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Ark's story


TheSnives

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So I've seen a few people finish the game and ascend. The ending was pretty cool and cinematic, but it didn't try very hard to explain the story of ark. Now, I've also read the day one launch post by wildcard and the way the post was written makes it sound like the devs think there's enough clues to figure out a definitive story of the ark. So, I'm making this list to compile all the observations and conclusions I've made during the tek cave and ascension. Feel free to add your own observations or suggest a theory about arks story.

THIS IS A LONG POST THAT I SPENT A LONG TIME ON SO BE WARNED

If you wanna see my theory on the story of the ark skip to the last paragraph.

The ascension area

After you finish the tek cave you are taken to a room that has a view of each of the boss fight arenas. The question is: why are the arenas here? There are a few possibilities. 

Either the arenas in the ascension area are just recreations of the arenas and the actual arenas are on their respective ark/planet, or perhaps these are the same arenas you fought in in order to get to the tek cave. If these are the same arenas you fought In, perhaps you were being watched, your strength and combat ability was being monitored by something, and the ascension area is a monitoring room. Why are you being monitored? Perhaps to determine your survivability. This would be backed up by the fact that your implant says "survivor quotient", so perhaps the creators of the arks monitor your progress in the cave, and if you complete the cave then they Mark you as gamma, beta, or alpha level.

Survivor quotients 

If the creators of the arks are indeed interested in how well you can survive, Why? Perhaps they take the best survivors, gamma, beta, or alpha level survivors, and send them to colonize other planets. Perhaps the creators of the arks want to recolonize a dead and hostile earth, or perhaps they want to colonize mars or some other planet.

(Back to the tek cave)

The planet holograms 

In the ascension area, there are a few holograms of planets. One looks like Pangaea, another another is quite clearly modern day earth, and the third shows a strange configuration of the continent's. It is unclear whether this third hologram shows earth or another planet altogether. If it is earth, then the third hologram most likely shows the current earth at this point in ark's story, and the three holograms are a general history of the earth continents. However, if the third hologram is not earth, then perhaps it is scorched earth. However I'm not sure why scorched earth would be a planet and not an ark, therefore I believe this hologram is of earth.

The consoles 

Next to the Pangaea hologram there is a terminal. The terminal has a hologram of a DNA model on it's left as well as a hologram of an unknown image made of hexagons (perhaps it's a futuristic coding system like binary). In front of the terminal is a hologram of a dino. The hologram shows images of the creatures of the ark, and the image changes every few seconds. That, coupled with the DNA model on the side makes me think that perhaps this terminal holds all the genetic instructions to make every creature on the ark. I have no significant data to back this up but this is simply my conclusion.

Further down the tunnel, by the second earth hologram, is another console. This console is quite interesting, as it shows a hologram of a human.  Much like the other terminal, this terminal has a model of DNA on the left and that hexagon structure to the right. If the first terminal did contain the genetic code for all the creatures of the ark, then I'm not sure why human dna would be stored in a different terminal. Perhaps the creators of the ark realized we were different than the other animals and thus took an extra interest in us and placed us in a separate console. However I noticed something about the DNA models on the two terminals. The human terminal had a clear picture of human DNA, however the first terminal's DNA model was missing the "rungs" in the "ladder" (I forgot the words don't judge me). Perhaps this is why humans have a different terminal. Perhaps the creators of the ark don't have the full dino DNA, hence the missing "rungs". This would also explain why most dinos in the game aren't entirely historically accurate, maybe the creators of the ark do know what the dinos looked like, but they lack the DNA to make a historically accurate dino.

Next to the third hologram is a third terminal. This one has a structure that resembles DNA, but more complex, almost like the DNA itself evolved or was artificially altered to create a more genetically superior organism. And it is most likely altered human DNA since in front of the terminal is a hologram of a human shape. This makes me think that perhaps when you prove yourself strong enough by ascending, your DNA is altered and you are made even stronger. Perhaps ascending can only be done successfully if the organism is strong and durable enough to survive the massive genetic changes that could possibly occur during ascension. Perhaps that is why we are on the ark, the ark is a challenge, a trial, that only the strongest survivors can overcome. And when the strongest survivors do overcome the ark and ascend, they prove their worth to the creator of the arks, so the creators of the arks enhance your DNA and possibly use you for whatever they need.

