The Aratai
The Aratai are the native sentient species of the alien planet Arat and the principal antagonist faction of ARK 2. They are humanoid, hostile, organized into competing tribes, and they tame and ride their own dinosaurs, mirroring the player's toolkit and inverting the franchise's classic power fantasy.
On This Page
The Aratai are the native sentient species of the alien planet Arat and the principal antagonist faction of ARK 2. They are humanoid, hostile, organized into competing tribes, and unlike any prior wild creature in the franchise they are also dinosaur tamers. They ride and fight from the backs of their own mounts, treating the human survivors stranded on Arat as invaders to be evicted rather than as natural fauna of the planet. For wider context, see the Overview.
Profile
Field | Detail |
|---|---|
Type | Sentient native species, humanoid |
Origin | Native to the alien planet Arat |
Weapons | Primitive melee and ranged armament with metal-and-bone construction |
Mounts | Tamed dinosaurs of their own, paralleling player taming |
Faction Role | Principal hostile faction, in active conflict with Santiago da Costa and his tribe |
Visual Design
The studio has openly described the Aratai as orc-like and goblin-like, and the cinematic design language matches that framing. They are humanoid, broad-shouldered, with aggressive sharp-edged armor profiles. Their kit blends primitive aesthetics like bone trim, fur, and leather with worked metal plates, blades, and rivets. The result sits between a caveman tribe silhouette and a more advanced primitive culture: not stone-age, not industrial, but a mix that signals both craft tradition and active threat. Datamines and lore listings refer to a recurring set of equipment commonly called the Aratai Set, which carries this same fusion of bone and metal.
Tactical Design
The Aratai are not generic primitive raiders. The tactical hook is that they are NPC dinosaur tamers. They own and ride creatures of their own, and encounters scale up into mixed tribe-versus-tribe fights involving both bodies and mounts. This deliberately mirrors the player's own toolkit. Where the first game gave the player a near-monopoly on taming dinosaurs, the sequel positions the Aratai as a faction that already knows how to do this on their home planet and has been doing it for far longer. Engagements become full mounted skirmishes, and the player has to read both rider and creature at once. For how the player handles these fights mechanically, see the Combat System page.
Inverted Power Fantasy
The Aratai exist to flip the franchise's framing. The first ARK was built around the survivor as the ascendant figure, a stranded human who learns to dominate a wild world by taming its dinosaurs. ARK 2 inverts that. The Aratai pre-date the arrival of the Genesis Colony Ship's escape pods on Arat. They were already there, already tribal, and already mounted, when the human survivors fell out of the sky. From their point of view the player is the invasive species, and the conflict is staged as eviction rather than conquest.
Franchise First
The Aratai are the first non-dinosaur sentient antagonist faction in mainline ARK. Earlier expansions did introduce powerful intelligent threats, but those threats were always individual or constructed: the corrupted Defense Units, the parasitic Reapers, and the Edmund Rockwell hybrid bosses anchoring various endgame fights. None of those are an organized rival civilization. The Aratai are, and they have been long-foreshadowed since the Extinction expansion's references to Arat Prime, the planet whose name the species shares.
Conflict with Santiago
Inside the trailers shown so far, the Aratai are the visible enemy. Santiago da Costa and his tribe encounter them in early ARK 2 cinematics, and the on-screen fights pair Santiago, his daughter Meeka, and a tamed bone-armored Tyrannosaurus rex against Aratai war parties. No public gameplay encounter has been shown; everything published is in-engine cinematic.
Unconfirmed Details
Much about the Aratai is still unconfirmed. No specific chieftain has been named, and no individual tribe has been singled out. Their internal hierarchy, language, religion, and exact relationship to Arat's biome are undescribed in public material. The full roster of dinosaur species they ride has not been listed, and the end-state of the conflict is unannounced. This page will be updated as further details are confirmed.