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Ride and hunt dinosaurs in ARK: Survival Evolved, a new open-world MMO

By Koh Wanzi - on 15 May 2015, 3:17pm

Ride and hunt dinosaurs in ARK: Survival Evolved, a new open-world MMO

You can wield a wide range of weapons in Studio Wildcard's ARK: Survival Evolved. (Image Source: Steam)

Jurassic World may be coming to theatres next month, but ARK: Survival Evolved lets you get up close and personal with these pre-historic behemoths. Well, perhaps a little too close for comfort. You wake up naked, freezing and stranded on a mysterious island called ARK, inches from a lumbering long-necked dinosaur.

A product of a developer called Studio Wildcard, the game’s premise certainly seems promising. Jurassic Park may be popular, but dinosaur lovers out there have weathered a drought of quality, open-world games featuring their favorite beasts. The trailer certainly looks good – it’s comprised entirely of real in-game footage so you know you’re not getting some juiced-up cinematic cut scene that sends your expectations soaring unjustly. Dead Island, we’re looking at you.

As a massive multi-player online game, you’ll need to work together with others to hunt, harvest resources, research technologies and build shelters just to survive. But if you think the game will have you creeping about like some starving Neanderthal, fret not. In-game footage and screenshots show players wielding a variety of primitive and modern weaponry and even galumphing across the plains on the backs of scaly steeds.

Dinosaurs can be your friends too. (Image Source: Steam)

You’d think that a bunch of humans stranded on an island where dinosaurs roam free would be more united than ever. Unfortunately, or fortunately – since it makes things that much more fun – the game hews close to reality in this respect (because when have people really gotten along?). Players will have the opportunity to join tribes and make war on other groups of players in all-out warfare to survive and dominate.

There are also hints of a tantalizing backstory as players work together to survive, escape and discover what exactly ARK is. Furthermore, things look like they have the potential to get pretty advanced – we saw what looked like a glowing, airborne fortress in the game’s trailer. Also, is that a dragon in that last shot?

Unless our eyes deceive us, that is most certainly a dragon. (Image Source: Steam)

ARK: Survival Evolved is based on Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 4 and will support modern APIs like DirectX 12 and fully dynamic lighting, global illumination and weather systems. Studio Wildcard also appears keen to tap into the potential of virtual reality as the game will supposedly support VR headsets like the Oculus Rift and Sony’s Project Morpheus. Add that on to the fact that UE 4 is itself poised to support SteamVR, and prospects look more exciting than ever.

To cap things off, the game will have full support for Steam Workshop and a customized UE 4 editor. If you’re feeling ambitious, you can even host your own server and configure your island to your liking à la Minecraft.

You can try out the game via Steam Early Access starting 2 June on Windows, Mac and even SteamOS. Studio Wildcard also has plans to bring the game to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

Source: Studio Wildcard via Wired

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