It is a milestone yr for Ark, and Studio Wildcard is making certain it is a memorable one. Celebrating the franchise’s tenth birthday, we have already seen Ark Survival Ascended add the remastered Ragnarok DLC to its suite of expansions and obtain an engine improve. The unique sport, Ark Survival Advanced, can also be getting an sudden new enlargement, Aquatica. However the icing on the birthday cake shall be Misplaced Colony, the primary all-new enlargement for ASA, which is about to drop in December. In an unique interview with PCGamesN, Studio Wildcard co-founders Jesse Rapczak and Jeremy Stieglitz reveal what it has been prefer to lastly inject some authentic content material into Survival Ascended and focus on a number of the new options and improvements the extremely anticipated DLC will carry.
Ark Survival Ascended is already heavy with remastered expansions, and Ragnarok is the most recent. Including one in every of Ark’s largest and most stunning maps, alongside a number of iconic creatures, its debut in ASA has resulted in a wholesome uplift of gamers. Nonetheless, for thus many Ark followers, it is a world they’ve seen earlier than – and that is why the prospect of Misplaced Colony is so thrilling. After I ask Stieglitz why hundreds of gamers nonetheless have not made the bounce from ASE to ASA, one of many three core causes he offers (alongside tech restraints and time invested within the authentic sport) is that they need to see one thing correctly new. “They really desire a cause, creatively, to reinvest their time,” he says. Effectively, the following enlargement will give them simply that.
“Persons are beginning to get just a bit style of it now with the Misplaced Colony Growth Move we launched [alongside Ragnarok],” says Rapczak – the cross provides a couple of gameplay mechanics and creatures to the sport that may function within the full launch of the enlargement, however extra on these later. “It is simply the tip of the iceberg. The entire map and all that new content material coming later is, I feel, actually gonna blow individuals away by way of furthering the Ark story and tying it into what we plan to do later with these characters in Ark 2 and past.”
“Beforehand, the one actually, really authentic content material we had launched for ASA was Bob’s Tall Tales, which was extra like a gameplay function set,” Steiglitz provides. “It is like, ‘this is some cool gadgets and creatures,’ but it surely wasn’t like a brand new world or a brand new story.”
Given this radical change from remastering previous content material to creating one thing recent for a similar sport, I ask if Studio Wildcard has suffered any whiplash from it, or if it has been an pleasurable expertise. “It is actually about dusting off the previous inventive abilities that the workforce’s been utilizing for extra brief time period enhancements, [but now] considering extra long run about how we create an entire new world, complete new map, complete new characters, and new storytelling parts, and that is been actually rewarding,” Rapczak says. “It is one thing the workforce has been trying ahead to for a very long time.
“[We’re] increasing the way in which we inform tales within the sport. Lately, we bought a brand new mocap facility arrange at our Seattle workplace. We have been diving into Unreal’s new Metahuman toolsets for a few of our characters within the sport. Jeremy has been getting a whole lot of our voice expertise from [Ark The Animated Series] and different areas to reprise their roles within the sport, and our returning expertise has been very excited to return again and voice new content material for this enlargement. The workforce is having nice enjoyable constructing Misplaced Colony from the idea section up, unbounded by what we did earlier than [in Survival Evolved].”
A lot is already recognized about Misplaced Colony. As Rapczak alludes to, it will function iconic characters (and their well-known voice actors) from Ark The Animated Sequence. We all know that it will happen on Arat Prime, a frozen planet that lore-heads could have realized about a couple of instances over time. And we all know that it’ll tee up the story for Ark 2, the formidable sequel that Stieglitz tells me should still be a few years away.
As talked about, with the Misplaced Colony Growth Move dropping alongside Ragnarok, gamers can go hands-on with a number of the new gameplay adjustments early. Already out there proper now are the Drakelings (new miniature dragons that offer you robust passive buffs), the Veilwyn tame, a brand new device that may save sections of your base as templates that you should utilize once more, and Ark’s first-ever participant ability tree.
“Though this may increasingly have critical long-term meta sport impacts to how Ark works, [Lost Colony adds] a ability tree, which is a completely new idea in Ark however clearly exists in different video games like Path of Exile,” Stieglitz says. “However to actually do this in a radical manner in Ark [means] going off in a really new path.”
As for what else is arriving in December, Stieglitz teases an unannounced function making its debut in Misplaced Colony. It has been requested a good quantity over time, and it is a core element of fellow survival sport Conan Exiles.
“One of many concepts in Misplaced Colony is NPC thralls that you may sway to your aspect, and the thought of having the ability to assemble a military in that manner is one thing that we have not likely experimented with in Ark,” he tells me. “[We’re] actually attempting to cope with human antagonistic NPCs in that house as properly. So it will be very experimental. A few of it pertains to issues we additionally intend to [include] in Ark 2. It is, to some extent, a manner of seeing what works and what does not earlier than, , a completely new sequel that actually cannot afford to overlook with a few of its mechanical experimentation. So Misplaced Colony affords us a barely much less monumental manner of getting to experiment with a few of these sorts of mechanics.”
Talking extra broadly, Rapczak notes that the world of Arat Prime can also be “constructed round new sorts of gameplay we’re placing [into Lost Colony] that have not existed in Ark earlier than.”
Regardless of all of Wildcard’s efforts to push Ark’s gameplay ahead and make Misplaced Colony a genuinely new expertise that would draw extra gamers over to Survival Ascended, Stieglitz is aware of that it is essential that the workforce does not “lose sight of [Ark’s] roots.”
“We’re a creature survival sport,” he says, definitively. “So there’s bought to be actually cool tames. They must be essential to how the map works and to traversing the map and to surviving the map. That all the time must be there. However inside that form of framework, what can we do to make the sport expertise have extra layers and depth that does not essentially take away from the creature side?”
As talked about, Ark Survival Ascended’s Misplaced Colony enlargement is because of launch in December 2025. It is arguably crucial second for Studio Wildcard since ASA launched, not just for the influence it may need on that sport, however the way it will crack the door open to provide us a glimpse of what Ark 2 may very well be – each by way of its narrative and its gameplay evolutions.
