It's been an odd week for Ark fans, with a new tease for Ark: Survival Ascended DLC The Lost Colony, launching in November, featuring a blink-and-you'll-miss-it mention of Ark 2. This came alongside the announcement of an expansion for Ark: Survival Evolved from developer Snail Games called Ark: Aquatica, which is… well, a lot of people think it looks like AI slop.
To briefly clarify, Ark: Survival Ascended is a full-on 2023 remake of the original Ark: Survival Evolved, developed by creator Studio Wildcard. Ark: Survival Evolved is the original 2017 Ark, and is now handled by the US-based Snail Games.
The trailer for Ark: Aquatica begins with a few seconds of in-game first-person footage, before the remainder moves into a series of what seem self-evidently AI-generated underwater scenes.
Everything's slightly off: The colours look weird, with featureless blacked-out fish next to dazzlingly bright coral formations. The animations are just not right, with an octopus emerging from the water and then seemingly hovering above the surface. And the transitions are terrible, particularly the trailer's end where a tentacle touches an ugly-ass coral-encrusted logo.
"As an IT professional," notes commenter OhNaNoh, "this shit is why I'm not worried about AI taking over my job." Others are more straightforward about it: "There's a bit of Ark in your AI," says Valkymeow.
One of the biggest Ark content creators, Syntac, said simply "This is disgusting and you should be ashamed of yourselves."
Over on the Ark subreddit the reaction is the same: widespread disgust mixed with disbelief that Snail Games ever thought this would fly. "I honestly feel kinda bad for Wildcard man," says MikeyBastard. "Sure their development process can be a little slow, but Snail Games has absolutely fucked 'em over time and time again. The absolute greed from Snail to use an AI for pretty much the entire video including the voiceover, just to save some money from having to pay artists is absurd. How in the world did they think this would go over well?"
"Big fan of the foot that turns into a fin at 40 seconds," says Flaming Puffins.
The trailer currently has just under 50,000 views, and a grand total of 203 "likes". I used one of those YouTube dislike viewer sites, and apparently there are well over 6000, which I believe we'd call a ratio.
Don't take my word, or the word of fans either: Studio Wildcard itself couldn't distance itself from Ark: Aquatica fast enough.
"ARK: Aquatica is being developed by Snail Games USA Colorado, please follow them for more updates," Studio Wildcard said on the game's X account. "Studio Wildcard remains entirely dedicated to the production of ARK: Survival Ascended & ARK 2, and we're excited to bring ARK: Lost Colony to you later this year!"
In other words, please don't blame us for this AI travesty, and aim your vitriol in the right direction. The trailer is still viewable, but has notably been de-listed following the community reaction.
Ark: Aquatica is apparently "an ambitious underwater setting featuring 95% of gameplay taking place beneath the surface." The big worry raised by this trailer, though, is whether the DLC itself is going to rely so heavily on AI tools. It's a terrible look for Ark either way, which has always boasted outstanding art direction and over the years delivered some truly memorable trailers. This… this ain't it.
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