Ark 2 got its first reveal a year or so ago where it was revealed that not only will Vin Diesel play a character in the game, but he's joined Studio Wildcard as 'President of Creative Convergence'. Based on today's impressive Unreal Engine 5 reveal we can only assume one of his first presidential decrees was "Yo, I want to ride a T-Rex into battle".

That and no doubt something about family.

Ark 2’s main narrative tells the story of a father (Vin Diesel as key Ark hero Santiago) and a daughter, Meeka (played by Auli’i Cravalho), of betrayal and broken promises, and the strength of the family bond — and of course, it’s a story of awesome giant dinosaurs. But even more importantly, this is about players’ own stories — like any good persistent-world online survival game, Survivors in Ark 2 each have their own unique path through the game, as they form their own tribe, make their own friends, and attempt to build their own creature-aided civilization.

With Ark 2, we’re seeking not only to enhance the game’s narrative and world-building, but also retouch and improve on all aspects of what constitutes an Ark game.

Still very much a PVP survival game, Ark 2 will be played entirely from a third-person perspective - which means controls and movement have been completely redesigned. According to Jeremy Stieglitz and Jesse Rapczak, Co-creators of Ark and Co-founders of Studio Wildcard, the team drew inspiration from Assassin's Creed and its parkour as well as Breath of the Wild for freedom of movement. They also throw in the obligatory "Souls-like action" for the human-scale combat, which means there will be a focus on dodging, blocking, pulling of combos, and nailing that timing. In terms of the dino stuff it gets interesting as all hits and contact will be physically registered with torn-flesh, and animation to sell each bite and scratch.

The world will be more dynamic too with a World Event system detailed.

Rather than simply having a more-or-less static environment with easily predictable or repetitive occurrences from the first game, the new World Event system is designed to ensure that unique things are always happening around the world, whether you are there or not. Events include procedurally-dynamic scenarios like watering hole gatherings, wounded creatures, tracking the signs of advanced prey, stampedes, herds, defending endangered creatures to earn their trust, finding dens of parent creatures and their young, and more. Whether you choose to engage with these events is up to you, and each can yield unique rewards and challenges.

Ark 2 is on track for a 2023 release on Xbox Series X|S and PC, where it will also arrive on Xbox Game Pass. The console version will also support fully stackable mods with mod support via mod.io. Very cool.

And yeah, running on Unreal Engine 5, the footage we see above looks pretty incredible.