What you need to know
- Ark: Survival Ascended is a full remake of Ark: Survival Evolved in Unreal Engine 5.
- Studio Wildcard announced Ark: Survival Ascended in March 2023 on its website with a planned Early Access launch targeting October 2023.
- The first game play reveal trailer was shown during the Xbox Partner Preview showcase.
Studio Wildcard has finally released a gameplay trailer for Ark: Survival Ascended during the Xbox Partner Preview showcase. The game is a remake of Ark: Survival Evolved using Unreal Engine 5 that was announced by Studio Wildcard on its website in March 2023 with an expected Early Access release window of late October 2023. In the new trailer, the release date was only listed as “coming soon”.
Studio Wildcard shut down the official servers of Ark: Survival Evolved in September in anticipation of the release of Survival Ascended, which was submitted for console certification in mid-October. While single-player access and private hosting were still available, players who wanted to continue with Survival Evolved’s PVP side would need to rent a server from Nitrado, with whom Studio Wildcard has an exclusivity agreement.
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A few tidbits of info about Ark: Survival Ascended have made their way into the community via the Ark Discord and other social media channels, but the latest gameplay clip also features a thorough post on Xbox Wire with more details.
Players can look forward to cross-platform multiplayer and modding in Ark: Survival Ascended with cross-platform anti-cheat. New content, including photo mode, quality-of-life changes to dinosaurs and baby dino management, and a reworked character creator are all expected for the remaster. Ark fans can also look forward to base building improvements, including changes to snap points and logic, and an optional third-person camera mode.
Cross-platform mods, in particular, were highlighted in the Xbox Wire blog post written by Studio Wildcard executive producer, Jatheish Karunakaran. PC players have been able to foster a robust modding community for Ark, and that community will be able to cross over to consoles for the first time with Ark: Survival Ascended. The Ark devkit will be available on the Epic Launcher when Ark: Survival Ascended releases.
Survival Ascended’s development on Unreal Engine 5 has given Studio Wildcard the chance to implement advanced lighting features, better mesh rendering, and enhanced physics to the game. Unreal Engine 5’s Instance-based Rendering will bring massive improvements to Ark’s performance when players are building massive bases, which has long been a struggle for developers and players alike.
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Ark: Survival Ascended will release in early access with the base game and a remaster of the Scorched Earth DLC at launch, as well as access to the Ark battle royale mode. Additional expansions Aberration, Extinction, Genesis Part 1, and Genesis Part 2 are expected to be released to Survival Ascended throughout 2024 in the lead-up to the release of Ark 2. The content roadmap for Ark: Survival Ascended includes the addition of 11 new creatures, more than any of the previous DLC expansions.
There has not yet been any announcement of what the minimum PC specs are going to be for Ark: Survival Ascended, leading to worry amongst the community that their gaming rigs won’t be up to snuff in an ambitious game that has a history of being both demanding and buggy.
