Ark 2 remains one of the more intriguing upcoming Game Pass games, and not just because it’s also an upcoming Xbox exclusive — it promises to enhance everything which made the first game great while adding a host of new features. After a sizeable delay, Ark 2 should land later this year, so we’ve gathered together everything we know so far about the game. Check it all out below!Everything we know about Ark 2When is Ark 2 coming out?Ark 2 was intended for release in 2023 but was pushed back to the end of 2024. The announcement of its delay came alongside the reveal of Ark: Survival Ascended, a remaster of Ark: Survival Evolved, which has since launched (after its own delays).What platforms is Ark 2 coming to?As an Xbox exclusive, Ark 2 will come to Xbox Series X|S and Windows. Is Ark 2 coming to Xbox Game Pass?Yep, it’ll come to Game Pass as a day-one addition!We also found out how long Ark 2 will remain in Game Pass, with a legal document confirming that the game will stay in the service for three years after release. That same document listed Ark: Survival Evolved as staying in Game Pass “perpetually.”What is the story and setting for Ark 2?“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.”That’s the official blurb, but there’s more info to be found. The story revolves around Vin Diesel Santiago and his daughter Meeka (voiced by Moana’s Auli’i Cravalho) and is an “epoch-spanning adventure as he seeks to protect his daughter… from the ghosts of the ancient past and visions of a new future.” That’s on top of carrying on the overall Ark narrative: an “dramatic eons-spanning story of humankind’s evolution.”Studio Wildcard co-founders and Ark co-creators Jeremy Stieglitz and Jesse Rapczak previously expanded on this in an Xbox Wire interview. “Ark 2’s main narrative tells the story of a father and a daughter, Meeka… of betrayal and broken promises, and the strength of the family bond — and of course, it’s a story of awesome giant dinosaurs. But even more importantly, this is about players’ own stories — like any good persistent-world online survival game, Survivors in Ark 2 each have their own unique path through the game, as they form their own tribe, make their own friends, and attempt to build their own creature-aided civilization.”What type of game is Ark 2?Ark 2 is primarily a third-person survival game. Studio Wildcard has also covered some of the new features we’ll see in Ark 2, on top of the “rethought and redesigned” aspects of the Ark series. Those include Soulslike melee combat, new traversal mechanics, a new creature management system, dynamic world events, “sensory-based creature AI,” and more. Stieglitz and Rapczak explain in that interview that Ark 2 takes inspiration from Assassin’s Creed’s parkour and Breath of the Wild’s climbing, and go on to add, “With a focus on primitive-era combat… Ark 2 draws heavily from Souls-like action for its human-scale combat: an emphasis on dodges, blocks, light and heavy attacks, combos, and player-reflex skill — a rarity for the PvP survival genre.”Traversal options include free-climbing and swinging, while the crafting mechanic offers “millions of possible combinations.” The dynamic world events will be influenced by your choices and whether you join in, and can be anything from stampedes to “defending endangered creatures to earn their trust.” That’s on top of the new creature AI, which requires you to camouflage and mask your scent to deceive predators. As for the types of enemies you’ll come across as you navigate those world events: aside from intelligent dinosaurs, you’ll also need to factor in the Aratai, who will hunt you down atop their own tamed mounts.On top of all this, “Ark 2 adds a revolutionary new feature for consoles players: fully stackable, user-created mods, including on unofficial servers, for the Xbox version of the game enabled through official mod support by mod.io!” Ark 2 achievement listIt’ll likely be a while before we see the Ark 2 achievements, but we’ll update here as soon as we get them.Ark 2 trailersWe got the first Ark 2 announcement teaser trailer back in 2020. It has Vin Diesel front and centre through most of it, and in true Ark chaos, his efforts to protect his family from one group of fierce enemies is interrupted only when a bigger baddie comes stomping through. Chasing, fleeing, and fighting ensues before Vin Diesel and co make it to safety.A more up-to-date trailer followed in 2022. It’s much shorter but gives us more backstory about that “terrible war” which preceded the events of Ark 2, and once again finishes with a shot of Santiago and Meeka.
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