After more than a year of waiting, Jurassic Park: Survival gives us a tiny gameplay tease in a fluffy behind-the-scenes video
It's a classic videogame story: an exciting announcement trailer gets everyone foaming at the mouth and then… nothing. For absolutely ages. There's a common refrain from developers and publishers: "We announced the game too early." But the marketing machine cares not.
In related news, we've finally heard a bit more about Jurassic Park: Survival, largely for the first time since it was announced in December 2023.
Unfortunately it's a fluffy behind-the-scenes video that's mostly what you'd expect. Saber Interactive loves Jurassic Park. The fans are passionate. Making sure the dinosaurs are cool is really important. And yes, it's going to recreate the famous kitchen scene. But we knew that already.
As you might expect from a movie as treasured as Jurassic Park, Saber Interactive and Universal are aiming for authenticity. "We go through room by room in the game, level by level," says Universal Products & Experiences executive producer John Melchior. "We look at every possible resource from archives, from the film, from production stills, production blueprints to make sure every prop is in the same place."
If you're hoping for more insight into the game's development, look elsewhere. But what we do get—slipped in between loads and loads of clips drawn from the announcement trailer and the original film—are some very brief snippets of pre-alpha footage. Of corridors, mostly. But also some dinos!
Allow me to push cynical Fraser aside for a second: I'm still incredibly excited about this one. How could I not be? The first movie infected my 8-year-old brain with an obsession that's only been slightly diminished by the long list of mostly bad sequels. And now we're getting to go back to Isla Nublar, a day after the events of the first film.
We see plenty of Dr Maya Joshi, an InGen scientist working very hard not to become raptor chow, but as the in-game footage reminds us, this is a first-person romp. Which is great, honestly. I don't want anything to get in the way of my meet and greet with the island's resurrected inhabitants.
The actor behind the unfortunate boffin, Payal Mistry, gives us a rundown of the character, though it's all broad strokes. "The actual journey, the arc of Maya, it's just incredible," Mistry says. "She was personally recruited by Dr Henry Woo to become an InGen scientist, to work at the park. [At] the start of Maya's journey, she's unable to escape Isla Nublar."
She's a passionate, adventurous risk-taker, and Mistry feels like she's "standing on the shoulders of some of the coolest female characters in cinema history".
Anyway, Saber Interactive's developers say a lot of words while revealing very little, so I think it's going to be a while until we see anything meaningful from Jurassic Park: Survival. And I know what you're thinking: are they prepping us for a larger reveal at Gamescom? Nope! It won't be at the show.