Hi Everyone,
Tom here today and I’m joined with fellow Jurassic Park Podcast contributor, Steven Hurrell of Jurassic Unicast – and today we have something very exciting to talk about! Last Thursday we were invited to go and hang out at the Frontier Developments studios in Cambridge with a bunch of other community members.
It was super fun getting to meet new people, and getting to hang out with people whom I have known through the Frontier Forums (Joel & Jessica – looking at you guys!). Frontier put on a lovely day for us all – giving us a tour of the studio, keeping us fed, giving us lots of goodies and sharing lots of exciting new information about some of their upcoming projects!
Being The Jurassic Park Podcast, you guys know we want to dive straight into the world of Jurassic World Evolution.
We were given an up-close look at the brand-new updates which will be coming into the game with update 1.8. Releasing on the 18th of June for both console players and PC players, the update looks set to add a wealth of new features to the game. We got to see the brand-new Gyrosphere gates in action and these look fantastic – providing park guests with a seamless transition between enclosures as they explore your parks. This new feature will be accompanied by the great new audio safari tour – which is incredibly well written and really makes you want to spend those extra moments experiencing your parks at a guest level. We also got an up-close look at some of the new terrain tools – and they really do add a lot more of creativity to the existing tools which are on offer within the game currently. The ability to add individual rocks and trees really allows you to add an element of hand-crafted finesse – and adding textures such as sand really does add to the dynamism of the tools on offer. We saw a great example of watering hole surrounded by trees and rocks – so I am really excited to see how these new tools add to the creativity of this community.
We were also given a look at the brand new paid DLC for Jurassic World Evolution – titled ‘Claire’s Sanctuary’. The new DLC will include feature a brand-new narrative story – and it will take a different tone to the pre-existing campaigns already present in Evolution, providing players with a brand-new focus. Bryce Dallas Howard is returning to voice Claire as a part of the DLC, and the DLC will see several new elements added to the overall game. These will include two new playable maps, one being a brand-new Island called ‘Claire’s Sanctuary’. Claire’s sanctuary is the island which Benjamin Lockwood had planned to use to rescue the dinosaurs in Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom – and has been fully licensed by Universal so Frontier can use its exact likeness within the game. The second location is a new portion of Isla Nublar – called ‘Nublar North’.
Alongside the new locations, we have three new dinosaurs. These are the long-awaited fan favourite Albertosaurus - a medium sized theropod carnivore from the Late Cretaceous Period. The second dinosaur confirmed is the Ouranosaurus, - a herbivorous dinosaur from the early Cretaceous Period. And finally, the third dinosaur we shall see is the Euoplocephalus a large herbivore from the Late Cretaceous Period, closely related to the Ankylosaurus. Alongside these additions, we shall will have a new place able building the Paleo-Botanist Greenhouse, where you can research new plants to suit the new dietary requirements for the herbivores on the game.
Everything here looks fantastic – and as with the Secrets of Doctor Wu DLC, everything you unlock within this DLC will also then be able to be retroactively added to your parks, so you can get the most from the DLC. Let’s just say that one of the place-able buildings is going to be a real game changer for the way that visitors to your parks can experience your Dinosaurs!
This new paid DLC, alongside the fantastic quality-of-life updates in Update 1.8, really will breathe a lot of new life and replay-ability value into Jurassic World Evolution – giving fans more tools which we think they will be appreciative of!
I’d like to thank the amazing Community Team at Frontier, as always, for really being an absolute pleasure to work alongside. We’ve had the pleasure of visiting the studio twice now – and each time we have visited all the team have been amazing and have been just as excited as we have been for the news on offer! I’d like to say a special thank you to Bo – who continues to be a fantastic asset to not just Frontier, but to the JWE community too. She put this meet up together – and without her, we would not have so much exciting news to share with fans of Jurassic World Evolution!
What do you guys think? Are you excited for the new update coming to JWE? Will you be playing “Claire’s Sanctuary” when it releases? Thanks for checking out this article – and, as always, have a great week!
Also, don’t miss our full conversation about Claire’s Sanctuary and update 1.8 on The Jurassic Park Podcast!
Written by:
Tom Fishenden & Steve Hurrell