At The Game Awards last December, Jurassic Park reared its scaly head to the audience in the monstrous form of Jurassic Park: Survival. It's a new adventure game (no relation to the canceled early 2000s action game of the same name) made by Saber Interactive in partnership with Universal. At the time, they didn't share much detail. But today, Saber and Universal have given IGN an exclusive peek into their rendition of Isla Nublar — new characters, new locations, new dinosaurs and all.
Universal and Saber have shared with us an internal Q&A conducted with Universal Products & Experiences executive producer John Melchior and Saber Interactive creative director Oliver Hollis-Leick, which contained a number of tidbits about what to expect from Jurassic Park: Survival. Going in, we already knew the game will take place one day after the events of the 1993 film. The action will follow InGen scientist Maya Joshi, who has been left behind on Isla Nublar after the characters of the film depart. There, she must survive and attempt to escape the park, avoiding dinosaurs and other hazards as she goes.
From Melchior and Hollis-Leick, we learned that we'll not only be revisiting iconic locations from the 1993 film, but we'll also be seeing brand new ones. This particular setting allowed the developers to explore places that were only implied in the film, but never seen — distant buildings, places where visitors were meant to stay the night, and so forth. And the locations that we're familiar with may have been changed by the aftermath of the film.
"We have been working with all our stakeholders on what the island would have looked like after the events of the film," Melchior said. "This includes areas we all love like the Visitor’s Center and the T-Rex paddock. But also, what we didn’t see, things that were not part of the tour or got cut off by the storm. Those on the island were supposed to be there overnight, so what does that mean? What would they have seen and where would they have stayed if everything went according to plan? That is where we are starting. One thing is certain - the island is as much a part of the story as the characters and dinosaurs."
Speaking of the characters and the dinosaurs, it sounds like we'll see new ones of both. Hollis-Leick specifically refers to "new characters," plural, meaning more than just scientist Maya Joshi. And in response to a question about "special dinosaurs" in the game that aren't in the movie, Melchior uncryptically replied with "Life finds a way..."
As for what you'll be doing as Maya, we still haven't seen gameplay yet. But Hollis-Leick offered this explanation of how exploring the island will work:
"The island is full of different types of terrain, many of them quite challenging. The player will need to use caution and planning in some cases, checking routes in advance. There will also be times when the player will need to move very carefully through an environment to avoid the attention of certain predators. Maya, the main character, is neither superhuman nor an action hero. There are real risks for her around every corner and the player will need to use a mixture of intelligence, grit and patience to survive the island’s many challenges."
There's still plenty we don't know about Jurassic Park: Survival, and there's certainly pressure on it to nail the nostalgic vibe of the film. Melchior says that Jurassic Park is the "most requested" game for Universal to make. Sure, there's the Jurassic World Evolution series from Frontier Developments, but the management sim rendition on the franchise is a very different beast from a single-player adventure. Unfortunately, we may still have a while to wait, as Universal and Saber aren't sharing a release date just yet, but did confirm the game won't be out in 2024. We'll see it out eventually on PS5, Xbox, and PC.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
