Ark 2 will be a third-person game with "Souls-like melee combat" and a whole AI enemy force to fight against in PvE. In other words, it sounds pretty different to the original Ark: Survival Evolved.
After the game got a new trailer at the Xbox-Bethesda summer showcase, developer Studio Wildcard sent a press release explaining a number of newly announced features, and it uncluded some surprising details. The biggest is that the game swaps the original's first-person perspective for third-person, promising, "Advanced character traversal mechanics include mantling, free-climbing, parkour, sliding, and swinging!"
Connected to that change is a promise of melee combat similar to FromSoftware's Souls games, offering "Target-lock, blocks, dodges, combos, staggers and special attacks," with a focus on player skill. Ark 2 will also include an entire opposing AI force called the Aratai, who "hunt & attack you while riding their own tamed creatures, as they seek to drive human interlopers from their world."
The original Ark was built around players crafting, scavenging, fighting and taming dinosaurs in a shared server. Ark 2 sounds like a more traditional narrative-led game in many respects – and will be set on a brand new planet, "where native flora and fauna are being overrun by invasive primeval creatures, from an extinct Earth."
It's hard to get a sense of how different Ark 2 will be from the original game given that we're still yet to see gameplay, although today's new cinematic (above) is said to be in-engine, and created using Unreal Engine 5.
Studio Wildcard promised several other features, too:
- "REVOLUTIONARY CROSS-PLATFORM MODDING - Fully stackable, user-created Mods for new creatures, items and gameplay features, with maps distributed across all platforms – including onto Xbox – and support for modded servers enabled through official mod support by mod.io"
- "COMPONENT-BASED ITEM CRAFTING - Construct weapons and tools from a range of distinct modules to customize their look and functionality -- millions of possible combinations enable players to craft their own unique gear! Specific materials will further affect the appearance of items, with multiple resource options in unique regions of the world."
- "DYNAMIC WORLD EVENTS - Natural and unnatural occurrences are always happening across the game world, independent of your presence! Your choices in deciding whether to interact with these events will yield rewards or challenges."
There's much we still don't know about Ark 2, but we do know one thing – it stars Vin Diesel for some reason. The actor plays the game's "hero protagonist" Santiago, and his daughter Meeka will be played by Moana's Auli'i Cravalho. It will arrive in 2023.
Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.