Developer Studio Wildcard have announced a release window ARK II, their online dinosaur survival action game.
Ark II launches in 2023 for Windows PC (via Steam) and Xbox Series X|S, and will be on Xbox Game Pass on day one.
Here’s a rundown on the 2020-announced game:
Ark II
Survive the Past, Tame the Future
Suddenly awakened on a strange primal world filled with dinosaurs and humans struggling for dominance; you must piece together the history of how you arrived there, team-up with legendary heroes, and confront powerful dark forces seeking to control the fate of all life. Saddle up, and join the definitive next-generation survival experience with ARK II!
Every aspect of the ARK series has been rethought and redesigned in this sequel. Here’s a sampling of the new features that ARK II will contain upon its initial Early Access release:
Features
- Epic – Starring Vin Diesel (“Riddick”) as legendary ARK hero Santiago, experience an epoch-spanning adventure as he seeks to protect his daughter Meeka — voiced by Auli’i Cravalho (“Moana”) — from the ghosts of the ancient past and visions of a new future.
- Revolutionary Cross-Platform Modding – Fully stackable, user-created Mods for new creatures, items, gameplay features, and maps are now distributed across all platforms, along with support for modded unofficial servers!
- Best in Class, Third-Person-Only Gameplay – Advanced character traversal mechanics like mantling, free-climbing, parkour, sliding, and swinging!
- Souls-like Melee Combat – Target-lock, blocks, dodges, combos, staggers, special attacks, emphasizing player-skill-based action.
- Massive, New Alien Environment – Explore a mysterious, chaotic world where native flora and fauna are being overrun by invasive primeval creatures from an extinct Earth!
- Component-Based Item Crafting – Construct your weapons and tools from a range of distinct modules to customize their look and functionality — millions of possible combinations enable you to craft your own unique gear! The specific materials you choose will further affect the appearance of your items, with multiple options of resources found in unique regions of the world.
- Dynamic World Events – Natural and unnatural occurrences are always happening across the game world, independent of your presence! Your choices in deciding whether to interact with these events will yield rewards or challenges.
- Opposing PVE Force – Hostile ‘Aratai’ hunt & attack you riding their own tamed creatures, as they seek to drive human interlopers from their world.
- Advanced Template Building & Sharing – Instanced rendering and network-streaming enable much higher client and server performance for large, player-built structures, and a longer draw distance! Survivors can set up and save their own preferred building templates, share them, and place prospective template layouts in the world to then build them out as a team.
- Sensory-Based Creature AI – No omnipresent radar — animals now track and hunt by sight, sound, and smell! Hide from predators with visual camouflage and environmental obstructions, and learn to mask your scent! Dynamic pathfinding enables creatures to intelligently maneuver around obstacles and player-built structures.
- Character Progression and Skill System – Gain both experience points from gameplay, and knowledge points by accomplishing key objectives and overcoming unique challenges, to progress along a massive skill tree filled with new active abilities, perks, and passive benefits.
- Full Utilization of Unreal Engine 5 Technology – See foliage react convincingly to passing wildlife, water flow downstream around obstacles, volumetric stormclouds, localized weather systems, smoke and particles affected by physical forces, and much more! Fundamental advancement of lighting systems enables a more photorealistic day-night cycle, generating real-time ambient lighting & shadows within both natural and player-constructed environments!
