Who Are You? ARK II Story & Lore Theory Breakdown! 

JOIN OUR ARK LORE DISCORD HERE! :D discord.gg/deMg5mS Also: I want to address something I've been asked a lot! "What about your survivor at the end of Genesis 2!?" well, in all honesty I just forgot about the possibility that we'd actually play as them in ARK 2. We might! It's just as likely and so I may cover that possibility in a later video. Thanks for watching :)

I think that art two will begin with us the Survivor just defeating Rockwell Andrew crashing on the same plant Santiago lives on and we end up stumbling upon them later in the game

another idea that I have is that we're the same character from Gen2, and we wake up after crashing on the planet in our Mek that HLN-A shot us out of the colony ship in. but yeah, your content is amazing, keep up the amazing work :D

With how Santiago and how his part of the story works makes me think there will most likely be 2 modes to Ark2. A smaller story mode medium where you travel alongside Santiago to achieve some kind of goal with just yourself or you and a few friends, and a larger sandbox mode where smaller tidbits of a story are there, but less so.

It might be a artifact collection type system to be able too get to Santiago for special quests or quests in general i.e. collect the sky lord and thyla claws etc to open quests or get to certain areas. While aslo having other systems in place i.e. random npc quest like in fallout. Open world bosses are needed though. Good content dude.

Here's my 11-month late theory: You have a Subnautica-Esque introduction cutscene where you are injured as you crash down. You awake in a small encampment that is inhabited by other survivors, led by Santiago. He guides you through the basics of the game, and then you are able to split off from the group and play through the typical Ark experience. If they want to continue implementing the lore throughout the world in a similar way to Explorer Notes, they could have random survivor NPCs camping around that tell you a little bit about the world. It'd make sense that they are somewhat familiar with things considering they've been alone long enough to flourish. Maybe there are solo NPCs chilling next to a campfire with a certain tame, teaching you about that dino, or maybe there are larger settlements that teach you more about lore, crafting, or brewing. Lots of stuff they could do with Ark II.

I hope we have the hunt missions back but it would be more open and story oriented. For example there’s a mission we’re there’s a Stryder that survived the crash that malfunctioned and we have to destroy it.

I Just fear that ark 2 become too much of a Story game, rather than a "build your own stuff/Story and survive" game. Of course, you're absolutely right with the fact, that telling the Story through Explorer notes isnt very accessible, but for me personally that's something i absolutely love in games: Games you are able to Just play how you want and, most importantly, Set your Focus on what you want. You only want to Do pvp? Then Do so. You only want to play pve and build a lot of cool stuff? Then you can also Just Do that. And those who really wanted to get behind the Story, can also Just Do that, by either collecting and reading the notes themselves or through a bit of research online. Simply put it Just Gives you a looot of freedom in choosing how you play the game and this has become really scarce nowadays in the game Industry. Now if ark 2 abandons that System, does more of a storydriven, quest lead approach with maybe npc interactions and for example telling the Story through cutscene-exposition or something like that, this will have to be forced onto the Player (because if they're gonna put money into animating, voicing and producing that stuff they'll definetely make sure that everyone Sees it), which in turn Takes away a lot of the "play Just like you want" feel i think, because no matter if you wanna play only pvp, pve or whatever Else there is, you cant decide if you want to go After the notes or not, no, youll be forced to watch the cutscenes no matter what, youll be forced to go After the Story, no matter if you want it or not. I already wasn't a Fan of the genesis approach with Missions, forcing the Player into certain scenarios with certain play-types instead of the free Form "get through the cave your own way and get the artefact" And Just for clarification, i absolute love the ark Story, i collected all the notes myself and i will of course be hyped for how the Story continues. I Just like it more free Form, leaving the "how" fully to my Imagination instead of forcing me to Do it a certain way. Edit: Well nevermind, as always i should have Finished the vid before commenting, i Paused the Video exactly before you said the Same stuff i Just wrote, so Yeah, that's that then xd

i hope we are the survivor from gen 2 who has been trapped in orbit for a time untill we fall to the planet and end up near a pod that has crashed and the survivor inside dead where we get our new tutorial or something.

