Studio Wildcard revealed the first gameplay trailer for ARK: Survival Ascended today during Microsoft’s Xbox Partner Preview stream. They followed up the reveal with the announcement that the remake of the dino-themed survival game will be releasing today on PC via Steam.
At its core, ARK: Survival Ascended (ASA) is a next-generation remake of the original ARK: Survival Evolved. More specifically, ASA utilizes Unreal Engine 5 to boast big improvements and enhancements to the visuals and gameplay. As such, the codebase for ARK has been fully rewritten and the artwork recreated. ASA has also utilizes UE5-specific features such as Lumen to really push the graphical fidelity.
Life finds a way!
“ASA provides an evergreen adventure that re-energizes the classic-ARK experience, one that will continue to grow and leverages the latest tech advancements with UE5, as well as what we’ve been working on with the ARK Franchise as a whole. With ARK 2‘s direction as a Souls-like adventure, we realize our community still wants and loves the original ARK. ASA enables that original ARK experience to thrive in next-gen quality with continued developer support as well as the exciting growth from UGC creators.”
– Jeremy Stieglitz, Co-Founder, Lead Designer/Programmer & Co-Creative Director at Studio Wildcard
Wait, what? I had no clue that ARK 2 was going to be a Souls-like Vin Diesel adventure. Now I’m even more curious! Also, with that knowledge, it makes more sense as to why ASA was created. As great as Ark: Survival Evolved is, it will certainly be enhanced with a quality touch-up. When it originally launched it was quite buggy, but over time Studio Wildcard ironed out a good amount of the bugs. Unfortunately by then, it started to show its faults in its age. Hopefully the reworked codebase and graphics in ASA will allow the game to truly shine.
Also, ARK: Survival Evolved had a handful of DLC’s over the years. ASA includes access to all of them including Scorched Earth, Aberration, Extinction, and Genesis Parts 1 and 2. ASA will launch with access to the original map, The Island, and then add access to the others over time.
ARK: Survival Ascended will be available today on Steam at some point. I’ll updated this post once I see it go live! ASA will also launch on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S in November.
