Set in a series of uninhabited lands teeming with over 150 different creatures, ARK: Survival Evolved has nigh-endless content to offer. While at first this can be overwhelming, players eventually develop a knowledge base of ARK facts and lore. This potentially includes the full names of extinct creatures and their eating habits.
Although Studio Wildcard has added fictional creatures such as the Phoenix and Griffin to ARK maps, over 90 of its creatures are based on animals that were once indigenous to the planet Earth. The behavior of these creatures is often exaggerated for the purpose of player enjoyment, such as the rolling motion of the Doedicurus and the Thylacoleo’s ability to climb vertical walls reminiscent of Spider-Man, somehow defying gravity. However, despite these amusing commodities, there is a factual element to the creatures involved that players can glean during gameplay.
ARK's Explorer Notes Explained
The earliest days of ARK revolved around a map called The Island, a part-tropical, part-frozen stretch of land home to just under 25 historically classified species of dinosaur, birds, mammals, and fish. While exploring The Island, players can stumble across an explorer note, which results in them receiving boosted XP for ten minutes. Once all the explorer notes have been found, the player unlocks an extra ten levels for their character.
Whilst some of these notes are narratives written by explorers of The Island that explain ARK lore, others serve a more educational purpose. The latter are known as dossiers, containing scribbles written by one of The Island’s original explorers: enthusiastic palaeontologist Helena Walker. These offer a brief description of the creatures that can be found there. Included with this description will be details about whether the creature is herbivore, omnivore, carnivore, or piscivore; its full name; species classification; and the geological period it existed in. This time scale can range from Triassic, the earliest period associated with the existence of dinosaurs, to present-day Holocene, as written in the Anglerfish dossier.
A number of ARK creatures can only be found in their native biomes, such as the Mammoth and Woolly Rhinoceros located in cold areas among snow deposits. It is common knowledge that these now-extinct species thrived during the Ice Age, so in this case the setting is accurate. Other creatures tend to appear in areas that seem very unnatural to them. An example of this is the giant crocodile Sarcosuchus, which is speculated to be a fresh-water reptile dwelling in tropical climates, but can commonly be spotted swimming among the icebergs of frozen coastlines in ARK. As with exaggerated behaviors, this is likely more for in-game enjoyment than a failed attempt at scientific accuracy.
Alongside the facts written at the bottom of each dossier, Helena also made notes on the behavior of the creature, such as how well it could defend itself. She further summarizes how well the creature could be used by a tribe once tamed, which is purely fictional. Once discovered, the dossier can be viewed in the player’s inventory, displayed like the findings of an exploring biologist. The nature of this in-game element can teach players, many of whom may be able to identify pictures of dinosaurs by name just from playing ARK.
As ARK’s selection of maps expanded, so did its diverse range of creatures; some fictional and some modeled after extinct real-life organisms. With most of these creatures arriving alongside their own unique dossier, players have access to a database of information, the contents of which can be experienced through gameplay. Exploring themes of academia in video games is something that has been more touched upon in recent years, raising the idea that games can be designed for educational purposes as well as recreational.
ARK: Survival Evolved is available now for Mobile, PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.