Your videos are literally why I am all about this lore. I rp on ark.... nearly all of my hours have been spent making stories in this game, so to find such a rich world just in the background of these memories I have... It was super cool, and now whenever I find them now I have a "Omg this is from that one part of his video!" moment. And I have all these fun facts to tell my rp buddies about the game cause of your shorts and stuff too. Im always plugging your videos to them XD Which is a really long way of saying you and your team are still doing freaking amazing

I think Ark 2 will start us off as an undercover agent for Rockwell. We are tasked with infiltrating Santiago's tribe. As this tribe is very heavily involved in a huge Gallimimus race ring. We have to take them down. So we show them our race skills and become a part of the family. From there, who knows where the adventure will take us.

I need that flower lizard as a shoulder pet.

3:55 never heard of him before

I'm just now getting to experience ARK 1 right now! It's a ton of fun, and I'm super pumped for ARK 2! I suppose it is kind of telling that I like lore so much and yet i haven't read the notes I've already found. Thanks for the feature!

Dude your content is always so well made, keep it up👍

Nice, i really enjoyed the ark lore. When ark first came out I fell off the wagon because of the lack of story. Then I got back into the game when complete games and Kona started reading the notes and visualizing the story.

Hear me out, what if, smiliarly to ark mobile, there was like an npc that, in lore, tries to gather the notes but also gives the player something like hints as to where the notes may be, in the form : npc accidentally finds one note, becomes intrigued, studies and makes educated guesses to places you might find them in.

I think it'd be really cool if you could find crashed drop pods on the planet and it would have little radio discussions over what's happening with them on the planet. Kind've like the radio messages from Subnautica but a little differently because you'd have to be at a drop pod to hear them

I 100% agree with the idea of notes being read to you while you play. It took 2 years and a RU-vidr (Complete Games) to show me how to TRANSLATE the explorer notes. 😂🤪

Idk what an Element Extractor is But this video is amazing and I’m sharing it with all my friends bc this game is awesome

0:46 sums up the video so well

I hope the opening of ark 2 is during the Rockwell fight we’re maybe it’s a cutscene or maybe you get to do the fight as a sort of tutorial

I think some things from the concept dino art tells us that its farther in the future, as evolution on a hostile like planet allowed for better armor like the anky concept art etc. Yet Santiago would not be alive at that point as it would be many years. Maybe Santiago will not be someone we interact with during our playthrough. But if that ship brought all the dinos etc. to the planet then it would have to bring them in a way to make sure they survive as well. I have other theories etc. but find it interesting on how they will introduce the survivor to the world.

it would be neat if ark 2 was kind of like a quest sort of game, like a game with a main objective and the steps, side missions maybe and then the regular survival part of it, if they were to do the story a different way than explorer notes. maybe even some of the missions being kind of like monster hunter, take down a trex or trap one or something for small tribes, if there were any. basically im saying a mix between monster hunter, ark (1) and ghost of tsushima (or any other game along the lines of ghost of tsushima). also something that would be absolutely crazy that would be really cool but probably wont happen would be if you could travel to the other planets/moons, the ones in the trailer, no not rocket ships but if there were obelisks then maybe those? at the right time of night when the obelisks line up from planet to planet then you can? idk it would just be kind of cool to have normal ark 2 planet then, i dont know, a radiated planet? but thats a lot. and i guess we probably will be getting an entire planet, hopefully

In the humanoid creatures we see in Ark two are evolve version of the corrupted people

Another way to do a voice log / interact with npcs would be to find radio communication towers that allow us to get missions from the Santiago character remotely from a different region or side of the planet...

The lore behind the games was definitely an afterthought for WC from the start, but because it has become such a topic of interest I have no doubt they're going to go forward with a more direct way to present the story/new lore and maybe some previous lore. I almost wonder if part of the story will be a faction led by Santiago to bury the history and tech to move on vs a faction of other survivors who want to keep digging into the wreckage for the knowledge/tech that's there.

One way they could implement NPCs progressing the story without making it too linear is by implementing Explorer Notes (or an equivalent, such as voice logs like you suggested) and have them written in a different language. Then you can bring these Explorer Notes to an NPC who translates them for you. You could even be rewarded for bringing them an Explorer note. This would incentivise players collecting Explorer Notes and it would make them more accessible and more important for players who don't care about the lore. Personally, I don't care about a game's story if I have to go out of my way to find it.

