Come hop in our ARK Lore Discord here! :) discord.gg/deMg5mS

I love the idea that it's the same survivor throughout all of ark. Makes it feel like an epic and wonderful journey

Rockwell was transformed partially because of element, the arks were made to support the last cleaning of it when the titans where destroyed, I have the theory that maybe the other arks that were not malfunctioning detected Rockwell as element that had to be destroyed and so he had to escape to the colony ship, Just my theory, loved the video

I think rockwell left earth because him himself is made of corruption and the arks were slowly killing him.

Music and lore are the best things about Ark.

Since the DLC came out this is the question I've been asking this the whole time. Thanks for the video!! :D

Ah i personally love when some aspects of lore are up to interpretation! This usually serves as a catalyst to many theories and speculations. In this particular situation it probably doesnt matter that much as the outcome is already clear. However it would be great if the writer(s) for Ark 2's lore used this storytelling tool in the buildup story to create a cool plottwist! Very nice video Ned! Remember to not spend to much time working on the Survival Stories for your own health! We are patient.😁

When I read the explorer notes I thought that the link from Arat Prime to the Genesis ship was only a data link but now that I think about it it could have been a teleportation link as ARKs made at the same time as the ship and Arat Prime do have their own teleportation systems between places on the insides of individual ARKs (obelisks to boss arenas and TEK cave to Overseer's platform) as well as between different ARKs (lore jumps from the Island to Scorched Earth and to aberration as well as the jump from the Island to Aberration). So really Rockwell could have teleported from Arat Prime to Genesis ship physically not just upload his consciousness.

I would love to see a video of your speculations on what ark 2 might be, lore wise, gameplay wise and all

Neddy out here answering the important questions

Great video series! I love the splicing of in-game video/cut-scenes with theories and info. If you go with the version of the epic survivor that retraced the explorers‘ steps, then Rockwell taking over the ship could be concurrent with our exploration of the genesis simulation and building a new biological body. Time in VR is flexible! I love the idea that Element is a commonly occurring nano-scale, medichlorian type of „life form“ that is beneficial in and of itself and can be corrupted by human ingenuity (Rockwell) or war (URE vs Feds). With fantastical feats possible (survivor implant, snow owls / managarmr, arks / hyperspace jumps), as well as terrible and dangerous implementations. ARK lore is great and I hope gets developed further (go Amazon, Disney or Netflix)!

I'm glad I finally found someone doing lore videos on genesis

so much respect for you, i mean seriously your videos might be some of the most well made iv'e ever seen on this site

Thanks for giving it your best shot this is probably the hardest topic to speculate and unpack.

This was amazing, this subject has been driving me nuts when the "new map smell" wore off. Some of the explorer's notes raised questions as well so I got to thinking "How did we even end up here? How LONG has it been since Extinction?" Thank you so much for this!

I think that Rockwell made it to arat prime after aberration crashed on earth and beamed himself onto the colony ship.

Possible answer:the colony ship was launched after the ARKs were brought home and Rockwell was brought to earth with aberration and managed to fuse with the ship before it launched, so he could take it over.

Can we just appreciate how well these videos r made

I really love arks story, and this helps me understand it more. Great video!

Incredible Ned, these seem like they could of come straight from Wildcard themselves!

Amazing video man, keep up the great work

Thanks for this i have this question from long time thanks for give the answer about rockwell

I dont think Rockwell could take over earth physically after landing. Because after defeating king titian all the element starts disintegrating so Rockwell had to flee the planet or risk getting disintegrated since he is made of element

I am very amazed on what wildcard does for Ark and its lore.🤯

Thanks for explaining this!!!!!! And thanks for all the amazing content!!

Thanks man! Love your work!

I've being looking for this for a long time.

These are all sooooo good. Thank you!

