1. Quality of Life Additions
Stay on your toes, that bow will only get you so far!
As this is a full rework of Ark Survival Evolved, Ark Survival Ascended has a lot of new quality of life additions. A new third person camera that players can choose to opt in or out of will be added that contains a new photo mode feature for players to snap images in game way better than ever before. A highly requested feature from Survival of the Fittest will be joining ASA at launch, the minimap. With this minimap players can pan, zoom and ping. The new pinging system will allow for much better communication between tribemates.
As far as character customization, ASE has a fair amount of options, but ASA has added a measure of improvements to really bring your character to life. The movement for your character has also been upgraded with players now having the ability to sprint or walk diagonally. With ASE being known for its aggravating building mechanics, the developers have completely overhauled those mechanics in favor of a more Conan-esque style. With increased foundation support, the ability to now alter heights of structures, snap fixes and more, your fully customized character will now have the perfect home base to go with it.
The UI for the game is also getting a complete revamp. It will appear visually different with a new chibi slot and new skins tab and will be more player friendly. It also comes upgraded with a new dinosaur management system that will allow players to view real time status and track locations of all owned dinos. Along with heaps of other balance passes and quality of life updates ASA is well worth the money to buy.
2. Unreal Engine 5 Upgrade
Everyones favorite running friend, the Raptor - might win best glow up of this new game
Since the late 90’s when the first Unreal Engine had been introduced, game engines have come a long way. Unreal Engine itself has now been upgraded to 5.3 and in 2014 had been dubbed the “world's most successful game engine” by Guinness World Records. With UE5 just releasing in April of 2022 the developers of ASA had to fully learn this new game engine before they could begin work on the main goal.
ASA’s entire codebase was rewritten to take full advantage of UE5 including Lumen and Nanite technologies. It makes for the allowance of advanced graphics features such as dynamic water with custom Fluidninja integration and interactive foliage.
There are also heaps of performance gains due to the implementation of UE5. With instanced rendering (large bases, ect.), threaded server networking and a brand new native physics engine the game will look better and run smoother than ever before. Not only do the devs deserve to be compensated for learning and implementing an entire new game engine, but the game itself is suspected to be twice as good as the original. A definite must-have for Ark lovers.
3. New Features
Turn that thatch house, into a thatch home with all this extra space
Ark Survival Ascended is set to release in early access nearing the end of October in 2023. With this release comes a large number of new or altered features for players to love.
- New anti-cheat software for official servers. No one likes cheaters and with this addition players should be able to have a more friendly experience online.
- Holiday events are reworked as well, turned from ‘events’ to mods that players can choose to run or not to run or when they would like to do so. This makes for a super versatile experience now allowing for multiple mods to be activated and utilized at the same time. There could be some interesting mashups for sure.
- Cross-platform modding - a fan favorite feature for ASA. Before, console players were unable to use mods, but with the developers collabing with overwolf ASA has made it possible for mods created on PC to be played by those on consoles. Wildcard has even gone so far as to streamline the process of helping former and/or current sponsored modders prepare their mods to be ready for the release of ASA. Not everyone plays with mods, but with this new feature it will be easier and better and make modding a more common occurrence.
- Cross-platform multiplayer feature. In ASA players will have the ability to access their account, characters, dinosaurs, items and anything else they may need across many different platforms. There will be cross progression so players are always up to date wherever they decide to boot up the game. As well as cross-voice chat and friend support so no matter who has what, everyone can play together and communicate effectively.
- Taming has been reworked with new ways of taming and new ways of helping to keep track of the process.
- Breeding is also altered in ASA with stat multipliers now being based on already tamed dino stats rather than the wild dinos stats. The developers claim to be keeping a close eye on these numbers and will jump to fix any imbalances should any occur.
Along with the addition of these features listed above, many more are waiting for players to find when the game releases. Overall, these features are definitely worth the cost of the full game to be able to experience.
4. New Content
It probably won't help to run from this, but we applaud your trying
Of course, it wouldn’t be a full remaster without new content and Ark Survival Ascended happens to have a plethora of it. Accompanying the building quality of life upgrades, there are a lot of new structures to be added to the game. There will be display cases, smaller tek teleporters and much more. All structures and items will also receive a visual update to look different and better.