I’m really hoping they add more character to the wildlife. You never see them sleeping, building a nest, guarding eggs, or even foraging for food. The carnivores just run around randomly and kill and eat everything in sight and the herbivores just walk around randomly.

What's interesting in my mind is that the survivor from Genesis 2 must have landed on to earth safely after the destruction of Rockwell's ring. How else could you explain the cave drawings of HNLA? Who else would have been able to remember her or come in contact with her? Thought?

Anyone else realize since cryo pods ark is litteraly pokemon for adults? Like the cryopods are pokeballs. The caves are the gyms the artifacts are the badges and the boss fights are the elite 4 where you show your badges to finish the game.

Honestly I really like those "predictions" based on what we have. A different idea could be, that the planet we are thrown at in the end of Gen2 would be the real world, which regenerated after the ARKs return. (This would explain the rex an the petranodons in the Trailer) And now we as the "new comers" live like a tribe shown in the trailer and the other guys are a mutation of the ARKs ihabitants who lived on the reseeded world for a few years, decades or even centuries.

Maybe they could make something to do with the enviornmental explorer notes thing and incorperate the player being awoken from a stasis nd make it a part of the story. Like what if there were others who were also put in a stasis and are still sleeping. Maybe we can be tasked with awakening a few of them, helping them out, or maybe impactful people could be introduced gradually as more and more awaken. Or there could be some big threat like a guy like nerva who is asleep and we have to choose wether or not we kill him in his sleep, like a moral dilema that impacts the story. Not anything too groundbreaking but certainly another fun aspect of the game

The quest system with logs makes the most sense. Like you said many games already use that system and it works.

I hope it doesn’t become a story mode type of game, the freedom of going out of your way to find things and do stuff is what separates it from games like that. A game that i played like that was Days Gone, organically finding the nests and hordes and Easter eggs were my favorite parts of the game. The repetitive missions and storylines were not.

I have a fix for the npc Killable or non kill able issue. The implants, from A lore stand point the implants were able to communicate over distance but the system in the arks and gen disabled this to short range of the persons voice, how ever with the ship destroyed and the reseed protcall complete, the limits were... terminated. Letting use talk to npcs without making them invincible. (I put some thought into this and I think it would work from a game and lore standpoint)

Honestly love this I used to be one of those players that played when boost where happening and being competitive I never cared for the story until you told it thank you

Me and my friend were literally talking about this kind of stuff a bit before you posted this

One huge thing in ark I always wanted was NPC enemies. So I’m happy to see these humanoids

It might be interesting to see a sort of Far cry approach. The worlds got quests that have you meeting certain criteria, you unlock abilities and and knoweldge through them, and as they go on you have side quests like searching a bunker to find a note from the locals or something of a similar vein.

That one kid with a Mae wing obsession

I love how he uses half of sand diego to show how you travel 😅

Interesting ideas relating to Santiago and story. Imagine Ark 2 with a little bit of Monster Hunter (quests and making armor out of your kills, wyvern armor plzzzz and thank you).

I’m hoping that with the Genisis 2 ring surviving the explosion I hope it doesn’t come crashing down so that maybe stryders and other gen 2 things don’t come

Would be interesting if we pick up where genesis ends with us in the exo falling to the planet

I love the explorer notes i really like the idea of seeing the experience pf all the amazing characters but maybe it would be better if you found all the notes at the same time instead just one piece of their story so it wouldnt be so annoying. If the story was told in any other way it wouldnt let us know anything about the actual characters if ark 2 is going to have any Also the notes were so personal for all characters with all of them making them in differeny things that were from their time some used books and some wrote in different things and i liked that they all had their own style, handwriting and some had different language it made us understand the charactes better I hope they dont stop having notes

Love the videos man! You ever consider what type of creatures they'll utilize in ARK II? like will Wildcard use the all or most same creatures from ARK and revamp them or will they only choose a select few ie the rex, raptor etc and bring in new species? Like do you think they'll incorporate things like Wyverns, Rock Drakes and other fictional species into ARK II

I think Ark 2 explorer notes could just give out small details and this would allow the community to piece it all together. I think the overarching antagonist of Ark 2 would be like another survivor character that imposes Santiago and hates him in a way that he wants genocide and completely kill off the planet. Because Santiago is from the Terran Federation, and the Terran’s goal is to leave earth and settled onto another planet. So maybe the antagonist wanted break everything from Santiago and his people.