The drops

The next area is almost like a cavern. The floor is made of tangled, root like structures, and in between the roots is a glass floor allowing you to see an ark below you. On the sides of the cavern are unmistakably loot drops being dropped down into the ark below. This area is interesting for two reasons. One, we now know where those strange drops are coming from. Two, considering that we are looking down at an ark, it's quite obvious that this is not a cave anymore, we are above the ark. Upon entering the boss room, you can see three arks in the background. If you look closely at the ark on the right, you will see that it is surrounded by three pillars, and connected to one of these pillars, is a structure that juts out over the ark. I believe this is the station you are in. You are on a control room high above the ark. And if you look at the ark in the middle, you can see one of the pillars is destroyed. This is most likely the ark that the new dlc, Aberration, will take place on.

The boss room

The next room is simply an observatory where you fight the final boss, the overseer. The name of the boss suggests something. Since it is an overseer, it most likely observed our journey on the ark. It is most likely an AI made to monitor people's progress towards ascension, and ultimately be the final boss for the survivors. 

Quick sidenote: is it just me, or do the flying defense units look a lot like watchers from halo 4?

The end cinematic 

After you defeat the overseer, a large hologram moves around the room. At first I had trouble recognizing what the hologram was, but then I realized its a hologram of our solar system. However, it only shows the Sun, the earth, and perhaps mars. Most importantly however, the hologram shows what can only be a bunch of arks floating around the earth. Next, the screen fades to white and the end game cinematic plays. You are suddenly outside the station, and quickly fly past the island ark. Then you fly past multiple other arks while your survivor implant glows and activates something. You can see that all the arks are orbiting a strange, brown planet, and there are no obvious continents or bodies of water to easily identify the planet as earth. However, I believe it has to be earth since we already saw that the arks orbit the earth (the hologram of the solar system told us). It looks as if something happened to the earth to make it brown, dead, and uninhabitable. I also noticed a large asteroid, around half the size of the earth, behind the planet, with smaller rocks around the asteroid. Perhaps multiple asteroid strikes destroyed earths ecosystem, forcing humans to evacuate the planet. The next important detail is all the hexagons around the planet. The planet seems to be surrounded by hexagons. The next part of the cutscene has you zooming towards the planet, particularly one of the hexagons surrounding it. Your view becomes obstructed, then is clear for about half a second. In that half a second, you can see that you're being teleported to another ark, possibly scorched earth due to the arks brown color. The fact that this new ark was one of the hexagons around the planet, I think the arks are arranged In a hexagonal field around the earth. When you finish zooming towards the ark the screen goes black and the credits play, signifying the end of the game.

A few notes

I have not played the end of the game so I have no first hand knowledge of what the cave has. Instead, I watched Thickfreedom's video as well as parts of GG Fizz's video in order to make these observations. 

What do I think the story of ark is?

Earth was made uninhabitable by something (war, asteroid impacts, environmental changes, or pollution). Then the arks come in. It is unclear who made the arks (humans or aliens), but I believe they are a sort of training grounds for the survivors. The survivors attempt to survive in the harsh, artificial world of ark, and the strongest survivors have a shot at ascending. After defeating all the bosses (the creators of the arks use the bosses as a way to determine a survivors strength), survivors must defeat one final challenge to prove their strength, the tek cave. Once a survivor makes it through the tek cave and defeats the overseer, they have shown their strength and have proven that they can survive in a harsh environment. The creators of the ark then reward the survivor by enhancing their DNA, making the survivor even stronger. Next, the survivor is teleported to another ark (scorched earth), where they are tested once again. I believe the creators of the ark wish to make the best survivor, perhaps so they can send the survivor to colonize another planet (or recolonize a dead earth). 

