ARK: Survival Ascended shows off gorgeous Unreal Engine 5 gameplay goodness

ARK: Survival Evolved was one of the biggest surprise hits of the last few years, and now Studio Wildcards' is cooking up something very, very exciting with its sequel... ARK: Survival Ascended, which has a new gameplay trailer to check out:

The new trailer was released during the Xbox Partner Preview showcase, with the Unreal Engine 5-powered ARK: Survival Ascended looking mighty fine in the graphics department because of it. We have massively upgraded environments, creatures that have an enormous amount of detail, destruction, and so much more. It's all in-engine, and it looks in-sane.

ARK: Survival Ascended is using Unreal Engine 5 to great effect, with many its technologies baked inside of the game, including Lumen, Nanite, Instance-Based Rendering, fluid and foilage animation technologies, and more. There are also modding abilities in ARK: Survival Ascended, with the new modding tools letting you access Unreal Engine 5 directly. Not only that, but console gamers playing ARK: Survival Ascended will be able to get in on the modding fun, too.

Studio Wildcard teased some more things coming to ARK: Survival Ascended: "A third-person camera for players and creatures with additional per-creature customization and flexibility. A new, highly detailed map system that supports world pings and points of interest. Advanced dynamic navigation for intelligent creature pathfinding, so no more running into walls of your base, but running away from Carnivores just got tougher!"

"There's so much more to cover, including more character customization options, unique color sets, quality-of-life improvements, new split-screen multiplayer functionalities, audio revamping, new gameplay items and structures, changes to existing items and creatures, and essentially, every inch of The Island has been redesigned, and much more".