Ark: Survival Evolved Update Will Let You Play (And Breed) As Dinosaurs

During E3’s PC Gaming Show, Studio Wildcard outlined the year ahead for their more-popular-than-Barney (but not nearly as fierce) dinosaur survival game, Ark: Survival Evolved. The craziest addition? A mode that lets you play as dinosaurs.

Ark: Primal Survival is coming later this year. Here’s how it works:

“ARK: Primal Survival is an upcoming Total Conversion where survivors will be able to play, live, and breed as any of the ARK’s creatures! Survivors will experience full survival mechanics and lifecycles, including mating, growing, recruiting more creatures to your ‘pack,’ even constructing primitive dens.”

Transforming into dinosaurs and mating with your best pals to have precious children and form a pack that will ultimately be torn apart by the lascivious jaws of death? Kinky.

Each creature lives a different sort of life, too. In a Steam post, Wildcard offered examples ranging from coordinating attacks on other species as a prowling band of raptors to crawling around in caves and poisoning victims as a giant goddamn spider that can fuck off and die, if you ask me. Or you can start a bear family, which apparently involves lots of cuddling and fishing. Conspicuously, Wildcard does not mention mauling at all, suggesting to me that they have never met, seen, or even read about an actual bear.

It all sounds really neat, and I’m interested to see what’ll happen when players get their hands on the mode. My guess: definitely not what Wildcard is expecting, no matter what that is.

In the nearer future, Ark is getting a new redwood biome and the game’s largest creature yet, the Titanosaur. The latter can be used as “a mobile superfortress capable of ferrying obscene amounts of weight, structures, defences and creatures upon its back.” Finally, video games have made my greatest dream come true: a pet I can live on. That update will be out on June 22 on Steam and shortly after on Xbox One.

Lastly, Ark is getting another official mod. This one’s called Primitive+, and it seems pretty interesting, despite a name that’s kinda… errrrrrr:

“Primitive+ explores the idea of what life may be like with common-day knowledge and resources provided by the land. It incorporates primitive tools and techniques that are still being used by indigenous tribes around the world today!”

“Players are challenged to use primarily wood and stone without the benefit of advanced metals. A whole new set of items and detailed new mechanics focus the player on ‘primitive’ survival, which fits snugly in the world of ARK. Primitive+ will be playable as a functionality mod on all official ARK maps.”

That will be out on July 28 on both PC and Xbox One. 2016 is shaping up to be a very good year for dinosaurs — unlike the previous 65 million or so.