Let me know if you agree with my theory or if I missed any important information. I love ark and I think it's pretty cool that it has a story.

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On 9/7/2017 at 11:51 PM, DinoDash said:

Well the creators of the ark are highly advanced humans, apparently called homo deus. They are endangered and probably want to create more.

How do you know? Is there any mention of them in the game? I didn't read all of the survivor notes so I could've missed a reference to a new human species.

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How do you know? Is there any mention of them in the game? I didn't read all of the survivor notes so I could've missed a reference to a new human species.
So you know how we can see a model of dinosaurs, then humans? When people decoded everything it said homo sapiens were extinct and the sort of ghost body in the shape of a human is a homo deus, the creators of the arks and endangered.

When you ascend you are becoming one of them and being put into a soul cube.

Posted from my [device_name] using http://ARK: Survival Evolved Community App

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On 9/11/2017 at 2:59 AM, Reshkrom1153 said:

 When people decoded everything it said homo sapiens were extinct 

What people (IRL or characters in the game?), and what did they decode? Are you talking about  the survivor notes?

 

On 9/11/2017 at 2:59 AM, Reshkrom1153 said:

 and the sort of ghost body in the shape of a human is a homo deus, the creators of the arks and endangered.

If the ghost hologram is a homo deus then I wonder why they're shown as ghostly. Perhaps they don't need a body? And if they're endangered and want to make more then I wonder why they would make survivors ascend, wouldn't it just be easier to clone a bunch of homo deus's? They could absolutely do this since there is a cloning chamber in the game.

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They didn't leave it open to speculation. The code in each room actually explains everything. There's YouTube videos out already decoding it all that tells the story.

Planets- Pangiere, Earth at human Extinction, Current day.

Dino's- modified versions created by Homo Deus for the ArK's

Players- Modified versions created from old DNA records created by Homo Dues for the ArK's

The ArK's- testing arenas to find Humans worthy of repopulating the Earth and the Homo Deus species.

Homo Dues- Currently Endangered, but an evolved version of Humans.

There's actually a book called Homo Dues which obviously inspired this games story.

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11 hours ago, HalfSlabBacon said:

They didn't leave it open to speculation. The code in each room actually explains everything. There's YouTube videos out already decoding it all that tells the story.

Yeah so I watched the one fresonis made and now I know what you're talking about. I thought those hexagon codes were just there to look cool, I didn't know they were an actual code. 

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Is it not possible that we are actually playing as the overseer or homo deus? Like the characters we create are just vessels for the advanced humans to control to try and send them down another evluotionary path? 

When we make a new character we can fool around with it's appearance much like we are changing its DNA, then when you are playing you level it up adding attributes which again is much like altering the DNA. Not to mention the fact the character creation screen is TEK like, that would indicate they are clones, vessels of some sort. It's sort of like we create them in the console that shows the human hologram. Maybe the dinosaur console is where dinos are created and sent down to the arks, which would explain their constant respawn and would open up a lore reason for primal survival when it's finished. 

 

I can imagine the homo deus are an ethereal type of human now and invisible to the human eye, hence the ghost like hologram, the ships above the arks could be filled with them and we play as them, making a character in the human console and then inhabiting that body down on the arks to build a survivable human for the dead earth they orbit. Maybe. 

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On 9/14/2017 at 5:34 AM, YUSHOETMI said:

Is it not possible that we are actually playing as the overseer or homo deus? Like the characters we create are just vessels for the advanced humans to control

A long time ago I wondered the same thing. However the problem I have with this theory is that it's too close to reality. This kind of theory basically says that ark is just a game which, in real life, it is. And I think this explanation is like the "it was all a dream" explanation for many stories, it makes sense, but it's not as exciting.

