The sequel to Ark: Survival Evolved has been pushed back again, with a new release target of 2028. Studio Wildcard's cofounder Jeremy Stieglitz announced the delay during Snail Games' investor day, citing the need to test new mechanics in an upcoming update to the original game. Vin Diesel's involvement remains unclear, potentially affecting the narrative scope.
Ark 2 was first revealed at The Game Awards 2020, shortly after the 2017 release of Ark: Survival Evolved, featuring Vin Diesel in a prominent CGI role. The game was initially slated for a 2023 launch, but delays shifted it to early access in 2024, which passed without release. Earlier this year, Stieglitz expressed hope for a 2027 early access debut, but the latest update sets a full release for 2028.
To bridge the gap, a major update titled Legacy of Santiago is planned for late 2027 in the original Ark: Survival Evolved. This will introduce new combat mechanics previewing Ark 2's soulslike third-person and melee systems. “Legacy of Santiago is going to involve a lot of the new fighting and combat mechanics that we want to experiment with, with ARK 2: Soulslike third-person combat, melee combat, and so forth,” Stieglitz said in an Epic Games Store interview. “But it’s not going to have all this, like, crazy narrative world build-out content that we want to do with ARK 2, if the mechanics seem to work well with Legacy of Santiago, then the key selling point of ARK 2 could be that there is this giant campaign narrative that sits as a standalone product.”
Vin Diesel's participation has been inconsistent since he initially contributed to development. The team is now collaborating with Karl Urban, known from The Boys, who may expand his role in Ark 2. Stieglitz noted the uncertainty: “The question is: How much performance are we going to get from him? Are we going to get one day, five days, eight hours? You don’t know. And the scope of how much performance we are going to get determines just how the narrative is going to play out. We have a narrative that’s, if we get a lot of Vin Diesel, this is what we will do, and if we get a little Vin Diesel, this is what we will do.”
These repeated setbacks highlight ongoing challenges in delivering the ambitious sequel, now over a decade after the original.
