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As part of its celebrations around the tenth anniversary of the Ark franchise, Snail Games revealed that the game that started it all, Ark Survival Evolved, is getting a new expansion – Ark Aquatica. However, it’s already got off on the wrong foot due to its reveal trailer containing more than a hefty dose of AI-generate footage. Now, a Snail Games developer confirms that those actually creating the expansion “did not know” about the AI trailer, and calms fears that Aquatica itself may feature AI-generated content.
It’s hard to believe that this year marks a decade since the Ark franchise began with Ark Survival Evolved. The dino-infested survival game is one of the all-time greats in the genre, but with its shinier, newer brother Ark Survival Ascended receiving regularly remastered expansions (and now entirely original ones, too) it’s been a while since Survival Evolved got some love. Couple that with the fact that the incredibly ambitious Ark 2 should be on the way too, and it makes the existence of a brand new Survival Evolved expansion, Aquatica, a real surprise.
After initially revealing the expansion as ‘Ark Aquatica’ in a simple X post, with no actual context on what it was, it was confirmed a few hours later to be a Survival Evolved DLC. However, while this underwater, non-canonical expansion sounds great and will be an absolute treat for those still playing the original over Ascended, its reveal trailer has caused quite the stir. Using AI-generated footage, it has been bashed by fans and has even led to concerns that some of the expansion itself will have been created using AI.
However, speaking with Pocket Tactics at GDC, Snail Games USA’s lead game designer Matt Kohl assures that the trailer does not resemble the final product and that no AI tools were used in the development of Ark Aquatica.
“The marketing department used still images of some of our assets to create an AI-animated trailer,” Kohl says. “That was not part of the development team; we did not know that they were doing it.”
The decision to push out an AI trailer is a strange one. Judging from initial screenshots like the one below, the in-game environments are already looking ready enough to be featured in promotional material. Maybe there’s a concern, due to Evolved’s age, its lack of graphical prowess would put off potential new players watching the trailer. But to be honest, the main target audience of this expansion is going to be existing Ark fans who know fully-well what to expect from Evolved.
Ark Aquatica is slated to launch in June 2025. Hopefully, we’ll get a proper look at its underwater world in-game before it drops.
Until then, if you want to play something else with an Ark flavor, check out some of the best building games and best dinosaur games on PC right now.
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