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Ark 2 was first revealed at The Game Awards in 2020, with a cinematic trailer featuring Vin Diesel punching saurian monsters and unearthing futuristic technology. While the survival sequel was initially announced for release in 2022, developer Studio Wildcard has offered only occasional updates on the game since then, and according to a new interview with the team, that's because they've been "only nibbling" at the project within the past few years.
Wildcard built a "pretty cool vertical slice" of Ark 2 prior to the launch of Survival Ascended, as studio co-founder Jeremy Stieglitz tells PCGamesN, "but we felt that as a team, it would be very difficult to follow that all the way through to a complete game with both our experience level and [our scope] as a company."
Stieglitz says that the team "put the vertical slice on hold a couple of years ago to make ASA, and we've been only nibbling at it since then." A "small portion" of the team is continuing to work on Ark 2's combat, as Stieglitz says "it's very difficult to do Soulslike combat in a multiplayer PvP context."
The last concrete word we had on Ark 2 was that it'd launch in late 2024, but that news came in 2023 - presumably right around the time the project had essentially been put on hold. But, as Stieglitz explains, the studio is now trying to find the right time to shift resources from Survival Ascended onto Ark 2.
It'd 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 says, noting that an early access version of Ark 2 could launch "hopefully within the next two years."
For now, it seems Studio Wildcard is at least intent on continuing to build the story of Ark 2, since the upcoming Lost Colony expansion is set to bridge the gap into the sequel's plot. How long it'll be before we actually get to play that sequel is a whole 'nother question.
Ark remains one of the best survival games out there.