Really helps clear things up Anyways my take on it is likely a combination of factors as to why Rockwell didn't stay on Earth 1. The Arks and Survivors landing would prove a significant spike in difficulty with the Arks reseeding life and the Survivors it would likely deter Rockwell from wanting to fight off the large legion of Survivors, that combined with the fact that the player kills the 4 most powerful creatures in Arks lore and he basically pulled a "fuck this shit I'm out", he has a big ego but he's not stupid so he knew trying would likely end with him dying 2. Its from a logical standpoint the better option, like which would you rather have, a destroyed and ruined earth that is going to be extremely difficult to take over, or move to the Genesis Colony Ship which will allow him to not only take over the colony ship but expand to different planets Basically trying to take over Earth just wouldn't be worth it for Rockwell, granted he ended up dying anyways but the Genesis Colony Ship gave him much better odds than attempt to take over Earth and end up like the Titans

I have not read all the notes but when I got through the opening scene and had already known about Rockwell's presence my theory was that after the Ark's seeded Earth there eventually became two primary groups of people, those who were intent on rebuilding and those who didnt think that the Earth could heal. The latter used the TEK to fashion a colony-ship out of the remains of the Arks. The Abberation Ark was used for this, thus allowing Rockwell's genetical presence to stow away.

Hey ned did you know that mei yin and Diana might be in ark 2 since in Santiago’s notes he menciones a beast queen in the database

Good work as always

Love the way you tell us the stories of ark

If Santiago, HLNA and Bob managed to upload themselves into the _Genesis,_ Rockwell could've done so as well. Which would imply that Bob and Santiago were asleep for _years_ (in the simulation) while Rockwell ate Ring 2 and the crew.

Man's a real G for all these vids

Great video!

For some reason I thought that the corrupted master control was the closest thing to Rockwell as an identity, since it’s enigmatic and brutish at the same time, much like Rockwell pre-prime with how they behaved around us. Also, you know how the mega fauna on shear immediately responded to human colonization?, I think the new earth might do the same since humans didn’t exist on the planet until we moved in(are we an invasive species?)

I think the key to understanding how Rockwell, Helena and the player get on the ship is to remind ourselves of what they are. I think with regards to Rockwell, Neddy is accurate in him reaching the location Mei Yin and Diana reached on the opposite side of Earth. His mind was he understood that to control all the landed Arks and Earth as a whole was too much for him at that stage, and so utilized the Genesis simulation to create an army which he could use to conquer Earth at a later date. As for Helena, she's a Homo Deus, a being for whom space and time are not necessarily barriers. Then there's you. A lot of people seem to forget that at the end of Extinction, you ascend to Homo Deus as Helena did, thus you'd be able to traverse space and time like her. As for your arrival on the colony ship, I think the answer lays in the anouncement trailer for Gen 1. Helena speaks about moving beyond her reach, and how other need her. I think, as Neddy said, that Helena and you could enter the Genesis simulation temporarily, but when you the player enter and stay there long enough to defeat Rockwell, you sacrifice your Homo Deus statis to return to the physical world. This explains why when you come out of the pod having beaten the genesis simulation you have an implant in the cut scene. You've entered a new clone body. It almost reminds me of reincarnation. You ascend, but then return to the mortal realm, and in so doing relinquish the spectral nature of being incorporeal.

Thanks for the content!

Keep up that good work man! :)

Yo loving the ark lore this is so dope!

I have always wondered this question,thank you!

U DESERVE MORE SUBS!!!

Nobody: Rockwell: hippity hoppity your ship is now my property

A fantastic theory!!!!! (I had a quick little mini theory here, what if seekers are a extraterrestrial of some form explaining why they appear to be fine to lack of oxygen and are just out there in space, only on Aberration as it had a thinner atmosphere.)

My guess is that Rockwell fused with Element, unlike King Titan, who gains his power through pure element, Rockwell commands the Element. He is now the beast's master. He tamed King Titan.

Great video! You should add these to a playlist if you have not done so already =)

ok, i haven't watched the video yet, but i'm pretty sure that he transmitted his consciousness through the fact that element is a hivemind, he could move his consciousness through any remaining amount of element, since element is on the genesis ship, as well as scattered through space, and element has been proven to be capable of instantaneously transmitting any data of oneself near instantly (transmitters, obelisks, boss terminals, etc, this is imo how rockwell had gotten on the ship, by hopping between available terminals, and scattered amounts of element throughout the universe, i'm gonna watch the video now to see if i can get a different perspective

i love these!

