Ark: Survival Evolved is adding a dinosaur so big you can build a base on its back

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The update, which also adds a redwood forest biome, is due later this month.

At the PC Gaming Show during E3 2016, Jesse Rapczak and Forest Rapczak of Studio Wildcard announced some upcoming changes to their popular multiplayer dinosaur-based survival game Ark: Survival Evolved. Big changes. Specifically, the biggest dinosaur the game has ever seen.

The Titanosaur will loom into sight later this month, along with a new biome featuring giant redwood trees, complete with Ewok-style tree forts and villages (and at least one actual Ewok, also viewable in the trailer above). 

Studio Wildcard also brought two more videos to our show, both featuring mods that are becoming officially integrated into the game.

Above, you can check out Primal Survival, which lets you play Ark as a creature instead of a human. We're not just talking dinos, either: the trailer shows playable bears, sharks, primates, wolves, and even ants. Ants! It's not just a matter of swapping your skin with that of another creature and running around for a bit: you will actually live in the world as that animal. You can hunt, explore, recruit creatures into your pack, mate with them, and have offspring. While you can encounter other players who are also playing as animals, you can only communicate with members of your own species.

There's also a total conversion mod called Primitive+ that heightens the roleplaying aspects of Ark, with a focus on more realistic systems for building, farming, fishing, trapping, cooking, and even the economy. Primitive+ will be integrated into Ark on July 28th.

Christopher Livingston
Christopher Livingston
Senior Editor

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.