ARK 2 FAQ — Everything We Know

ARK 2 is targeting a late 2026 release and tbh we've been waiting forever for this thing, they announced it back in 2020 with that cinematic trailer featuring Vin Diesel which was honestly kind of wild at the time and nobody really expected Vin Diesel to be in a dinosaur game of all things but there he was, and since then development has been happening alongside ARK: Survival Ascended which is the UE5 remaster of ARK 1 that came out in 2023 so basically Studio Wildcard has been splitting their time between two big projects which probably explains why ARK 2 has taken so long, but the most recent dev updates confirm the game is in full production now and Q4 2026 seems pretty realistic if nothing major goes wrong which honestly with this studio you never know. So. Late 2026. PC and Xbox first. PS5 later. And who knows maybe it'll get delayed again because game development is just like that but for now that's the official word and I'm choosing to be cautiously optimistic about it.

ARK 2 launches on PC via Steam and Windows Store, Xbox Series X|S as a console launch exclusive, and it hits Xbox Game Pass day one which is honestly pretty sweet if you're already subscribed because that's basically a free launch day game for millions of people and you don't have to drop 60 or 70 bucks on it to find out if it's buggy at launch or whatever. But the PlayStation 5 version will come later, probably like 6 to 12 months after the initial launch, based on the exclusivity window Studio Wildcard indicated in their Xbox partnership announcement from 2020. So if you're on PS5 you're waiting a bit longer. And ngl as someone who has both consoles I'm kinda annoyed about the PS5 wait. But that's just how exclusivity deals work and Microsoft paid for it so what can you do.

Yeah it launches day one on Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass, that was confirmed as part of the Xbox partnership they announced when the trailer dropped back in 2020. So basically if you've got Game Pass you're good to go without dropping cash on it. Which is honestly a pretty good deal imo. Because ARK launches have not been smooth historically and having the option to try it risk-free at launch is probably the smartest way to go, and if it's actually good then you can buy it later or keep playing on Game Pass or whatever.

ARK 2 takes place on an alien planet after the events of ARK: Genesis Part 2, and you play as Santiago who is voiced and portrayed by Vin Diesel, and he's a clone of the original ARK 1 protagonist which is kind of a cool narrative throughline if you actually played through the whole story of the first game and its expansions and paid attention to the lore instead of just building bases and taming dinos for 2000 hours like most people did. So the main thing you're doing is protecting your daughter Meeka who is voiced by Auli'i Cravalho from Moana, and building a tribe in this super hostile world where pretty much everything wants to eat you or kill you or both. And the story focuses on survival and family and this whole conflict between primitive tribes and advanced technology, and from what I've seen of the trailers and dev interviews it feels way more narrative-driven and cinematic than ARK 1 ever was. But whether that's good or bad kind of depends on what you're into I guess. Because some people love story-driven survival games and others just want to build bases and tame dinos without cutscenes getting in the way, and both are valid honestly.

Yeah he's actually in it for real, not just some celebrity cameo or a single voice line you hear once, Vin Diesel is the executive producer and lead character Santiago who you play as through the whole game, and what's honestly kind of funny and unexpected is that he's a legit ARK player with over 1,000 hours in the first game who personally championed the sequel at Studio Wildcard. So it's not one of those random celebrity tie-ins where the actor has never touched a controller in their life and they just showed up in a mocap suit for a day. And his character's daughter Meeka is played by Auli'i Cravalho who was the voice of Moana. Also I mean that's pretty solid casting tbh, like she's an actual talented voice actor and not just some random celebrity's kid or whatever, which happens way too often in big games and movies and stuff.

The combat is now souls-like third-person with lock-on and dodging and blocking which is a massive departure from ARK 1's first-person janky combat that we all kind of loved and hated at the same time, you know what I mean, and there's no first-person mode at launch which has a lot of people genuinely upset tbh because some folks spent literally thousands of hours in first person and can't imagine playing ARK any other way, so that single feature cut is probably the biggest point of contention right now and I get why people are mad even though I personally think the new combat looks better. But anyway. The early game is way more primitive-focused with Tek stuff being endgame content instead of something you can rush to in a week with a good tribe, and they've completely overhauled creature AI with pack hunting and migration patterns which honestly sounds amazing because ARK 1's creature AI was basically "run directly at player and bite" and that was pretty much the entire behavior tree. And there are dynamic world events like weather systems and NPC tribe raids that should make the world feel more alive, plus full mod support on PC through a new modding framework which is huge because ARK 1 mods literally kept that game relevant for years after the devs stopped adding major content. So basically it's a pretty different game and whether that's good or bad kind of depends on what you liked about ARK 1 in the first place.

