Having taken a Dilophosaurus to their Dennis Nedry-esque plans for AI-generated scientist portraits in Jurassic World Evolution 3, Frontier are back to talking about a more wholesome form of generation – dinosaur sex. The game’s latest trailer is a brief glimpse at the new breeding features, which allow you “to synthesise male and female variants, each with visible dimorphism” and have them do the ole horizontal tango “to shape the traits and markings of future generations.” Please close the curtains before clicking play.
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The intricacies of dino-bonking appear largely in line with bake-the-potato mechanics in similar strategy management games. You will need to construct and place a nest at a tasteful remove from visitors, with comfort levels sufficient to set the mood for the species in question. Dinosaurs have a fertility level that varies according to age, health, and how recently they’ve roasted the broomstick. From the looks of it, when they’re up for some slophockey they’ll go perch on the nest and do saucy toodle-oo noises. Then you just need to find or flash-grow an appropriate mate, and assign a boffin to officiate the Chesterfield rugby.
The result will be an individual with a particular combination of genes and traits, such as faster growth, greater aggression and a need for more living space. As is generally the case in Jurassic Park, you may come to regret letting your terrible lizards have kids. “While fascinating for park guests to behold, introducing juveniles also brings new challenges thanks to their unique social needs, as well as changes to the wider herd dynamic,” the developers caution in a press release.
It’s hard to get much sense of the possibilities from 90-odd seconds of very restrained and managerial T-reXXX footage, but the hope, of course, is that the system will lead to sudden overpopulation punctuated by a few total genetic disasters. I want to turn my back for five minutes and discover that the triceratops have become the equivalent of parakeets in London, and that all of the young velociraptors are vegetarians. Going by the developer’s prior work, I don’t think it’ll be quite that adventurous, but, as Geoff Goldblum likes to say, life finds a method.
