The following article contains spoilers for Part Two of Jurassic World Aftermath. Please click off of this article if you want to avoid spoilers for the second part of the game.
The second part of Jurassic World Aftermath has arrived on the Oculus – providing an opportunity for Jurassic fans to revisit the ill-fated Isla Nublar for one final time as they uncover the fate of the secretive NMS programme. Courtesy of Brent Kappel, we have another collection of the narrative moments in the game on our YouTube – so we wanted to write an accompanying article breaking down some of the most interesting moments.
The biggest thing we felt was worth touching on is how heavily the second part of Aftermath seems to tie into other events which we know are taking place on or around Isla Nublar during the events of the second game. We get lots of discussion around how importing recovering Wu’s DNA is throughout the narrative of the second part – and we even get some small nuggets of information confirming that Wu was unable to recover this DNA during the initial extraction from Isla Nublar. The sequel feels as though it takes a lot of steps to really tie the experiments at the NMS centre into the wider lore unfolding on Nublar – with references to Bioluminescence experimentation, which was also present in Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous, and even reference to Velociraptors being trained to respond to audio prompts – something which we see to some extent in Jurassic World with the IBRIS Raptors responding to the clicker Owen uses. A great deal of effort is made to connect the IBRIS and NMS programmes here – helping us to understand more about how the two may have informed each other, and really building out the idea that work around the Raptors and their behaviours was a vital part of InGen’s revival.
We also get some fun references – including the fact that the main character of Mia actually met Doctor John Hammond when she was aged nine. She says that she met Hammond at a dig site near Snakewater – something which instantly caught my attention given the fact that the dig site which Ellie and Alan are working on in 1993’s Jurassic Park is present in this area. Is it possible that Mia was actually one of the children at the original dig site, and she met Hammond before he departed from the location? This certainly seems to be the implication here and is a fun piece of knowledge for long-term fans of the franchise. On the subject of the 1993 film, we also get a fun flashback from Malcolm in the audio at the very beginning – calling back the trauma which the Chaotician endured on Nublar and helping to re-emphasise how that lasting impact on him may motivate him to get involved in the events of Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom, and also the upcoming Jurassic World Dominion. There are a couple of other interesting details – including potential nods to the breakout of the Scorpios Rex, and also a reference to the Monorail distracting the Pteranodons – all helping to ground Aftermath alongside some of the other extended media which has been released in recent years.
One thing we did want to touch on before we close this article and leave you to enjoy Brent’s gameplay is the way Malcolm’s dialogue is handled in this game – and, particularly, how it can be applied to some of the real world debates we see around climate change right now. This is such an important topic for so many of us to consider, and Jurassic provides a welcome medium to explore it as we really can learn from the past to consider the long-term impact that our actions have on our planet. With this taken into consideration, we wanted to acknowledge how applicable Malcolm’s dialogue in this game is – not just to the upcoming narrative questions which we are sure Jurassic World Dominion will pose, but to some of the greatest challenges which we face currently. Jurassic often gets a lot of flak for being set-piece centric, but Aftermath really excels at being a thought-provoking look at the science of this franchise and the wider impacts from that which are applicable within the real world, so we wanted to take the time to congratulate it for handling an often-difficult topic with sensitivity.
That’s it for our breakdown – we could talk more about this game, but Brent has put together a fantastic video, so we want to encourage you to go and enjoy it. Check out the full video below – and let us know your thoughts on Aftermath Part 2 in the comments below. As always – stay tuned to The Jurassic Park Podcast for all of the latest news!
Written by:
Tom Jurassic