PvP is still a core feature but Studio Wildcard has said they're redesigning it to be less grief-heavy than ARK 1, and honestly thank god for that because getting offline-raided at 3am by some alpha tribe with 50 gigas was literally the worst experience I've ever had in any video game and I've rage-quit ARK 1 more times than I can count because of waking up to find my entire base gone and my tames killed. So yes PvP is still there, tribe warfare and base raiding and territory control and all that. But they're adding new anti-offline-raiding mechanics and probably some other changes to make it less miserable for solo players and small tribes who can't maintain 24/7 coverage like the mega-tribes can. Then again we'll see how it actually works in practice because PvP survival games always seem to find a way to be toxic no matter what the devs try to do, it's like the second law of thermodynamics or something.

The exact number hasn't been confirmed yet but they've shown over 20 new creatures in trailers and screenshots so far, and I'd expect a launch roster of 100+ unique creatures with more added through free updates and expansions over time because that's basically how ARK 1 worked with new dinos getting added every few months for years. Ngl that's a lot of stuff to tame and breed and fight and collect and cry over when they die. And knowing how ARK works there's probably going to be some absolute nightmare fuel creatures in there that'll oneshot you the first time you run into them and you'll spend the next week obsessing over how to tame one because now it's personal, and that's just the ARK experience you know. Also some of the creatures we've seen in trailers look absolutely massive compared to ARK 1, like I saw one that made a Giganotosaurus look like a Compy, and I'm not sure if that's exciting or terrifying or both.

ARK 2 runs on Unreal Engine 5 with Lumen and Nanite and World Partition, and the visual jump from ARK 1's UE4 is honestly pretty massive, like the dynamic global illumination alone makes everything look way more natural and less flat and washed out, creature polygon counts are significantly higher so they look way more detailed, and there's seamless world streaming with no loading screens between biomes which is something ARK 1 players have been begging for since forever because nobody wants to stare at a loading screen for 3 minutes every time they enter a cave. So yeah the tech side looks great in the trailers. But the real question that nobody can answer yet is whether they can make it actually run at a decent framerate on hardware normal people own, which is something ARK 1 absolutely and spectacularly failed at and I'm still bitter about tbh.

ARK 2 is a completely separate game from ARK: Survival Evolved and ARK: Survival Ascended, so no progress or tames or items or bases or mutations or anything carry over at all. Which honestly kind of sucks if you've spent thousands of hours breeding super dinos and building insane bases and collecting every creature in the game. But that's how sequels work. And honestly everyone starting fresh on a level playing field is probably healthier for the game in the long run even though it stings. Also I'm not gonna lie I'm definitely going to miss some of my ARK 1 tames, like I had this bright green mutated Argentavis named Steve who I'd had for like two real-world years and the thought of never flying around on him again is honestly kind of sad and I'm not ashamed to admit it.

ARK 2 is substantially more demanding than ARK 1 which shouldn't surprise anyone who played the first game, an RTX 3060 or RX 6700 XT is expected for 1080p at 60 FPS on Medium settings, so basically a decent mid-range gaming PC from the last few years should handle it okay at reasonable settings and resolution. And you can check the system requirements page for full specs because there's a lot more detail over there and I don't wanna just repeat the entire table here. So if your PC struggled with ARK 1 at all you're probably gonna need an upgrade before ARK 2 launches, and if you're on a gaming laptop without a dedicated GPU I wouldn't get your hopes up honestly. But the one silver lining is that by late 2026 hardware prices might be a bit more reasonable than they are right now, so you've got some time to save up for a new GPU or maybe prices on used RTX 4000 series cards will drop by then or whatever.