I'm sort of think one of the things I really like about Ark is early in the game there was no story that was pushed on you. At least for me it actually seemed like there really was no story to the game it was just a game about surviving and taming and raising dinosaurs. It wasn't until aberration and maybe extinction was about to come out that I started to get curious about the story and started looking into it. Of course that opened this whole new world of the story that was Ark and it was so interesting to kind of learn about everything that was going on and this overarching story that stretched over several maps. It's really kind of cool how it incorporated the game mechanics of like being able to respawn and not dying into the story of Ark and why it was like that. I'm sure ark 2 we'll have more focus on a story I'm just not sure how that's going to be implemented. I sure don't like open world games where you need to rely on other people to do stories and you need to go to a certain NPC. In open online games I just opens up a space for people to camp and kill you and grief you. I'm still cautiously optimistic and excited for what ark 2 will bring when we see it in 2 years, lol

Would it be possible that we start the game as our previous character (in the story, not with our items / stats obviously) falling and crashing in the Exo Mek? That way we can take HLNA's message and 'build a new world'

I hope they keep the xp notes I like the hidden lore and so many do so much on RU-vid acting them out... I can see Santiago having notes like time capsules like missiles shot into the ground with a holo of him speaking where walker still doing notes on paper... She could be back as a person with hlna as a drone leaving her own notes as well one knows who she was the new clone don't... Be kool

It's possible that those tribals are a mutated form of human that Rockwell mutated in stasis during Genesis. And he could return as an antagonist in some way if these tribals had seen him at some sort of God, making it seem like he reached the form godhood he wanted. The Genesis ship probably had the ability to copy a portion of his engram into these creatures. Not to mention the mutated versions of dinosaurs in the trailer.

I think we are our previous character is docking at the space ring and then goes down to the planet like everyone else of the colonists

cautious excitement for ARK 2, they can't make it worse then the original... right?

Hope our survivor returns

One question I have about Ark's lore is what really happened on Earth. We cleanse it from element and all, survivors come out from the Arks but after that bit of insight on Extinction we don't really know anything else. Feels a bit weird that the main storyline of Ark (being this the first 4 official maps) is left unanswered and we follow up the Genesis storyline. Maybe it will be a DLC or something who knows.

I’m pretty sure wildcard will always do the simplest thing that they can get away with… If I were to put myself in their shoes and thinking caps for a second, I believe they would have you crash, your pods door wouldn’t open correctly from said crash, Santiago would get you out while then proceeding to give you a tutorial on the basic game mechanics, and there you go… Sandbox.

Ark devs: *watches this video* Also ark devs: WRITE THAT DOWN WRITE THAT DOWN!!!

Are you still doing explorer note stories? Cause honestly it’s the best Ark content I’ve seen since it’s release

2:55 suddenly a reaper appears!

I hope in the near future the idea of ark becomes a reality

Just an idea replacing explorer notes with wall painting you could find on main quest kinda makes since to me because of how we see wall painting in the teser with wall painting with HLNA

Possibly get explorer notes from already crashed pods spread around the world.

0:02 Neddy wasnt lying its now almost 2.5 years later and its still not out and litterly no info about a possibile release thats what i love about Neddy he thinks realisticly hes critical but reasonoble and i like that

I feel like ark 2 story could benefit alot from the darksouls style story system where instead of telling you exactly where you need to go it hints at it and then you need to find it yourself

I think how were going to get explorer notes is when the pods crash Sam will explode, and the notes will fall out of the pods

I guess this is the best place to give these notes. I dont think it would make sense to have no friendly human npcs. Limiting them or doing an mmo thing for hubworlds might then be a necessity , but as we have seen , hundreds landed and at least a few will have made it. Then of course the prospect of beeing the survivor from gen 2 still stands. The combination of , if failing, exo mek and tek suit will probably keep you alive in the crash. They could pull an good old memory loss or something similar, but i think it would at least be weird to have the survivor that killed rockwell unmentioned. Especially as HLNA is depicted on a drawing in the trailer.

