Our colleagues at Gamasutra had the opportunity to speak with the Creative Director of ARK: Survival Evolved, Jesse Rapczak. They happily chatted about the various dinosaurs and the initial design ideas.
Fun > Realism
According to Rapczak, the developers largely disregarded logic when planning the dinosaurs. Some species, for example, did not coexist on Earth, yet both appear in ARK. “We went through a long list of our favorites that we wanted to bring into the game,” he says. The archetypes of the dinos then became a central component around which the game was developed.
In other respects, reality is not taken very seriously: The large and small monsters do not behave according to their real-life counterparts, but as players are used to from movies. Anyone standing in front of a Tyrannosaurus can expect it to charge directly at them, resulting in a long chase.
The landscapes are also rather imaginative
At the beginning of development, a world was created that was as realistic as possible. The size of the environments and the diverse fauna could very well exist on Earth as they are. Even then, the team realized that this would not create much fun gameplay. Therefore, a completely new landscape was created that is more unrealistic but significantly more entertaining.
Paths run through jungle areas and large mountains lie quite close together to provide habitats for the various dinosaurs. Conflicts often arise due to adjacency to other areas – either between the dinos or because players intervene – leading to exciting situations.
Mods allowed in the full version
Once the game is complete, that is, when it reaches the release version 1.0, players will have the ability to modify their own servers through modifications. For instance, they will be able to alter the behavior of dinosaurs, the appearance of weapons, and the amount of resources. There are hardly any limits, especially creative individuals can also develop their own tools and expand the game on their servers to provide a new gaming experience.
It will naturally take some time before Ark Survival Evolved actually reaches version “1.0” and is then also released on Playstation 4 and Xbox One. One can only hope that ARK is among the early access games that truly make the leap to the final version.