Survival of the Fittest isn’t necessarily new, but it is coming back in a totally new format and will look a lot different. It will now be added into the main game as a fully supported game mode with its own dedicated team of developers. SOTF is upgraded to Unreal Engine 5 along with the rest of ASA and will include performance gains and visual updates along with the main game.
There will now be a matchmaking queue and a local lobby where players can use newly implemented customization options for their character and dinosaurs. Players are also able to use this lobby to group up with friends and queue up for games. With its release it will also contain a new (to it) map, with new challenges not yet seen in SOTF, but well known for seasoned ASE players - Scorched Earth.
Moving back into the main game, ASA will also contain a host of new dinos across various maps.
New Dinos:
- Fasolasuchus: A quadrupedal reptilian carnivore that will be added to Scorched Earth. With thick scaly hide and bone crushing jaws this tough dino is sure to make a fierce addition to any player's team.
- Gigantoraptor: Will be added to Ragnarok. It looks very much like one might expect with a name like that, being a much larger version of Raptors or their furry counterparts - Deinonychus. This huge creature isn’t aggressive per say, but very territorial and extra protective of their young. They more so prefer raising young to fighting and are very useful for taming orphaned wild baby animals as they have a call to lure them towards their location. It is useful to note however that Gigantoraptors receive some sort of power spike when their young are also in battle and will fight to the death to protect them. Similar to the Deinonychus, these Raptors cannot be tamed as adults, only by sneaking into their nest to steal an egg or to win the trust of the young.
- Yi Ling: Raptor creature that will be added to Aberration. This feathery foe prefers to prey on smaller creatures and can shoot its feathers out as a deadly attack. While initially weakening it, the feathers it loses by performing this attack are rapidly regenerated, giving very little time for opponents to score a good opening. Yi Ling is an incredibly agile glider, being able to cling to and climb walls and evade attacks with ease.
- Shastasaurus: Now swimming in the depths of the Center. This giant whale creature is a relatively easy tame, passively doing so by scraping barnacles off its lower body. Once tamed these curious creatures serve as living submarines, with players able to mount large encapsulated saddles equipped with echolocation and torpedoes.
- Dreadnoughtus is the most recently voted for to be added into ASA. Added into Extinction and smaller only to the Titans themselves, this massive creature can be equipped with a saddle that can hold up to seven heavy artillery weapons and has a harpoon on the chest for reeling in victims. Dreadnoughtus also has a special attack where it can regurgitate acid-covered cannonballs with a speed that can kill opponents extraordinarily easily.
Along with these five dinos, there will be four more unknown at this time to be added specific to a brand new canonical map. This new map will not be released at launch of early access but will come as soon as possible after release and is highly anticipated.
Aiding all of the taming and breeding reworks, the implementation of wild baby dinos is sure to give players a brand new experience on Ark. It also adds more life to the world. With more ways to tame and breed players will be able to compile the perfect dino team for beating bosses or raiding other tribes. That alone is enough to make the purchase of ASA worth it, but combined with all the other new content? It’s almost a necessity.
5. Support for Developers and Company
Add your friends to your world and conquer the Arks together!
In the grand scheme of things, video games haven’t existed very long at all. However in that time frame human advancements in technology have been constantly thriving with new improvements daily. Due to this, it makes sense that many video games have remastered versions. There are hundreds of excellent games that were released with what are now outdated softwares and gameplay features, as well as archaic visuals and controls. Basically, before we had the means to make them as good as we can now.
With new technology games are able to be remade better than the previous versions. Some games will simply update a few visual effects and release what they call a ‘remastered’ version. While other games spend months revamping nearly every aspect of their game. With ASA, the latter is the case. The game developers spent many hours not only perfecting the game, but learning entire new software (UE5) as well. They made sure to pull from ideas the players had and did everything possible to create a game that all survivors would love.
If the remaster only made a few small tweaks as others have done before, it would make sense for the game to not cost anything, or to come included in the bundle for Ark 2. However this is a full rework, nearly an entirely new game. It would only make sense to be paid a new price. As a whole, the developers that brought you this amazing game deserve to be paid for the time they took to create it. The company overall, deserves to be compensated for the time and effort it took to bring players this elite game. It is absolutely worth every cent for the amount of time and love went into Ark Survival Ascended.
