Ark: Survival Ascended will No Longer Inlcude Ark 2; Wildcard Talks About Unreal Engine 5 Comment

wccftech.com:

Well, it seems like there was a round of controversy that happened for the Ark: Survival Ascended upgrade that'll be part of Ark: Survival Evolved. Recently, Studio Wildcard announced that it would release the remaster of the game in Unreal Engine 5 with Ark 2. However, this practice sparked a backlash from the Ark community, causing Studio Wildcard to return to the drawing board and propose a new solution.

During a new community update, Studio Wildcard talked about how they took the feedback from the community and stated that the original intention behind this bundle was to provide a package where players would get two products for the price of one. Unfortunately, that doesn't jive with the Ark community in this case, as combining Ark: Survival Ascended with Ark 2 while requiring further DLC upgrades would be a terrible idea.

So, instead, Studio Wildcard will now offer Ark: Survival Ascended as a standalone package released on every platform for $59.99. While the game will no longer include Ark 2, it will include the following pieces of content built-in:

Each of the contents of the package will be remastered and altered for the next generation of consoles. Additionally, all the community maps like FJordur, Ragnarok, Lost Island, Crystal Isles, and others will be released over time across 2024. While that's great and all, it still is a $10 increase that no longer includes Ark 2... Which may cause more ire to spark up from the community.

By the way, Wildcard Studio also commented on the statement regarding how the Unreal Engine 5 remaster would be free. In the blog post, the studio stated the following:

Initially, when we had first considered doing an Unreal 5 upgrade, we planned just to port the Switch version of the game