Okay… apologies in advance for the long-as-heck rant, but this whole vulture/saki debate struck a chord with me.
I don't take any pleasure from saying this, I really don't, but I feel like everyone who's rallying behind us getting a vulture in this DLC is being willfully ignorant. There are way too many points against it being a vulture. Let's look at what either animal has going for and against it;
Vulture
The only vulture that has a white "ruff" prominent enough to match the cutout's shape is the Andean condor; I'm sticking my neck out there to say that, I’m confident enough in my vulture knowledge to say it. If it's somehow a vulture, it is almost certainly an Andean condor, and these points are based on the assumption that that's indeed what we're looking at.
Pros:
- The inclusion of the mute swan means we can’t completely discount flying birds as habitat animals.
- The Andean condor would make about as much sense in a desert-themed pack as a monkey such as the saki.
- Andean condors have compelling conservation value.
Cons:
- As people have mentioned before, it would make very little sense to include a non-waterfowl flying bird with no fanfare this late in the game’s lifespan.
- While Andean condors do occur in deserts, I would almost certainly associate them more with the Andes mountains. If they wanted to include a desert-dwelling vulture from the Americas, I feel like the turkey vulture or black vulture would be a more rational choice.
- If a flying bird were to be randomly and unceremoniously added to the game, I doubt it would be a vulture. Vultures don’t have the best reputation amongst the general public, and that’s putting it lightly…
- Why would they add a flying bird when there are so many highly-requested ground-dwelling birds they could add instead?
- If that papel picado is depicting a vulture, it would have to be a fairly stylized one, whereas all the other cutouts (bighorn, rhea, flamingo) are pretty frank, realistic silhouettes. Also, the shape language doesn’t communicate “vulture” very well. Why wouldn’t it have its neck sticking out, or its wings spread out? If it is indeed an Andean condor, wouldn’t they want to show off the male’s fleshy caruncle, arguably its most distinctive feature?
- This pack already has two confirmed birds; a rhea and a flamingo. Getting three birds in one pack is a stretch. We’re all adults here, we can admit that.
White-faced Saki
Pros
- New World monkeys are perhaps the single most highly requested animal type here on the forums. Frontier can only ignore that for so long.
- White-faced sakis are common in captivity, certainly moreso than condors... or even most vultures, I’d wager.
- The saki would be far more easy to add than a vulture; they could feasibly modify their existing monkey rig into something that works for it. The vulture definitely couldn’t be slapped onto an existing rig and look decent.
- The cutout art matches the silhouette of a saki perched on a branch well, and, unlike a vulture, it makes sense for it to be depicted facing forwards, since their white face is their most defining characteristic. It’s quite literally in the name. Plus, the shape of the face-blob in the cutout matches the shape of the saki’s face almost perfectly (It’s admittedly hard to tell from such a small artwork, and the fact that most of the pics folks have uploaded are super blurry doesn’t help, but rest assured, looking at it up close, it’s gotta be the saki’s face).
Cons
- Again, if this is a desert-themed pack, a monkey is a weird pick, but we don’t have any confirmation that that’s the theme. The scenery and color palette of the preview image certainly make it look like a desert pack, but who knows.
- …yeah, I’m not gonna lie, the saki doesn’t have much else going against it. It’s just way more plausible than a vulture, sorry.
And, if you’ll forgive a little appeal to emotion here… I want it to be a vulture
so, so badly. I haven’t mentioned it here before (because I try to avoid talking about really hypothetical stuff like flying birds), but vultures are my favorite animals of all time. I adore them, and they’re the main reason I’d prefer aviaries over aquariums in a Planet Zoo 2. However… I just don’t see it. Like I said, I take NO pleasure in saying any of this… but I cannot see any world where a vulture is a part of this upcoming DLC.
and both are absoluta clones