My prediction: 1.Opening scene is Santiago getting out the pod. Time jump to when he has established a tribe with the other survivors. You're one of them and need to go do recon or even deal with neighboring tribes. 2. Instead of explorer notes, you find the pods the survivors came down on. You can interact with them and learn about members who have either survived or died. You'll have to discover profiles of characters. 3. You'll be given a piece of land that you can build a village on as you wish. Prefabs will be an option as well as individual items such as walls, fences, doors etc. 4. When you die, you wouldn't come back like in the Ark lore. It'll just restart OR you'll be "rescued" by the tribe and treated. 5. They'll be a dark hidden secret that'll be the focus of the game, NPCs will need to be interacted with to progress, taming and raising will either be automatic if your village has a "pen" or just like Ark where you have to manually raise them. In short, I think it'll be a complete do over of how you play Ark. It'll be like Ark and Horizon Zero Dawn had a baby and the baby is Ark 2 😂😂

Glad someone mentioned subnautica. I've been thinking that ark II will be more like Subnautica, finding voice logs and driving the story at our own pace by building and surviving.

How Wildcard tells the story in the next game is the most important thing IMO. On the original story maps the player had to seek out the story. I loved exploring each map for pieces of the puzzle. Players who were not interested in the backstory could just enjoy the sandbox. I'm going to be 100% honest. I hated how the story was told in Genesis 1 and 2. HLN-A was the worst thing that was added in any DLC. Also, the boring missions that prevented the player from taming dino's and fighting the bosses were terrible.

I think part of the landscape will be the husk of the Gen 2 ship. With the player character following in his footsteps trying to figure out his whereabouts or the tribe's as shown in the trailer. It seems the no tek thing would be Santiago refusal to use element in any shape or form from his previous lives?. I can see collector notes being a thing perhaps certian story beats, like crafting certian things or discovering very key places and more obvious parts of artifact caves?

Nice theory,but i would u suggest to thing about how the genesis 1 works,how u teleport between biomes,okay,now look at the Atlas(other game they test things),on the officials they split the map in parts,have huge portals in the ocean to navigate throgh tham..now my theory is they test some mecanics on the Atlas for Ark 2,of course there they introduce some wonders and other stuff,i dont play anymore that game cuz i hate official servers for the every month wipes :) ,but i belive on Atlas they test mecanics for Ark 2..i could be wrong but who know :) Anyway,u make great content,keep going.

Ark 2 sounds so cool I’m very excited

No one has mentionned this yet, at 8:00 minute we can see that the survivors are carrying an egg, meaning breeding and raising dinos will be a part of the game. Not surprising but I tought it was worth mentioning!

No I think it would be better if they just made a no weapons village that all your "main story missions" come from. It would not take up too much space in the game and its an easy explanation for not being able to kill everyone. Guards and security take your weapons on entry because of a no violence policy, being a small village they are able to control that. This could be a cool feature to add in game where someone can request to view your inventory, but not take from it. That is something that always keeps players from trusting one another.

I mean… I didn’t play 76 until about march of last year, after the wastelanders release, but I had a lot of fun with it.

While everyone was going on about Vin Deisel, my first thought about the trailer was, THERE'S A KID! Will we get to play as a child? I haven't seen anyone address that. I'm assuming there were no children in cryo on the Ark, but that child is instead a child of the survivors. What does that mean for game play? I think they purposely made the kid not obviously girl or boy, so it could just be a child character. I'm sure you're right that this scene is some time down the road - I think years at least, because of the kid, and also look at what they're wearing and carrying - they didn't spawn with that stuff. Finally, what happened to all the element-corrupted survivors that fought for Rockwell? Might these humanoids be them? And are they npc's or are they also playable characters? Instead of male or female, maybe we can choose male/female/child/corrupted human?

