Stieglitz, who also works as creative director, lead designer, lead programmer and development director at Studio Wildcard, spoke about wanting to get player feedback for some of the new gameplay mechanics that we will see in Legacy of Santiago. Much like the last time he spoke about this, he noted that this helps the studio with reducing risks for ARK 2.

“We’re taking a lot of the systems developed for ARK 2 and moving them into Legacy of Santiago because we’d like to get player feedback on them and prototype them to reduce risk,” he said. “Every game can have an expansion pack that’s a ‘miss,’ and you just move on, but if you have a whole new game that’s a miss, it can be a company-ending thing. Legacy of Santiago is a way to see how features like the new combat perform in a live environment over time.”

Just last month, Stieglitz had spoken about some of these new features coming to ARK: Survival Ascended with the release of Legacy of Santiago in Q4 2027. He noted that, while the expansion won’t feature the narrative things we can expect from ARK 2 when it finally launches, it will bring with it things like Soulslike third-person melee combat. He also noted that these systems being received well could lead to ARK 2‘s major selling point becoming its worldbuilding and narrative.

“My general view on it is that it probably comes down to content. Legacy of Santiago is going to involve a lot of the new fighting and combat mechanics that we want to experiment with, with ARK 2: Soulslike third-person combat, melee combat, and so forth,” he said. “But it’s not going to have all this like crazy narrative world build out content that we want to do with ARK 2, if the mechanics seem to work well with Legacy of Santiago, then the key selling point of ARK 2 could be that there is this giant campaign narrative that sits as a standalone product.”

Stieglitz had also spoken about the lessons that Studio Wildcard learned when it had decided to stop development on ARK: Survival Evolved to instead focus more on ARK: Survival Ascended and ARK 2. He noted how fans of Survival Evolved got angry at the developer because they wanted more content and they weren’t ready to move on to a new game just yet.

“One thing we learned is to not say goodbye until your players want you to. To be honest with you, we kind of just hard-stopped updating ARK: Survival Evolved, and we’re like, ‘OK, we’re done with it.’ And actually, players were kind of mad about that, because they weren’t ready, they wanted more content at that point,” he said.

Announced during Snail Games’ Investor Day in Times Square (reported by the Epic Games Store), Stieglitz confirmed that a 2028 launch was indeed “our intention.” “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. 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.“

Legacy of Santiago, an expansion out in Q4 2027, is one such route that the studio is taking. “We’re going to be introducing a lot of the mechanics and features that we wanted to kind of test out in ARK 2 as an expansion for ARK: Survival Ascended.

“Legacy of Santiago will allow us to explore a lot of mechanics that we want to do with ARK 2, but it kind of derisks that. Essentially, if we don’t do it right, if we don’t do it perfectly, we’re able to iterate on it with a live game and get a lot more feedback than to just release something standalone. It’s much safer for us to get a lot of that feedback in a live game where we can react much more fluidly to what players are telling us.”

This is also a way to prep players for the sequel before bidding adieu to the original. “One thing we learned is to not say goodbye until your players want you to. To be honest with you, we kind of just hard-stopped updating ARK: Survival Evolved, and we’re like, ‘OK, we’re done with it.’ And actually, players were kind of mad about that, because they weren’t ready, they wanted more content at that point,” he said.

As for whether Legacy of Santiago could risk taking some of the sheen off ARK 2 by featuring some of its mechanics, it’s something that Stieglitz didn’t “quite” have the answer to yet.

My general view on it is that it probably comes down to content. Legacy of Santiago is going to involve a lot of the new fighting and combat mechanics that we want to experiment with, with ARK 2: Soulslike third-person combat, melee combat, and so forth. But it’s not going to have all this like crazy narrative world build out content that we want to do with ARK 2, if the mechanics seem to work well with Legacy of Santiago, then the key selling point of ARK 2 could be that there is this giant campaign narrative that sits as a standalone product.”

Of course, the expansion’s narrative isn’t anywhere near as massive in scope. However, much of that will rely on Vin Diesel, who was revealed in the sequel’s debut trailer.

“We have a much more ambitious narrative built out for ARK 2. But I’m going to be blunt, it’s really going to be highly dependent on just how involved Vin Diesel is actually going to be, which is still an open question.

“The question is: How much performance are we going to get from him?” Stieglitz said. “Are we going to get one day, five days, eight hours? You don’t know. And the scope of how much performance we are going to get determines just how the narrative is going to play out. We have a narrative that’s if we get a lot of Vin Diesel, this is what we will do, and if we get a little Vin Diesel, this is what we will do.”

ARK 2 is coming to Xbox Series X/S and PC, launching on day one for Game Pass. It will reportedly be exclusive to the subscription service for three years.