I would love to see a player made story where a person meets there clone that was made after they flatlined but then came back.

yup, makes sense. If I had to chose I'd say it's more likely it was our memories that transferred into a new body, just seems more plausible

Finnaly my question got answered

2:13 maybe we used the link to get on the ship to make it rerout back to Earth since Earth was already OK, and maybe Rockwell chose to contaminate the colony/new planet, because the element purging capabilities of the Arks were weakening him, or preventing him im some sort of way

I love you neddy

From evey journey my survivor turok has come so far it's good to finally have an end and and explanation

What if Rockwell isn’t truly dead but instead severely weakened if not just a consciousness? Santiago shuts down the genesis simulation in ARK 2 and they fought mutated humanoids and one of them growls “You” when engaging in a fight with Santiago. He could’ve found a way to link back into the simulation or worse.

A comment for the algorythm.

Amazing vid. As for the lore, am a bit confused because the ship and arks were made at the brink of Earth getting corrupted. So once Earth was corrupted, the Arks and the ship were already gone(Read Santiago notes for reference). And we don't know much about the link of the ship to Arat Prime. And, how would something as huge as Rockwell find a way to beam himself to the colony ship? Am supposing the beam is like a transfer, requiring an implant, but at the end of extinction, we have the implant removed. So, either Rockwell was able to keep the implant, or I have no idea. As for the survivor, am gonna suppose we either died and got sent to simulation, keeping our consciousness and once we create our simulation character, we get paired to the most look-alike body and become a colonist. Fun Fact: If you check the explorer notes, there is one named Skye. Shortest lived survivor.

"It works for the lore if we are either a new survivor, or the same one." Counter argument: right before the Rockwell Prime fight, HLNA says that we are fighting Rockwell again, but this time we have something physical to hit, implying that we didn't fight Rockwell on Aberration.

I would like to think my survivor is a battle hardened bob!

mabey at the end of ark 2 we build up enough and are able to either recover or reconnect that link between the new world and earth? final dlc of ark 2 or just ark 3 could be us reterning to earth after it has been reseeded and we could get some cool new areas inbetween arks

This is going to be a good one

its an interesting topic with so many potential answers, many explained very well here and in comments - kudos to you all. With my knowledge of ark, more practical than lore I have to regretfully admit, but that experience provided me with a different viewpoint and an alternative theory that I haven't seen expressed here. Sir Edmund Rockwell, like so many survivors who followed after him meshed. Think about it...Its the thing in game that "evil no good" survivors do to cheat the game or other players...you've come this far hear me out...Meshing then becomes a part of ark lore, and an *intended* game feature(!), and it doesn't get more meta than that. unless it does, kinda high rn idk what i'm even talking about really, but thanks for reading.

Im starting a play through going around all the story maps in order then to ark 2 once its out that is

I have a big theory - involving Rockwell and the rest of the Gang from The Island being alive. I have evidence, I just cant find it, i wrote it down somewhere, i just need to ifnd it - its alot of effort to find it but I want people to know of this. Ask Nedd or heart this comment or whatever if you wish for me to find it, and reply to your reply on it. Thanks

my head canon is that when the best survivors were found they sent there mind to the ship, possibly the body too.

The Vati of ARK

2:26 Rockwell was likely forced to leave as the arks were purging element from the earth and he is made of mostly element

One thing that's really interesting is in the start of Gen 2, Helena says that the Lifeboat must have left long before, probably some time around when the arks left. So... How do you get to the ship after extinction when you're on earth and it's mega far away.