 

On 9/14/2017 at 5:34 AM, YUSHOETMI said:

When we make a new character we can fool around with it's appearance much like we are changing its DNA, then when you are playing you level it up adding attributes which again is much like altering the DNA. Not to mention the fact the character creation screen is TEK like, that would indicate they are clones, vessels of some sort. It's sort of like we create them in the console that shows the human hologram. Maybe the dinosaur console is where dinos are created and sent down to the arks. 

I like this idea. We know that the humans on the ark were created by the homo deus so its entirely plausible that they could mess with our DNA.

 

On 9/14/2017 at 5:34 AM, YUSHOETMI said:

I can imagine the homo deus are an ethereal type of human now and invisible to the human eye, hence the ghost like hologram, the ships above the arks could be filled with them and we play as them, making a character in the human console and then inhabiting that body down on the arks to build a survivable human for the dead earth they orbit. Maybe. 

I can see how you think the homo deus are ghosts, given the hologram, but I don't think that's right. If they were ethereal then they wouldn't have bodies to contain DNA, this making them nonliving. If they are ghosts, then they'd have to be spirits (which we don't know if that's possible, at least in ark). Also, if they were ethereal I don't think theyd be worried about repopulating earth, since being ethereal implies that the natural world can't kill you (In my mind at least).

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I would highly recommend you go into the ascension cave yourself and the tek cave/ship/observation platform, for yourself, I attempted the same as you, to watch people do the cave, but I cringe whenever I watch let's players cause they all seem just so utterly unaware of the concepts their trying to show us. I went into the cave myself with Ghillie gear on, cause I heard you can sneak your way through it... only to find out that if you ghost your way through the door instead of activating it legitly, NOTHING spawns inside and you can just stroll all the way down, granted, it's INCREDIBLY HOT, then INCREDIBLY cold so you'll probably need some really strong insulating armor for both, as with the "tek cave" not "as cold" but still pretty cold up there.

Once reaching the tek cave I took special care to ghost my way around the place, which didn't really reveal much, got a much closer look at the orbiting arks near the windows but that only confirmed that that broke ark was indeed the Aberration Ark, and I did notice the meteor you spoke of, but it seemed kinda dormant, non threatening, just kinda suspended there, but I noticed something... interesting... about the planet holograms when I really got to look at them for a minute, something I couldn't do with the youtubers darting around like 5 year olds with pieces of candy. If you look at each world hologram, you notice that... at least in the first two, You notice a spreading green zone, and in the last one, the zones are red and receding. While it could have been a simple case of "Documenting the spread of life, then the spread of death" the first thoughts I had was "It spread like a disease", so maybe there were other reasons for the abandonment of Earth, and the utter and total extinction of the human race, the Deus Humans had to evolve in order to develop immunity to the disease perhaps.

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14 hours ago, Andminus said:

 

something I couldn't do with the youtubers darting around like 5 year olds with pieces of candy.

 While it could have been a simple case of "Documenting the spread of life, then the spread of death" the first thoughts I had was "It spread like a disease", so maybe there were other reasons for the abandonment of Earth, and the utter and total extinction of the human race, the Deus Humans had to evolve in order to develop immunity to the disease perhaps.

Yeah most let's players don't care about the scenery or lore they're just like "when do I get to fight something big!". And yeah I think I'll try get to the tek cave legit (I'm running out of things to do in the game) and then I can probably get much closer to certain things. That'd let me learn more about the consoles or what those root structures are made out of. 

So we learned a lot about ark through the ascension area, but I'm still curious as to how Rockwell, Helena, etc. fit into the story. So we know that the homo deus can time travel, since they brought people from all throughout history to the island, so that's interesting. However, why would they want humans from the past? I'm not sure about this, so I'll have to read the explorer notes if I want to come up with an answer.

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Most of the time...in my opinion...story lines in survival games are like story lines in porn, just a rough outline.  I started getting into the lore of ARK and have to say that it's pretty much just thrown together and makes little sense when you apply it to the game.  It honestly feels like they had an idea of a story, then stopped thinking about it and made the game then came back to the story.  That's apparent when you see explorer notes saying a giga was in a boss arena and a laser beam from an ob destroyed a tribes base because they got to big.  Again, just my opinions on the subject.

