Well, it seems like there was a round of controversy that happened for the Ark: Survival Ascended upgrade that'll be part of Ark: Survival Evolved. Recently, Studio Wildcard announced that it would release the remaster of the game in Unreal Engine 5 with Ark 2. However, this practice sparked a backlash from the Ark community, causing Studio Wildcard to return to the drawing board and propose a new solution.
During a new community update, Studio Wildcard talked about how they took the feedback from the community and stated that the original intention behind this bundle was to provide a package where players would get two products for the price of one. Unfortunately, that doesn't jive with the Ark community in this case, as combining Ark: Survival Ascended with Ark 2 while requiring further DLC upgrades would be a terrible idea.
So, instead, Studio Wildcard will now offer Ark: Survival Ascended as a standalone package released on every platform for $59.99. While the game will no longer include Ark 2, it will include the following pieces of content built-in:
- The Island (Released at Launch)
- Survival of the Fittest: The Island & Scorched Earth map variants (Released at Launch)
- Scorched Earth (Released at Launch)
- Aberration (Released by Q4 2023)
- Extinction (Released by Q1 2024)
- Genesis Part 1 (Released by Q1 2024)
- Genesis Part 2 (Released by Q2 2024)
Each of the contents of the package will be remastered and altered for the next generation of consoles. Additionally, all the community maps like FJordur, Ragnarok, Lost Island, Crystal Isles, and others will be released over time across 2024. While that's great and all, it still is a $10 increase that no longer includes Ark 2... Which may cause more ire to spark up from the community.
By the way, Wildcard Studio also commented on the statement regarding how the Unreal Engine 5 remaster would be free. In the blog post, the studio stated the following:
Initially, when we had first considered doing an Unreal 5 upgrade, we planned just to port the Switch version of the game and undo the ‘graphical’ limitations required for that hardware. [...] After carefully considering what would be the best outcome for those who enjoy ARK: Survival Evolved and would want to continue to enjoy it in the years to come, we decided that our initial plan would not be sufficient.
We weren’t trying to mislead you with earlier comments; our plans and overall intentions changed. [...] Many of the changes we’re making in ARK: Survival Ascended will touch a lot of aspects of the game; it’ll invalidate save data, some mods may not be functional, some things may not play the same way as they did before, and we didn’t want to change that experience for those who prefer it or are unable to upgrade.
It's still confusing how this will quell the rage that has been building against Studio Wildcard after they essentially removed the addition of a game that got delayed to 2024 and instead added a bunch of DLC... But that seems to be the solution for now... At least until the studio gets strong-armed into thinking of a better one by the community again. Ark: Survival Ascended will be released in August 2023 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
