Studio Wildcard confirms Ark 2 is “two years” away from being “an early access game” as the team shifted everything onto Ark: Survival Ascended

After making a huge splash back in 2020, Ark: Survival Evolved’s long-awaited sequel, Ark 2, has been missing-in-action for half-a-decade. In a recent interview, Studio Wildcard co-founders Jesse Rapczak and Jeremy Stieglitz confirmed that there’s still a lengthy wait ahead for fans of the game.

Speaking to PCGamesN, the co-founders explained that the team has a “pretty cool vertical slice” ready a number of years ago. However, the studio needed to master the intricacies of Unreal Engine 5, the tools it picked for the job, before making the sequel. This led to the recent Ark: Survival Ascended project, but where is the sequel?

Ark 2 is still years away

In the interview, Stieglitz explained that the studio put Ark 2 “on hold a couple of years ago to make ASA” with only a few devs “nibbling” away at the project since. Right now, there’s a new vertical slice at the studio, but it will take a while to turn into an early access release.

“[It will take] 18 months of hardcore team focus to [turn] that vertical slice into an early access game, when we get to put the vast majority of our team back on it,” Stieglitz said before adding the game will launch “hopefully within the next two years”.

“We need to figure out how we kind of optimize all those resources to continue to generate the revenue to get all the way to the finish line with Ark 2, but also free up enough development resources to make Ark 2 at the exact same time,” the studio co-founder explained.

Additionally, the team has struggled with the core concept of Ark 2. Unlike the original, Studio Wildcard is combining its open-world survival game with new soulslike combat and dynamic world events to make the game feel more alive. Unfortunately, the studio has struggled to actually make its combat system feel good.

“A small portion of our team continues to refine the mechanics of [Ark 2’s] combat,” the co-founder continued. “It’s very difficult to do soulslike combat in a multiplayer PvP context. You could probably count the number of games on one hand that have even attempted that in an actual PvP context.”

Furthermore, the team is also keen to make sure that the game keeps the promises it made five years ago saying “Ark 2 has to have NPC antagonists, because that’s been implied by the trailer”. The team also wants to implement “a lot more UGC concepts” to allow players to create more experiences. It’s a lot of work, a lot of ambition, and it sounds like it may not be possible to do in just 24 months.

Ark 2

• 
  Platform(s):
  PC, Xbox Series S
• 
  Genre(s):
  Survival