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I want to point out something interesting here.

When you look at the DNA strand for Homo deus, it features more than just a double strand--in fact, it shows quadruple stand DNA. In case the significance of that is missed on anyone, all current life has only single-or-double strand nucleic acids. This oddity implies that at some point, humanity began some crazy genetic engineering to not only rewrite their genome but to create an entirely new system of life through a quad-coil DNA strand. Why? This we don't really know. It may be in response to changes on Earth (nuclear war, climate change, etc) in an attempt to survive, or it may be that the genetic experimentation, along with other scientific breakthroughs, resulted in Earth's current state. It's not clear, but we do know that Homo deus is capable of extremely advanced genetic technology that explains why they were able to not only revive the extinct Homo sapiens but also dozens of prehistoric species.

My guess is that the ARKs are both about preservation and advancement. Homo deus clearly still exists, but their existence is threatened. The ARKs provide a way of finding traits that are advantageous to survival, so when a species begins showing evidence of dominance in an environment, the Overseer can wipe out the species (to prevent elimination of biodiversity by the dominant species and to allow new advantageous traits to arise) and collect genetic data to relay to surviving Homo deus populations, which can then incorporate these traits into their genome to improve their survival.

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9 minutes ago, BeardO said:

Most of the time...in my opinion...story lines in survival games are like story lines in porn, just a rough outline.  I started getting into the lore of ARK and have to say that it's pretty much just thrown together and makes little sense when you apply it to the game.  It honestly feels like they had an idea of a story, then stopped thinking about it and made the game then came back to the story.  That's apparent when you see explorer notes saying a giga was in a boss arena and a laser beam from an ob destroyed a tribes base because they got to big.  Again, just my opinions on the subject.

I suppose you're right, ark doesn't have a very mind blowing story, but perhaps it's due to ark being a survival game. If you look at games like dark souls or bloodborne, at the very core they are quite linear. Yes you have lots of choices but you're ultimately being nudged along a linear path. This makes it really easy to create a story that involves the player since the player's actions can be limited and incorporated into the story. However with a survival game like ark, the player's possible actions are nearly infinite, thus making it hard to incorporate the player into the story.

The REAL story of ark is a bunch of people that just woke up on the ark. Some, like you I bet, focused on surviving and playing the game, not worrying how or what the arks are. But others, like Helena, Rockwell, and us, wanted to know more about the ark and the mysteries surrounding it. In other words, ark has less of a story like most books (where you are told what happens) and more of an exploratory story (where we must figure out what happened). 

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6 hours ago, PuffyPony said:

I want to point out something interesting here.

When you look at the DNA strand for Homo deus, it features more than just a double strand--in fact, it shows quadruple stand DNA. In case the significance of that is missed on anyone, all current life has only single-or-double strand nucleic acids. This oddity implies that at some point, humanity began some crazy genetic engineering to not only rewrite their genome but to create an entirely new system of life through a quad-coil DNA strand. Why? This we don't really know. It may be in response to changes on Earth (nuclear war, climate change, etc) in an attempt to survive, or it may be that the genetic experimentation, along with other scientific breakthroughs, resulted in Earth's current state. It's not clear, but we do know that Homo deus is capable of extremely advanced genetic technology that explains why they were able to not only revive the extinct Homo sapiens but also dozens of prehistoric species.

My guess is that the ARKs are both about preservation and advancement. Homo deus clearly still exists, but their existence is threatened. The ARKs provide a way of finding traits that are advantageous to survival, so when a species begins showing evidence of dominance in an environment, the Overseer can wipe out the species (to prevent elimination of biodiversity by the dominant species and to allow new advantageous traits to arise) and collect genetic data to relay to surviving Homo deus populations, which can then incorporate these traits into their genome to improve their survival.

They could also be trying to repopulate the Earth with animals in the same say (the same disaster that killed the majority of Homo Deus probably killed most of the animals as well).

