Having sold a whopping 20m units on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation it’s no surprise that Studio Wildcard has used the opportunity of a brand new console generation to release a fully-fledged sequel of the game.
But so far, the developer hasn’t said a whole bunch about the game since it was first revealed. If you’re desperate for more ARK 2 news, then read on, we’ll bring you up to speed on everything that’s been revealed so far.
14 September Update - Checked for the latest ARK 2 news. All the most recent updates are found just below.
Latest News
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| Title | Content |
| July 1 - ARK 2 impacting ARK 1 Events |
ARK 2 won’t be released until 2023 but players in ARK are already starting to feel the effects of the game’s development on the original release. ARK typically has a reliable cadence of events throughout the year, and generally speaking we would normally see the ARK Summer Bash event throughout July. But this year the developers have announced that they’ve had to scale back plans owing to the work on ARK 2 (as well as the recently released ARK Fjordur map). It feels like the closer we get to ARK 2 that this was always going to be an inevitability, but for fans of the game, it’ll be interesting to see if more ARK events throughout 2022 also get put to one side so the team can focus their efforts on the sequel moving forward. |
| June 12, 2022 - Xbox Showcase Reveals New ARK 2 Trailer |
A brand new trailer for ARK 2 has been shown during the Xbox Showcase today, alongside a few new details. For instance, ARK 2 has been confirmed to release in 2023. We’ve no doubt more details will come pretty soon. |
| June 6, 2022 - Xbox Confirms Extended Showcase on June 14 |
Microsoft was already set to hold an Xbox Games Showcase together with Bethesda on Sunday, June 12. However, they’ve now announced an Extended stream which is set to take place on June 14 and last roughly 90 minutes. According to a blog post from Microsoft, the company will “share new trailers, take deeper looks at the news from the Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase and speak with some of your favorite game creators”. Let’s hope that includes a look at ARK 2! |
| April 30, 2022 - Studio Wildcard Co-Founder teasing updates 'on the horizon' |
According to Jeremy Stieglitz, co-founder of Studio Wildcard, we should hopefully have some more news regarding ARK 2 coming pretty soon. After relative silence for so long we’ve no doubt that’ll be welcome relief to fans! |
| April 28, 2022 - Xbox Showcase confirmed for June |
Microsoft has announced plans to host an E3-style Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase on Sunday, June 12. “This show will feature amazing titles coming from Xbox Game Studios, Bethesda, and our partners around the world,” it said. Could we see ARK 2 during the event? Here’s hoping. |
| June 3, 2021 - Is that Vin Diesel in the new ARK Genesis Part 2 expansion? |
The latest trailer for ARK: Survival Evolve’s last expansion – named Genesis Part 2 – has just dropped and it appears to show some bald chap exiting a stasis booth at the end of the trailer. It also looks an awful lot like Vin Diesel, who we know will be the lead character of ARK 2. Have a watch of the trailer here, but you can also see Vin on the screenshot below:
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ARK 2 Release Date
Update - Following the new trailer reveal at E3 2022, Studio Wildcard confirmed the game would be relesed in 2023.
Following the initial reveal Studio Wildcard confirmed that ARK 2 has a 2022 release date on next-generation platforms.
Has ARK 2 Been Delayed?
For now, we have to assume that ARK 2 has not been delayed. Studio Wildcard said the game would launch in 2022, and at the time of writing, we still have plenty more months left in the year. However, since that original reveal we’ve heard absolutely nothing about the game from the studio. We would have to imagine that with zero marketing for the game, it’s either going to launch completely out of the blue, or it’s had some difficulties in development which means we could easily see it being delayed into 2023.
ARK 2 Gameplay Details
With the game still quite far out we’ve not been given a whole heap of specifics about ARK 2 and the gameplay players can expect. Obviously there’s a feeling that it will be similar to the first game, but it’s more interesting how Studio Wildcard intends to evolve the experience for this entirely new chapter.
Thankfully, we do have a few clues courtesy of a blogpost on the official Xbox Wire titled ‘The Future of Survival Games Begins with Ark 2‘ which is written by
You can read the blog post in its entirety on the link, but here are a few key gameplay details that stood out to us whilst reading it.
- “Ark 2’s main narrative tells the story of a father and a daughter, Meeka (played by Auli’i Cravalho), of betrayal and broken promises, and the strength of the family bond”
- “In the sequel, which is third-person only, controls and movement for both players and creatures have been completely redesigned.”
