this number grew to 5.5 million between the PC and Xbox One versions. The unexpected success of sales brought on DLCs and also made Studio Wildcard think about the possibility of expanding on the storyline. Thanks to that, the sequel was announced in 2020 at The Game Awards, starring Vin Diesel. It’s being developed together with Grove Street Games and originally was planned to be released in 2023.
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In a new post on its community forum, Studio Wildcard has told the fans ofArkthat, unfortunately, it won’t be able to deliverArk 2this year and has made the difficult decision to delay it to the end of 2024. The explanation talks about wanting to use Unreal Engine 5 to create a “never-before-achieved scope,” which means the team had to adjust the speed of the development considerably. This will cause a significant change from theoriginal plans forArk 2. Studio Wildcard lists elements fans can expect such as “Soulslike combat, primitive-only weaponry, and strict third-person mechanics – and an overall very serious tone.” Because these elements might not appeal to the fans of the original game, the studio decided to also give players a next-gen version ofArk: Survival Evolved.
This new version will be titledArk: Survival Ascendedand is expected to release in August 2023. The base game will contain The Island, Survival of the Fittest, and all the DLC maps, which will be added gradually. The new features will include a cross-platform multiplayer option, allowing players to progress through the game no matter which platform they access it with. Cross-platform modding will be made available, which means mods that were created on PC will be “delivered directly to end-users’ consoles from a custom modding backend.” All this and more will be sold in different versions to Microsoft and PlayStation users. Those in the first group will be able to buy the Ark Respawned Bundle for $49.99, which will mean ownership of both the original game and the sequel on PC or Xbox, whilegamers on PlayStation will getArkas a standalone gamefor $39.99.
The project seems incredibly ambitious all around. But it seems there are plenty of areas which might receivecriticism fromArkfanswhen it comes to different access between platforms.
Ark: Survival Ascendedreleases on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S in August 2023.Ark 2is expected to release at the end of 2024 for PC and Xbox Series X/S.
