It’s the “ultimate-value bundle”
To compensate, they’re going to instead releaseArk: Survival Ascendedin August, a remaster of the originalArk: Survival Evolvedthat moves it over to Unreal Engine 5. That’s the good news. The bad news is you can only buy it in a $50 bundle with the sequel (which won’t be finished for at least a year), and that the original Survival Evolved servers will be switched off when Ascended launches.
They pin the delay on several factors, including the development team being new to Unreal Engine 5. They also say that producing Survival Ascended will help them to further their “mastery of the new engine and ultimately battle-test some of our riskier technical advancements.”
Ark 2is also apparently shaping up to be substantially different from Survival Evolved, with “Souls-like combat, primitive-only weaponry, and strict third-person mechanics – and an overall ‘very serious’ tone.” That’s a surprise set of ideas for a sequel to the original Ark, which was janky, both third- and first-person, and had terrible grind redeemed only by the daft joy of eventually being able to build a mobile artillery platform on the back of an amphibious dinosaur.
The substantial departure in Ark 2 is why Studio Wildcard “feel it is essential to provide players with a fully next-gen version of the original experience to ensure that fans can continue to enjoy the ARK they know for years to come.”
If I was turning off the service my customers already paid for and charging them $50 for an engine upgrade and an IOU, I’m not sure I would have called it the “ultimate-value bundle.” Particularly if I had indicatedas recently as Januarythat the “upgrade/remaster” would be “free”.
