ARK: Aquatica - Did They Use AI?
If you missed the news around the new ARK DLC, here’s a quick rundown. Essentially, on March 17th, Snail Games posted a trailer for the new ARK: Survival Evolved DLC called Aquatica. ARK: Survival Evolved is the original ARK experience that was released in 2017 as an early access title and was followed up with a recent 2023 remake called ARK: Survival Ascended.
Studio Wildcard is the developer behind ARK: Survival Evolved and works with Snail Games as their publisher. Back in October 2023, ARK: Survival Evolved got a remake for PC, Xbox Series, and PS5 called Ark: Survival Ascended. This came with The Island, the Battle royale spinoff Survival of the Fittest, and all the non-canon DLC maps along with some graphical and performance upgrades AND cross-platform multiplayer, progression, and modding.
ARK: Survival Ascended
Now this sounded great in theory but unfortunately, the players who wanted this ARK experience on next-gen consoles needed to buy the remaster as part of the Ark Respawned bundle for $49.99. On the bright side, that pricing included Ark 2 (for whenever it releases.)
Studio Wildcard also stated that when the remake would be released, the official servers for the original version of the first game would be shut down. So the players who don’t buy the upgrade will be shut out of their game, unless you play on non-dedicated and unofficial servers.
Ark is a survival game so you have to grind to get your footing and really establish your servers and grounds. The positive was that you were able to take your final save-data from the original game’s servers to rehost on their own servers or single-player games but you still have to buy the new remaster to even access it at all.
ARK: Survival Evolved
To add more disappointing news to the shuffle, Studio Wildcard stated that the delay for the sequel is a result of challenges developing the sequel in Unreal Engine 5. A statement from the studio read, "Our goal is to make ARK 2 the best game it can be and provide a truly exceptional and rewarding experience for players. Unreal Engine 5 is incredibly new technology to us (and all developers), and we aim to use this cutting-edge tech to its fullest potential while creating a game with never-before-achieved scope at Studio Wildcard”
Fans were definitely hoping the next update from ARK would be a positive one but it seems that wasn’t exactly the case with the latest announcement.
Ark: Aquatica showed off an underwater expansion that looked great and so different from all the previous DLC for the original game. This DLC is slated to come to the original ARK: Survival Evolved as well so all of this should have excited fans but instead caused an outrage after the trailer seemed to use heavy AI generated scenes to promote the DLC.
I was lucky enough to get some time to interview Matt Kohl, lead developer for ARK: Aquatica, when I was at GDC just a day after that trailer went public. The time I spent chatting with Matt also included a short live demo of exploring the underwater expansion.
The demo was pretty short but the highlight was definitely the pet axolotl you can tame that’ll sit on your shoulders as you swim around. The DLC looks fine and looks just like Ark: Survival Evolved. Never during the live gameplay portion did I notice anything looking ai-generated so my curiosity and confusion grew.
I was very glad for the extra time to interview Matt because I had a lot of questions, not even just on the AI-generated trailer.
Stella: I just wanted to do an interview because I know you guys just released the trailer for this and everything. Which, when is the actual 10 year anniversary for ARK?
Matt: It is in June.So we're targeting a release for Steam for ARK Survival Evolved in June.
Stella: So why did you choose ARK Survival Evolved as opposed to the remaster, the remake?
Matt: Well, this is a 10 year anniversary celebration, right? So we're doing it in the original game on the date that it was released.
AKR: Aquatica
Stella: What was it like working with Wildcard on making this DLC for 10 years?
Matt: We've loosely collaborated with them. We're an independent side. Any answers that we need from them, they're happy to provide, but this is made by Snail, not Wildcard.
Stella: How did it feel getting given, like, hey, make this DLC for us?
Matt: Oh, dream come true. I mean, we all grew up playing ARK, so this is amazing.
Stella: Did you have your own base or your own server and community?
Matt: Oh, yeah. I've put several thousand hours into ARK. Since day one, yeah, I remember when it first launched. And I think that first couple months, we spent, like, 700 hours on the game.
Stella: That's a lot. That is not casual.
