While actor Vin Diesel’s involvement with ARK 2 has been known for quite some time, especially with his title of being “President of Creative Convergence”, no information has been confirmed about his actual role in the game’s development. In a new interview with PCGamer, Studio Wildcard co-founders Jeremy Stieglitz and Jesse Rapczak have finally revealed some details about Diesel’s role in the company, the narrative of ARK 2, as well as him being a fan of the ARK franchise for quite some time.
“Diesel, at the time especially, played a very large amount of ARK,” said Stieglitz. “In the Survival Evolved days, he played it as much as any ARK pro player would. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours. Him and his kids, his partner, [they were] really good at the game. They played all the maps, they knew all the bugs, they knew all the exploits. They had their own tribe.”
As for ARK 2, Stieglitz has revealed that Diesel’s role has largely revolved around the narrative of his character – Santiago – and how he would fit into the overarching story. Interestingly, Santiago was originally conceived as “a nerd” before Diesel got involved.
“The character of Santiago existed before we started collaborating with Vin Diesel, but frankly, we kind of retconned the character a little bit to fit his archetype. The character was originally written as, like, a nerd, and we’re like… yeah, that ain’t gonna work,” Stieglitz explained. “He’s gonna be a really buff, awesome nerd who can punch out anybody?”
“So we retconned the character a little bit, but it fit because the character was also originally written as a gear head. We’re like, that tracks well enough. And so he helped us rewrite the character’s backstory a little bit.”
As for how much of Diesel’s character work has been completed, Stieglitz revealed that it has only been “a little bit”, largely for Genesis 2 and teasers for ARK 2, as well as a few lines for a planned animated series.
Since the release of ARK 2 has been pushed back all the way to 2028, Diesel’s silence on the matter was also curious. When asked about this, Rapczak said that the actor simply offered no comment on the matter.
“I think they’re used to it in Hollywood,” Stieglitz said. “I presume projects get delayed all the time, and you have projects sit on the shelf for decades, sometimes. Not that ARK 2 would sit on the shelf for that long. But we did tell them, yeah, we want to make Survival Ascended first. They were cool with it.”
Studio Wildcard had announced the 2028 launch window for ARK 2 back in December. In a statement, Stieglitz spoke about the studio needing to learn about newer technologies and gameplay mechanics for its development.
“One of the things about doing ARK 2 was that we felt we had to learn a lot more about how to make the kind of game we wanted to do, and to do it kind of in phases,” he said. “Learning about both the technology and the mechanics seemed, to us, safer than to just try to go and release a whole standalone product called ARK 2.”
