Atlas is really close to release, with only a few days left until the game goes into Steam Early Access. Made by Studio Wildcard, the game features the same open world survival concepts that made ARK: Survival Evolved great, with a few improvements and additions. To whet your appetite, we’re sharing a few thoughts about what will truly make Atlas stand out as the premier survival MMO of 2019.
Ahoy Matey!
If dinosaurs were the prevalent theme in ARK, Atlas is all about celebrating pirates in the grand manner. Players will start out playing lowbie pirates who can either go it alone or with friends to begin building their pirate empire. The huge open world will feature gameplay like naval combat, ship building and town governing, which sounds like what other pirate games have done this past year. The twist to that is of course, Atlas will house over thousands of players together on the server, which is a huge upgrade from ARK. From the previews we like seeing that the guns, ships and swords all look and feel like things pirates would use, so if that presses your buttons, this might be the game for you.
Living Breathing World
What made ARK fun to play was the AI environments and creatures that added so much more depth to the world. Dinosaurs provided the threat and the advantage too, if you tamed them and used them against other players on PvP servers. Atlas will undoubtedly keep this portion of the gameplay, considering what we’ve seen in the trailer so far. There’s multi-headed hydras, the kraken in the sea, a sharks, and of course, dragons. It’s a hot-pot of mythical creatures apparently, but also provides more ways to play and conquer the lands for the bold players that seek out this threat.
Naval Warfare That Sounds Interesting
Ships are a pirate’s best friend. It’s their livelihood, and in Atlas it will probably be just that. You start out with a crappy little raft and your progression involves building it up and upgrading it over time. Soon, you’ll be captaining your own warships and galleon, sloops, frigates and brigs on the open seas against both enemy players and monsters. The cool thing is, the end-game ships will have a good arsenal – cannons and other weapons – that need to be manned. If playing with friends, they can manually take control of these things which sounds awesome. If solo, the best part is you can hire AI NPCs to crew your ships too. All you’ll need to do is feed them and pay them. All in all, the pirate sim style of gameplay sounds interesting when it involves interactive naval warfare as well.
The Early Access Model
Atlas launches December 13th on Steam Early Access, and follows the footsteps of ARK: Survival Evolved. One thing to note is that the game will be cheaper in Early Access, and once launched the price will increase. Many will consider this to be weird, but that’s Studio Wildcard’s modus operandi when it comes to game releases it seems. One can only hope that it doesn’t suffer the same optimization issues that ARK did at launch, and still charge and produce expansions while the core game still needs work.
