How big is Ark Survival Ascended?

Ark Survival Ascended is an official remake of Ark Survival Evolved, an action-adventure survival game emphasizing multiplayer elements. There are several games that fulfill this MMO survival niche, including well-known titles like Rust, Valheim, Conan: Exiles, and even Minecraft. However, Studio Wildcard's Ark franchise is among the most celebrated pioneers of this hybrid genre.

While the sequel ARK 2 will branch off into a more skill-oriented third-person MMO with soulslike elements, Ark Survival Ascended is faithful to the original formula, being a direct remake. The game is out on Early Access for Windows on Steam, with console releases scheduled for later.

It is also underway to fully replace the original title, as the developer plans to terminate official support for Ark Survival Evolved and its servers. However, fans of the series may rejoice in the fact the remake is a significant upgrade, boasting much higher visual fidelity in its shiny new engine. The only tradeoff, of course, is that the new title has higher system requirements.

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Ark Survival Ascended size and storage space requirement explored

Originally made on Unreal Engine 4, the size of Ark Survival Evolved is on par with expectations given its detail and caliber, requiring 60GB of hard drive space to run. While Valheim and Rust are much smaller titles, Ark's high-quality assets and attention to detail are more comparable to Conan: Exiles (114GB).

Ark Survival Ascended, on the other hand, requires at least 70GB of storage space to install. This remake not only ports the game over to Unreal Engine 5 but also improves many of the game's textures, geometry, and foliage quality. In light of that, the 10GB size increment can be considered reasonable.

To utilize the new rendering technology fully, as well as serviceable load times, the developer also recommends you use an SSD instead of an HDD. As expected, Ark Survival Ascended will require better hardware to achieve the same performance overhead as the original UE4 title.

As per Steam, the Minimum System Requirements are:

• OS: Windows 10/11 with updates
• Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 2600X, Intel Core i7-6800K
• Memory: 16 GB RAM
• Graphics: AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT, NVIDIA GeForce 1080
• DirectX: Version 12
• Network: Broadband Internet connection
• Storage: 70 GB available space
• Additional Notes: SSD Required

Recommended System Requirements:

• OS: Windows 10/11 with updates
• Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 3600X, Intel i5-10600K
• Memory: 32 GB RAM
• Graphics: AMD Radeon RX 6800, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080
• DirectX: Version 12
• Network: Broadband Internet connection
• Storage: 70 GB available space
• Additional Notes: SSD Required

To be more specific on the new features, Ark Survival Ascended brings all its expected visual tech hallmarks of Unreal Engine 5, including:

• Nanite
• Lumen
• NVIDIA RTXDI
• Dynamic Water system powered by FluidNinja

It also brings a lot of performance enhancements for greater optimization, thanks primarily to DLSS support, threaded server networking, and instance rendering that presents better capacity to handle scenes with a lot of clutter over high draw distances.

The game includes new layers of detail, like interactive foliage that benefits from the new custom physics engine and animations remade from the ground up. Directional sprinting and a ping system number are among a laundry list of new and improved game mechanics, with more planned for the full release.