There's no lofty mountains in the background though, which is enough for some people to think highlands are less likely than other potential themes.
For me it's more the lack of an obvious mountain
and the fact that it has a lot more forest in it than I'd expect from a biome themed pack that wants to put the emphasis on mountains/highlands. It's not the lack of mountains perse, it's more the lack of mountains and the rest being pretty much a forest clearing.
Like objectively speaking, I think we can somewhat agree that what the baboons are sitting on can hardly be called a mountain if the trees behind it are basically bigger than it. They're sitting on a small cliff/hill (rightfully so). But then the rest of the image really does have more forest than anything else.
If I compare the other biome themed animal pack key-arts (
Arid,
Wetlands,
Grasslands) to this one, I do still think that the primary biome is not as focused as the previous ones if it turns out to be a highlands/mountain pack. Heck, a mountain/highlands themed key-art in the style of
this picture would have left no room for confusion and honestly would be much more in line with the other ones.
Now I know, montane forests are a thing obviously, but if you want to translate the idea of "highlands" or "mountain" to someone in an instance, a forest doesn't feel like the thing you'd initially go for. Nor would you count on people to know that the animals pictured are from highlands/mountains. Nor that you're implying Tibetan flags with the flags you used.
At the end of the day we can all agree on one thing. This a key-art for an animal pack that seems to deviate from the ones before it in several ways.
That said, it's like others have been saying; there's absolutely no reason it can't be both a celebratory send off and a mountain pack. It's not like Frontier has promised us the "Zookeeper's Collection", after all.
Yeah the idea of a Zookeeper's Collection pack is not a must in any way; but I don't think a celebratory pack
has to be a Zookeepers or a "heavily requested animals" pack. Anything that celebrates the weird, wonderful, uniqueness of animals, or just animals in general, could fit under that umbrella.
It’s just so weird how for a celebration pack they chose to ONLY reveal highland animals lol
A Hamadryas Baboon isn't a classic highland animal though, in the same vain a Black Rhinoceros isn't a classic desert animal. I feel like we're lumping them in with "obvious mountain animals" because this was the only other biome pack they could have possibly gone in if it was in a more fitting Arid pack.
Because they don't want the anniversary to be too close to PC2's release, that's literally it.
I think that's a given, but as I said earlier, those two things aren't mutually exclusive.
Having to celebrate the anniversary pack earlier because PC2's release is the day after is very much the logical marketing reason why they're celebrating it early, I think that's something we all can agree on; but that doesn't mean that they can't lean into it more with the DLC.
Is it really so improbable that a game would celebrate its 5th anniversary with a tie in DLC focusing on said anniversary?
It's all just so confusing...
