Paleo Pines devs worked with a palaeontologist to ensure authenticity
Getting things dino-right
Paleo Pines might not be a game that screams realism when you first see it. I mean, seeing trailers with humans riding dinosaurs makes you think that realism is the last thing on the developers’ minds, but it turns out that’s not completely true.
In a new dev blog from Paleo Pines game director Nina Roussakoff, we learn that the team behind the game wanted to ensure they got the important parts about dinosaurs correct. The devs weren’t going for an educational experience, but they did want Paleo Pines to be a title that was at least based on realistic attributes and features. That’s why they hired a palaeontologist to be a part of the team.
Let’s face it, these prehistoric creatures are endlessly fascinating, with new discoveries continually unearthed. While not every game has to be educational or scientifically informed, part of the childhood obsession with dinosaurs is the facts about them. That’s why we worked with a consultant palaeontologist. For example, based on footprints, it’s believed that Parasaurolophus and other hadrosaurids were both bipedal and quadrupedal - that’s why Lucky runs on twos and walks on all fours. And did you know that velociraptors were feathered? This was discovered years after Jurassic Park first aired, so the velociraptor of popular imagination looks quite different to the real thing.
In an interview with NWR, executive producer Aimee Beimers shared more insight into what the paleontologist offered to the dev team.
We were lucky enough to have the input of a real-life paleontologist to turn to when our modelers and animators had questions! Natalia Jagielska was brilliant in allowing our team to reach out throughout the production and has even done an analysis for us of several of our dinos to evaluate how close to known scientific fact they are. It was this knowledge that we layered over the wholesome style originally created by Jordan Bradley.
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