- “Taking inspiration from game systems like Assassin’s Creed’s automatic parkour and Breath of the Wild’s climbing, player characters can now clamber over the environment in a more realistic and freeform manner.”
- “Ark 2 draws heavily from Souls-like action for its human-scale combat: an emphasis on dodges, blocks, light and heavy attacks, combos, and player-reflex skill”
- “Rather than simply having a more-or-less static environment with easily predictable or repetitive occurrences from the first game, the new World Event system is designed to ensure that unique things are always happening around the world, whether you are there or not. Events include procedurally-dynamic scenarios like watering hole gatherings, wounded creatures, tracking the signs of advanced prey, stampedes, herds, defending endangered creatures to earn their trust, finding dens of parent creatures and their young, and more”
- “Ark 2 adds a revolutionary new feature for consoles players: fully stackable, user-created mods, including on unofficial servers, for the Xbox version of the game enabled through official mod support by mod.io! This means that players who create mods using the PC version will be able to upload them to the cloud and make them available for all console players to enjoy as well”
Trailer
The ARK II World Premiere Trailer made with in-engine graphics and game assets using the latest Unreal Engine was debuted during the 2020 Game Awards. You can watch this just below.
This was later followed up by a new trailer revealed during the Xbox and Bethesda E3 2022 Showcase event.
The new trailer, which you can see below, was also accompanied by a new blurb, which read:
“Starring Vin Diesel (Fast Franchise) as Santiago and Auli’i Cravalho (Moana) as his daughter Meeka. Survive the past. Tame the future. Awakened on a primal world filled with dinosaurs & humans struggling for dominance, you must team-up with legendary heroes to confront dark forces. Saddle up, & join the definitive next-gen survival experience with ARK 2!”
Why is Vin Diesel in ARK 2?
Vin Diesel appears to be taking a starring role both in the game and behind the scenes. The Fast & Furious star was introduced in the Genesis Expansion to ARK: Survival Evolved and his character will presumably continue the story in this next-gen release.
Away from the mo-cap of the game it also appears as though Vin Diesel will be taking a leading role at Studio Wildcard as an executive producer on the game.
According to Doug Kennedy, CEO of Studio Wildcard, Diesal has played “1000’s of hours of ARK: Survival Evolved,” and following the reveal of the sequel Diesel said he was having a lot of fun playing ARK as well as being really excited to join the Studio Wildcard team to develop the story both in-game and in the upcoming animated series.
Is ARK 2 Xbox Exclusive? Is Ark 2 Coming To PS5?
ARK 2 is confirmed as a “console launch exclusive” for Xbox.
Whilst this information was missing from the game’s original press release and seemingly also the official studio wildcard trailer, the console exclusivity was confirmed by the Xbox Newswire with a dedicated blog post, which read:
Last week at The Game Awards, Studio Wildcard took their next dinosaur-sized step with the Ark franchise and thrilled the world by announcing Ark II. The reveal trailer (above) was fully captured in-engine and showcases some of the features and gameplay fans can expect when it arrives as an Xbox Series X|S console launch exclusive in 2022.
The original ARK: Survival Evolved came to PlayStation 4 and we would imagine that ARK 2 will also launch on PS5 consoles at some point in the future, it’s just that currently there’s no telling how long that exclusivity could last.
ARK Genesis Part 2 Ending Explained
Right, so that was Vin Diesel who we saw in the trailer for ARK Genesis Part 2. If you want to know why, read on. If you want to avoid spoilers, stop reading now.
Ok, last chance? Find we’re starting now.
ARK Genesis: Part 2 is set onboard a colony ship with two ring worlds (seen below). One is corrupted by the main villain Rockwell, and at the end of the game, Rockwell’s corrupted ring world starts crashing towards an unknown gas planet. The other ring world is left behind drifting through space, and then starts launching escape pods with survivors down towards another nearby planet that looks a lot like Earth. This planet is most likely the one we sew in the ARK 2 trailer.
Vin Diesel is playing the character of Santiago, a clone of long-running ARK Survival Evolved character ‘Santiago da Costa’.
During the ARK 2 trailer is also worth noting that we see a drawing of HLN-A on a wall, which would suggest that the survivor (AKA the main player) from the first ARK Survival Evolved, made it down to the planet. So whilst ARK 2 will most likely have Vin Diesel as the main character, we might get to meet the main character from the original ARK games.
That’s everything we know so far about ARK 2, but stay tuned to Turtle Beach for more news, leaks and updates in the lead up to launch.