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Just now, Shrekasaurus said:

They could also be trying to repopulate the Earth with animals in the same say (the same disaster that killed the majority of Homo Deus probably killed most of the animals as well).

That's true. I'm curious as to why they would choose primarily prehistoric creatures, though, instead of more-contemporary species

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2 hours ago, PuffyPony said:

That's true. I'm curious as to why they would choose primarily prehistoric creatures, though, instead of more-contemporary species

They might be "shuffling" through the genomes of all sorts of prehistoric creatures to see which are "fit" enough to survive a harsh environment. The mythical/sci-fi creatures could have been created for the same purpose. 

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22 hours ago, TheSnives said:

I suppose you're right, ark doesn't have a very mind blowing story, but perhaps it's due to ark being a survival game. If you look at games like dark souls or bloodborne, at the very core they are quite linear. Yes you have lots of choices but you're ultimately being nudged along a linear path. This makes it really easy to create a story that involves the player since the player's actions can be limited and incorporated into the story. However with a survival game like ark, the player's possible actions are nearly infinite, thus making it hard to incorporate the player into the story.

The REAL story of ark is a bunch of people that just woke up on the ark. Some, like you I bet, focused on surviving and playing the game, not worrying how or what the arks are. But others, like Helena, Rockwell, and us, wanted to know more about the ark and the mysteries surrounding it. In other words, ark has less of a story like most books (where you are told what happens) and more of an exploratory story (where we must figure out what happened). 

I agree with that, the issue is at least for me, when the written story (explorer notes) doesn't quite line up with the game play.  It kills any sort of immersion for me.  It's one thing to make up your own story as exploring, but when you have written items in the game that tell the story and it's off from what you are seeing and doing it just kills it for me

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So when do we finally get to breed humans with dinosaurs to get mutations? :P I want to be an enhanced lifeform, an abomination to nature and rip through all the ark challenges with ease.

But seriously though, you're theory and observations are pretty much what I surmised when I saw them first hand.

The fact that the game is called Ark, and its pretty much a life saving vessel for lifeforms to live to escape some extinction level tragedy, it makes more sense to me that Humans or us, created the Ark's. They saw the giant meteor coming and prepared way in advance to save its species. Perhaps it was that Asterioid you spoke of.

One of the surviving eco-systems and life, being Dinosaurs, I thought why not save modern day creatures, animals, mammals? (Giraffe in Ark would be awesome.) Maybe there is an Ark somewhere that saved these as well. There is 100s of Arks surrounding the planet. Maybe they saved more than just humans, plants, dinosaurs and minerals. The hexagonal energy around the planet suggests they are all interconnected. As if to not only monitor but allow you to visit each one.

Maybe the humans figured, "save the dinosaurs, hmm why not?" Maybe there is a reason, maybe the bones of the dinosaurs will fuel a way for the Earth to terraform into a living place. Or like it was mentioned on this thread, dinosaurs had a better chance of surviving.

Maybe re-colonize the Earth like you suggested. I would very much like to see something like this and 100s of Ark's being involved. It would definitely one up the ending I saw. And quite possibly be the single greatest and most challenging online game ever produced if they were to take it that far. Or had the ability to.

Its obvious the whole story hasn't been completely revealed. Since the ending gave us more questions than answers.

The whole explorer notes that you follow in game, isn't the main story. Its just information of other survivors that somehow made it to Scorched Earth. WC said they were going to add more to those stories and possibly introduce new survivors down the road.   Or maybe the scope I am thinking about on where the story could go is limited to what WC is only capable of funding atm. And that is wrapping up the story within the Arks we have and the two addtional Arks said to be released or DLCs. I think it was mentioned somewhere either Pax west or a community crunch or interview.

I suppose it would feel like a better "mind blowing story" was so adequately put, if the game were single player and more linear. But then we wouldn't have the online experience and the story would just be about you, the last survivor. But from what information I've gathered from WC is that there is more to come.

 

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