How To Make The Perfect Jurassic Park Video Game
Who's bothered about flying a plane when you can hop on a T-Rex?
Picture the scene:
With the world of gaming anxiously awaiting the release of Grand Theft Auto 6, Rockstar Games suddenly announces a little side project they've secretly been working on - an open map experience based on the world of Jurassic Park. It's never been done before, and is a world away from anything the studio has done.
But how exactly would that work, and what would the game contain?
Well for starters, it needs to have multiple playable characters, and there's a full franchise to choose from.
Personally, this author would go for the original trilogy of heroes, Alan Grant, Ian Malcolm and Ellie Sattler (also providing Rockstar with their first female playable character), and give the player the ability to move between them as they freely explore Isla Nublar. That, or completely new characters with a brand new story.
In terms of the open world, Isla Nublar would be the main island (as the primary setting for the original film and the Jurassic World sequels), but there would also be the potential to explore smaller islands mentioned in the films, with the ability to get there via helicopter (Isla Sorna, for example).
By focusing mainly on Nublar and the surrounding area, it gives Rockstar an opportunity to map out the scale of the island accurately like for like. Described as eight miles long and three miles wide, it's the perfect size.
For gameplay, the main story could pan out the events of the first film and go from there, but with a large amount of side missions and exploration quests on the side, mainly hunting dinosaurs and carrying out ranger missions. Buggies and jeeps could be scattered around the island to use as vehicles for our characters, and they could interact with other figures from the film in locations such as the theme park, cloning labs and ranger outposts.
The most exciting element of course, would be the inclusion of the dinosaurs. While there would obviously be a combat element involved with them (which would see the player needing to upgrade weapons to take on some of the larger beasties), there's also the potential to use them as vehicles. Who wouldn't want to do a racing mission through the jungle on a raptor, or fly over the island on a Pterodactyl? The possibilities for using the dinosaurs are endless.
It's certainly an intriguing prospect, and one that Rockstar could creatively replicate.
What would you like to see in a Jurassic Park game?