Damnit not a stream

I just got gen 2 and I was like wtf who's attacking my ship?!?! I never knew the story of ark

Here is what I think: As players we are following in all these main characters' footsteps decades after they were already gone. We uncover what they found about the ARK's, and travel between them much like Rockwell, Helena and them did before us so long ago. When we get to AB, That isn't really rockwell we are fighting in the end, but the systems recreation of him, over and over, he took over what the Observer was for the Island. We beat this simulation of him, and prove ourselves going back down to the earth. However: Genesis has us on a space station looking for a 'new planet to inhabit' so it's likly it's own story thats not connected to what is going on along the ARK's. It could be Rockwell had already escaped the ARK's after AB and made it down to earth along with Helena and the rest. Back then they still had no means to clens the corruption. Maybe after Helena transcends those that remain found more people that did make it to the planet, or found a facility already with the transport ship and the 'respawn' system for it's people so it wasn't much to bring forward a few people to run the ship. They set off to find a new habitable world, taking with them parts of the habitats that they could in those biome rings. This could be why that one cutscene of HNL-A's creation, and why it went with the people on the station while it sounded like Helena was staying behind. Because she did. She stayed behind, as we the players that awoke on the ARK's made it back to earth after going from ARK to ARK, found the source of the corruption spread, (the titans), and helped bring the ARK's back down to the world once they were taken out. But by this point, the Gnenesis ship is already well on its way, and Rockwell had been slowly finding a means to take it over. OR that event with the ship already happend by the time we as players awake on the ARK's. So the player in Genesis isn't the same person on the ARK's, it's a split storyline. on Genesis we are our own new person ran through a sim to train us for when we arrive on the new world. Only to be awoken from that sim when the systems start having issues as Rockwell takes over more and more. Thus, ARK 2 is this whole new planet, and Rockwell may still be about if he did keep his threat of coming back.

My thought on rockwell on ext is the same as with the arks: he's now destined by Ab to be permanently reset every time he dies, bound to that Ark. That small piece of him planted the seed that allows the Titans to keep living outside of space and time, able to always be summoned by a new survivor to take on. That's assuming they didn't already have that power. Players who Ascend on ext only see one single small preset future, out of many. Even One Who Waits confirms this to be true when she references those 'many futures' in her notes. The concept of the physical and the digital in Ark is a little bit more liminal than current modern scientific thinking would allow. The fact that rockwell is already data (everyone is, we're all Engrams inside of an Implant stuffed inside a clone body) means moving to genesis would be easy for him. Us killing him in genesis sim allowed him to escape from the sim and into the ship. He literally taunts us to kill him nonstop in the sim, constantly warning about the results. We made him more powerful. I still don't think rockwell is dead. If there isn't element-infested flesh in Ark 2, I refuse to buy it.

Rockwell could've been the king titan or his soul was trapped inside the king titan

Thought the arat prime facility was the building that represents the stone in our arm from extinction

So I think ON TOP of injecting himself with element and mutating, he got corrupted by the element's hivemind, and then got melded with the ark itself (probably taking in some of the overseer's remnants, further twisting his mind). He was connected to the hivemind of element and tek both. He was defeated twice and crashed with the failing ark however he wasn't completely dead/eradicated, but the element would've been purged by the other arks and that would've finished him (can't survive digitally in a ruined ark that would've only crumbled further over time/destroyed by the survivors just in case, and element was being cleaned up). In short: his body was indeed a lost cause, element wouldn't be around much longer, and he couldn't stay as code in a crashed crumbling ark. Thanks to the ship and the arks using element, and being embedded into the overseer code he transferred to genesis the same way Helena did as something similar to a Homo Deus. From there it was just a matter of infiltrating the simulation, then using the facilities meant to seed the world (grow living oranisms, etc) to regrow a physical body and grow even more rampantly with further element corruption, and fusing himself across the ship. That sound about right?

Maybe he was created from all the Dino poop picked up by dung beetles and some how merged with element for life. Lol idk.

I hope there is an Easter egg or some how a way to meet HLN-A in ark 2.

I have some questions to ask you about the ending in ark Genesis 2 did all the other survivers die or something while in the ship because it look like it exploded in the ending and also when rockwell in the gen 2 ending was speaking to hlna did he turn good? And also can you explain the ending and also tell us some secrets because I don't understand the ending

Do you think in Ark 2 we’re just going to be on the alien planet that Santiago landed on or we’re going back to Earth after the Reseed Protocol

Yea artist prime I'm pretty sure.