Matt: No, no. We were not the casual type. Yeah. I mean, we were all, like, you know, early 20s at that point, right?
Stella: Wait, was that when you, were you at Snail at that point or no?
Matt: No, not yet. I've been with Snail for about four years.
Stella: So when you say a dream come true, you, like, literally meant it. That's really cool. So I know that there was a bit of backlash about the trailer and the AI that was featured in it. Is there anything you can elaborate on?
Matt: I can only say that the marketing department used some of our concepts art and used the AI to do that. That was not indicative of the final product by any means, and we actually didn't know they were doing that. So I guess it was just, like, a really big miscommunication.
AKR: Aquatica
Stella: Okay yeah, because I was going to say, I don't know if you're going to have gameplay up or anything.
Matt: We have a one-minute gameplay trailer right now, which was the reveal trailer. Later, probably in May, we'll have an actual release trailer that showed us a lot more.
Stella: Is there anything you want to say to fans to kind of reassure them that things are fine?
Matt: We can just say that, you know, the people making the game are as passionate about it as the players. It is what it is at this point. We're going to love it. We can't wait for players to love it as well.
Stella: Actually, could you remind me real quick, with Survival Evolved, you can still have servers up and playable, right? So multiple people can be on one server?
Matt: Yes, All private servers. That functionality remains. We're also including official servers for several months after launch.
Stella: Will the DLC connect to the previous content as well, or is it just going to be, like, just the DLC that players can access on the servers?
Matt: We're not bringing up any servers for any of the previous expansions.
AKR: Aquatica
Stella: Do players start in the water, or is there going to be some introduction to diving in?
Matt: The easy spawns are not in water. They're in an air pocket, but the medium and hard are underwater.
Stella: Then you mentioned that it's not difficult to drown, but you still can drown, right?
Matt: Yeah, you can still drown. Obviously, as you progress deeper into the story, it's going to be easier to manage your oxygen, even to the point of potentially not caring about oxygen at all.
Stella: So what are you most excited for fans to get their hands on?
Matt: All of our new creatures, but honestly, I'm most excited about seeing what our fans do with the mod kit. Now that we've expanded the underwater aspect of the game, the community maps are going to be amazing.
AKR: Aquatica
Stella: Is there anything else you want to add about ARK that you are really really excited for people to discover?
Matt: This is the first like Snail ARK project and we're really excited to see how a larger group of individuals who care just as much about the game as Wildcard has done and our passion to the players. That's really what we're excited about.
Stella: Yeah, obviously with you making this, this is Snail as opposed to Snail Publishing, just Publishing, do you think this could open the doors for more ARK projects from Snail?
Matt: I mean it's possible, it's not in discussion at this point, but anything's possible
.Stella: Yeah, because you've been working with Wildcard for how long now, it's forever, right?
Matt: I mean we've been with Wildcard for like over 10 years, yes.
Stella: That's crazy. So it's like about time that y'all made your own ARK, or an addition to it.
Matt: We've done other ARK projects, which some of them were really successful. I think this will be very fun, it's very different and yeah.
Stella: I think a lot of players are going to enjoy it, but I think there's also the scary aspect, so I'm like nervous about it.
Matt: I mean we've done a lot to make sure that it's not quite as scary as it seems. The Thalassophobia was one of the main design constraints that we designed around, so it doesn't feel dangerous, it feels like an underwater playground.
AKR: Aquatica
Stella: How do you go around the psychology of that? There's so much that you have to consider in making you feel that it’s kind of scary but also making sure you feel not too threatened.
Matt: Yeah, I mean it's all about the visuals and how we present the story and the gameplay experience and our testing has shown that we've done a lot of really positive stuff in that department.
Stella: So you worked with the community quite a bit with testing the game and making sure that certain mechanics were like what they wanted and such?
Matt: Yeah, we've had a couple playtests that have yielded great results there.
Currently Ark: Aquatica is set to release in June 2025. As Matt said before, a gameplay trailer should be releasing in May so hopefully we get to see more on this DLC sooner than later since fans are still vocally upset about the reveal trailer.
