Studio Wildcard has made some pretty significant announcements for its Ark franchise. Ark 2, which was due out sometime this year, has been pushed back to late 2024, but in the meantime, fans of the series have other things to look forward to.
The developer has announced Ark: Survival Ascended, a remastered version of Ark: Survival Evolved. Built on Unreal Engine 5, it will serve as a significant leap forward for the game and will launch exclusively for current-gen consoles and PC sometime before the end of August. Around that same time, meanwhile, Ark: Survival Evolved will be shutting down its servers and ending support, so that players will only be able to play on private servers and in single player mode.
What exactly will Survival Ascended bring to the table though? The developer is promising a full technological overhaul thanks to Unreal Engine 5 and its Nanite, Lumen, and RTXDI technologies. Players can also look forward to dynamic water, interactive foliage, instanced rendering to allow for larger bases, threaded server networking, and a native physics engine.
Meanwhile, it’s also been confirmed that the remaster will feature support for full cross-platform multiplayer, cross-progression, cross-platform anti-cheat, and cross-platform modding, while it will also feature a fully revamped Survival of the Fittest mode. Additionally, art assets will be updated throughout the game, and new holiday events and content update will also be released post-launch.
Plenty of new QoL improvements, balancing changes, and content updates have also been confirmed, including an updated minimap, new structures, a queuing system, a pinging system, a new optional third person camera, directional sprinting and walking, chibi slot and skin tabs, gamepad cursors, and much more.
At launch, Ark: Survival Ascended will pack in The Island, Scorched Earth, and the aforementioned Survival of the Fittest Mode. Players will also be able to purchase two separate expansion packs- Explorer’s Pass will retail for $19.99, and will include Scorched Earth, Aberration (Q4 2023), and Extinction (Q1 2024; and Genesis Pass, which will launch for the same price, and will include Genesis Part 1 (Q1 2024) and Genesis Part 2 (Q2 2024).
The game itself will be sold at a price of $39.99 on PS5. Meanwhile, on Xbox Series X/S and PC, Studio Wildcard will be selling the Ark Respawn Bundle for $49.99, which will include both Ark: Survival Ascended and Ark 2, in addition to an exclusive one month closed beta of the latter for sometime in 2024. This bundle will be available for purchase for a year starting this August, after which point both games will be sold separately.