I mean Rockwell got pretty Krauss I wonder if he did take over her already

My theory is that since he is pretty much element now he used the element on the ship to teleport himself to the colony ship

How do you know the ship was already out in space before the reseed prodicall? Idkk but im a little spectical of some of the info, rockwell said himself that the survivor woke up or "arrived" on the 6th day of his "great work". The devs also said in a gen2 teaser one time, "I wonder what went so wrong on earth to make everyone evacuate into space on the ship" or something like that. I feel like maybe rockwell crashed on earth (the crash is why he says hes survived worse in the ending) and the ship was still there, he maybe began attacking everything and destroying any buildings they made just like the camp he was in on abb when he injected himself. Then in a panic everyone took off on the ship but rockwell got on too without them knowing and immediatly went to the ships main bridge to start taking it over. Rockwell has already taken control or the ship by a good amount and then moved to taking control of the genesis simulation. Thats why there's glitches and why some of the maps guardians are already turned off, and why rockwell can even talk thru HLNA, also why instead of the final boss its just him. I feel that while your in the simulation, he has already taken control of the ship and killed the crew?🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️ thats just my thoughts tho :)

I wonder what would’ve happened if Rockwell and Helena weren’t killed/transformed. Would they be at each other’s necks and create huge tribe’s and have a all out war?

What i hope the most Is that ark 2's main character is the survivor and not santiego, he's been his own character now and since the beginning and as we played the survivor until now, and if we aren't theb all that's tleff of the survivor is being left in space within a mek with the last message from HLN-A, as well as I really want the survivor to be it's own type of character, similar to for example doktah from arknights, you play as the doktah but they're also their own character with their own story who feels and does their own things, such as eating ramen by putting the ramen cube in the mouth and directly pouring in boiling water, and seeing as ark 2 going to be a campaign style game it would be much better to have santiego as a character we as the survivor stick with rather than play as

bros graphics are insane for ark tho

I took the story beats as, you won and allowed the arks to fix earth, but you are needed elsewhere. Helena split off her consciousness into a simulated her, and shoved that in via the sublight transmission once she became a homodeus to follow the mentally connected Rockwell (the one from ab, that found a way to use the systems to transmit a consciousness). Just like Helena and HLNA, the Rockwell's are of the same mind, but not connected any longer. Sort of like if you made a copy of yourself and sent one down one hall and another down a separate one. The experiences, things you learn about and the outlook can change. I think when you loose the survivor chip, it is allowing you to do like Helena, ascend to her level, split off, and be basically in two places at once, acting independently.

He bought the season pass

or when aberration hit earth rockwell became unbinded by its systems and simply downloaded himself just like your character and seated himself in one of the rings

Ark is my favorite game but I have to completed genesis 2 boss fight because I'm going to cry

You didn't add links to previous 2 genesis 2 lore videos, neither in description nor in popups. I had to search for them on my own. Going to watch them and will be back here after.

Rockwell was actually human and acquaintances with Helena in the island although I don’t know how he got on aberration or possibly scorched

I like to think about the lore of Ark as though it exists outside of its own space and time. Like, HLNA is aware of US: the players. So while the stuff happening on the Arks and in that world has a linear timeline, it doesn't exactly correlate to ours. I imagine a Homo Deus in Ark to be like the concept of an Avatar in Hinduism; Not as though a character is a manifestation of the players, but that these otherwise non-existint entities in the game are the manifestations of higher beings in our OWN reality. The 5th dimensional influencing the 3rd dimensional influencing the 2d. The Arks have a 'Past' and a 'Future' but we're only ever allowed to see it in a fixed place somewhere along that timeline near the middle-end, no matter our changes. Even if we Ascend, no one else on the Ark does unless you lifted them up with you. More specifically, you have to fight your way straight down through the literal underworld before rising up above the world. The whole Ark will continue to reset without you. Man, this game effed me up.

HLNA sacrificed herself not just to stop Rockwell, but to give us freedom 😢

I want to see an arat prime DLC

If element is so dangerous, why do we get it from the bosses? And why do we use it?

i wish ark would make a back story of rock well like was he always rock well if you know what i mean

imagine if doomguy was on the genesis ship

1:55 I’m sorry but how is the earth tidily locked and habitable? It would only really be habitable in the part where the light and night meet