... this game better be here before I go blind... ark is my happy place ironically the only place I feel safe without medication and I want to be able to see it before my vision fails

I think the intro to the the spawn will be you crashing down in the exo mek

Well you were right about voice acting as a possibility since they added it to ark 1 :)

Hey guys I have a idea maybe we are the antagonist we may want to go back to the time of tech wen Santiago wants to stay primitive and we basically become rokweel.

Since it having the unreal engine update, there probably some type of connection. Hopefully we can bring our Ingram records from ark1 to ark2.

What would be cool is if some parts of the story are told in the strange tek-y rooms we saw at the end of the trailer, perhaps a kind of key system from Santiago or perhaps collecting artifacts could do something to you implant which lets you unlock the rooms. Feel free to adapt in the reply’s.

We continue by explaining ourselves to Santiago

I didn’t even know gen2 notes were meshed, I thought the floor was the explorer note 😭

I would much rather have Ark 2 story beats be in the caves like a illustrated story. Then having them slowly ramp into a tek style cave like seen in the trailer. Now Ark2's story is going to be interesting I would love to know what happens on earth after the aberrant ark crashed down into it sense there is no sanitago on this place how will earth fair?

I'm probably the only one who thinks this, but I don't think Rockwell is gone forever. I think he's pulling some strings to survive. But that's just me

i just hope we are one of the main group member and progress as our own character

Can the explorer notes not automatically open when you come by them? Dislike running from something and have it open up or at least place them in a safe spot. Tho they are cool to read and learn, they have almost nothing to do with gameplay. Maybe if they had something in there that also helped you out in game. Also, would like quests that would give you items but not necessarily needed to complete to move forward in the game. I don't know about placing NPC on the map as I don't want to be ambushed by people camping NPCs. Maybe you can reach them through your implant or something. Lastly could we have a limit to how much we could build? Alpha tribes end up spamming everywhere on the map and claim about 30% of the map.

My theory about Santiago is, when all the pods start crashing, maybe he sends scouts out to see whats happening and they either bring you to him or you can choose to not go, which may have consequences 🤷‍♀️

Maybe it’ll keep mechanics like building in ark 2, but it’ll be like a Skyrim type of setting in ark.

it would be cool if they had crashed scouts that have logs in them from the people in the ship studying the planet

About subnatica I don’t know what was that pod for…for flying maybe

I just hope we get to talk with Santiago and be like “Yeah man, I defeated this big ass purple tentacle dude on the colony ship and saved y’all’s butts, so yeah, I’m pretty OP…” JK 🤣 but I REALLY hope we get to interact with Santiago and maybe even discuss some of the things that went down the the colony ship… and the callbacks… to HLN-A…😭

why do i feel like that little girl is the main character, or u could say she's probably some1 us players might play as because think about it she seemed very important in that trailer and she was one of the only survivors so i feel like we might play as her when shes older and the story might be something like having to find vin diesel again or something idk

One thing I do hope for Ark 2 is the gameplay isn't more of the same, as Ark's gameplay is more of a product of competing with Rust or specifically the Formula of "survive and chase supply drops" which I am sure nowadays people are slowly getting sick and tired of. The engram quality maybe fun but it is more than annoying, hopefully Ark 2 has an actual game that isn't centered around PVP, an actual single player game or ultimately, both.

I thought a lot of the recent interest in ARK's lore was generated by the announcement of the TV show.

I want to meet all the explorers from ark 1, atleast the ones that make sense like Mei and Diana who i’m pretty sure where the ones that launched the Genesis ship if I remember right

In the Conan game you could kill NPC's and they would just respawn. Kind of like having your cake and eating it too.

Personally, I'm hoping for a single-player (maybe with a Co-Op option) campaign and a completely separate multiplayer. Same map, just in the campaign there are NPCs and quests and in multiplayer it's more like ARK 1. Edit: As for the story, I hope it will revolve around the makers of Element. Maybe their civilization has collapsed, maybe Rockwell led us to them with the Genesis ship, maybe they're a bunch of primitives now and we have to pick up the pieces they left behind to find out what happened and how Element got out of control. Element always struck me as a gray goo scenario gone extremely wrong so personally I'd love a story around that. Nature defeating tech.