Since the August of 2017,ARK: Survival Evolvedhas grown in several surprising ways, with the careful weaving of its own contained lore and universe remaining one of the most impressive to players tenacious enough to venture from the island’s first beaches. Long time lore-minders following the game since early access will know that the first seeds of a larger over-arcing story had been planted as early as 2015 however, withARK: Survival Evolved’s increasingly sci-fi backed narrative taking it to fantastic biomes and beyond.

As the scope ofARK: Survival Evolvedhas widened with each massive expansion, so too has the inter-connectivity between the narrative’s mysterious settings. 2017’s Aberration DLC revealed the game’s antagonist, a mutated survivor of the ARK named Dr. Edmund Rockwell, formerly responsible for leaving journals and hints for the player scattered across the world prior to his reveal as the expansion’s final boss. Concluding the story of Aberration,ARK: Survival Evolved’s Genesis Part 2 expansionslated for release in March 2021 aims to bring new life to the game’s most subversive antagonist with the help of David Tennant, best known for his role as the Tenth Doctor in the BBC’s long-running Doctor Who series.

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While no stranger to voice over work for video games, Tennant’s performance from the expansion’s teaser trailer as revealed at the end of a recent 24-hour charity stream for Extra Life is immediately memorable. Joining him as the voice of HLN-A, the ARK’s robotic guide, is acclaimed actress Madeleine Madden renowned for several TV series including Tidelands, Mystery Road, and The Wheel of Time coming in 2021. In addition to voicing this expansion’s antagonist, the Tenth Doctor has also been hard at work on voicing the character in the coming VR titleDoctor Who: Edge of Realityin Spring of 2021.

With the coming of the Xbox Series X/S,ARK: Survival Evolved’sconsole performance improvementsmake for an opportune window to launch the game’s most ambitious expansion yet. Despite the exciting new chapter, accompanying details surrounding the announcement of Genesis Part 2 from Studio Wildcard suggest a sense of finality, perhaps one last confrontation with Dr. Rockwell. As this could very possibly be the end of one of the game’s longest running stories nearly five years in the making, the voice work of such prolific actors do much in the way of making this supposed conclusion memorable.

It’s an exciting time in gaming when television, films, and video games can exist so closely and parallel to one another that they complement one another with such memorable performances. Another outstanding example of such being Greg Baldwin’s role as the narrator forGhost of Tsushima’s newly released multiplayer mode.

ARK: Survival Evolvedis available for Android, iOS, Linux, PC, PlayStation 4, Switch, and Xbox One, with a Stadia version also in development.