ARK: Survival Evolved Players Can Now Breed Dinosaurs

The team behind ARK: Survival Evolved recently launched the single most important new feature to ever arrive on the first-person online survival game. Forget about new weapons and creative ways to take out enemies that are larger than life, because now you can breed your very own baby-freaking-dinosaurs.

Anyone who grew up watching the Jurassic Park movies has likely fantasized about what it would be like to have their very own collection of dinosaurs running around. I'm not sure a kid could watch that raptor hatching scene in the original movie and not be overcome with a sense of wonder.

Well, now you can experience the joys of parenting dinosaurs for yourself in Ark: Survival Evolved, as creature breeding and baby raising has been implemented into the game. According to the announcement, this is the team's first swing at the process, so don't be surprised if there are still some kinks in need of working out. Otherwise, though, you're free to dive in and try out the process for yourself.

Survivors will be given the opportunity to pair two members of the same species together, even across Tribes if you’ve got a particularly well endowed creature, and the resulting offspring will have a random selection of traits from both parents, along with a degree of arbitrary mutation! Your new tiny friends will grow dynamically in real time and will need to be cared for to reach their ultimate potential.

But as Jeff Goldbloom's character points out in Jurrasic Park: The Lost World, babies eventually grow up. Or, as he puts it, the whole process starts with “Ooh and ahh,” but then later there's running and screaming.

For those of you who enjoy the study and practice of eugenics, the announcement goes on to explain that selectively breeding creatures can result in offspring that demonstrate your desired qualities and, over generations of breeding, you might be able to craft your perfect dinosaur. Again, I'm fairly certain this was the plot of Jurassic World, and we see how well that went for all parties involved.

You’ll be able to selectively breed for your desired qualities and we hope to see some hardcore survivors progressively raising generations of Dinosaurs that have more refined collections of high-end traits than that which could ever be found in the wild - though be warned survivors, as this rewarding process cannot be accomplished with minimal effort. With the dangers that exist in the ARK, incubating an egg and then raising a small helpless baby Dino in real-time from hatchling to adult is no tiny task.

If you're feeling up to that task, then log into ARK on Steam and get to breeding your very own baby dino army.

Ryan Winslett

Staff Writer for CinemaBlend.