ARK Survival Evolved, a game where the only thing that you have to fear is overpowered dung beetles, doesn’t exactly have an accurate portrayal of dinosaurs. Especially those ones who fire diamond-encrusted lasers at those f***ing dung beetles.
See, despite what your fortnightly Dinosaur magazine taught you as a kid, the ancient beasts of our planet looked rather different. They weren’t all a bunch of scaly buggers waiting to be used for fuel many millions of years later.
Nope, the Cretaceous wildlife was pretty much a mixture of bird and reptile. Thanks to scientific discoveries over the last couple of years, we now know that Velociraptors were actually smaller, sort of horrifyingly cute vermin, like seagulls that could rip your face off. The ones you see in Jurassic Park, are actually more based on Dinonychus than the infamous raptor.
And that’s something that some hardcore fans have been asking the ARK Survival Evolved team to fix. Thing is, that’s not going to happen.
“We made the conscious decision to not make all of our dinosaurs actual species,” explained co-founder and creative director Jesse Rapcazak to MCVUK.
We’ve noticed that a lot of people are quick to point out: ‘Hey, dinosaurs have feathers now. The big lizard thing is not scientifically accurate any more’. It’s actually kind of stressful because people are really passionate about dinosaurs.
So we don’t have a Tyrannosaurus Rex; we have another sub-species that we made up for the game – that’s our creative licence, right? We’re not trying to appeal to the overly scientific crowd. We try not to take it too seriously.
Still, there is some manner of a compromise in play. “We tried to put some feathers on some dinosaurs,” Rapczak explained.
Our Velociraptors have a few feather-like things on them. The thing is, it’s really hard to do good feathers in a game. So we limit the feathers a little bit, because it makes it easier for us.
Ark: Survival Evolved is currently tearing up the Steam charts. It’ll be hitting Xbox One in the near future as well.
Last Updated: August 7, 2015
ZA Ludomusicologist
August 7, 2015 at 21:19
I smell a rat… I mean, a dinosaur…
lygamnt
August 10, 2015 at 17:40
Yes realism is something needed in a game where humans hunt dinosaurs…
Hammersteyn
August 11, 2015 at 07:50
Should have added armour plating and lasers!
Matthew Holliday
August 11, 2015 at 10:11
saddles have armour and theyr introducing collidable saddles soon that you can build on, gna turn my bronto into a moving turret mountain.
Hammersteyn
August 11, 2015 at 10:35
XD
Pariah
August 11, 2015 at 11:56
Can’t wait until I get to the point where I can tame a dino. 😀
Matthew Holliday
August 11, 2015 at 15:45
get one as soon as possible, a trike or something, things get so much easier when you have a dino to harvest berries for you.
learn the slingshot asap and get it asap
which server are you on?
if you hit the mweb cpt pve server i can hook you up with the saddle.
b1nd3r
August 11, 2015 at 08:50
show me another dev team that puts out updates and fixes like they do, this game is more complete than most AAA titles of the last few years (Yes its still Early Access) and you want to point out that a fantasy game isnt accurate to history??? this is honestly scraping bottom of the barrel news.
Allykhat
August 11, 2015 at 09:35
The amount of opportunity this game has to go Jurassic World is scary. Calling it now, Indominus rex incoming
Pariah
August 11, 2015 at 11:51
Bought this over the weekend. I need a new graphics card, but so far its fun. Only died once, and setting up camp inside a cave which is really cool. Can’t wait to actually explore more.
Pariah
August 11, 2015 at 11:51
Bought this over the weekend. I need a new graphics card, but so far its fun. Only died once, and setting up camp inside a cave which is really cool. Can’t wait to actually explore more.