Hypothetically, for whatever reason, aviaries just don't come to pass. We don't end up getting any type of new animal enclosures beyond the existing exhibits and habitats. What then, in your eyes, would be a sufficient (or close-to-sufficient) replacement?
As much as I want aviaries, I think I'd be mostly okay with an animal pack of 7 different habitat birds. Something like, gray crowned crane, helmeted guinea fowl, emu, saddle-billed stork, black swan, golden pheasant, kiwi. Or name your species, I know some people really like the secretary bird or ground hornbill or whatever, and that's totally fine. No matter how you look at it, there's a drastic shortage of birds in this game, even just considering the mostly-flightless ones that would work well enough in open air habitats. I think that a substantial addition to the bird roster would help mask the fact that we wouldn't have aviaries... as it stands, 1 new bird roughly every other DLC release isn't ideal for this outcome.
Or, alternatively, would anyone be okay with throwing realism to the wind here and just getting your eagles and parrots and toucans and whatever else and have them function more or less like any other animal? I think that would be a massive letdown, much more so than being skipped over altogether.
Slightly off topic, but I discovered earlier that one of the semifinalists for the competition that resulted in Magnet the polar bear's inclusion in the original Zoo Tycoon was a bald eagle. It's kind of crazy to think we could've ended up with a bald eagle all the way back then in the first major zoo sim, but people voted on an actual clone instead. For the record, two of the other semifinalists were a fossa and a pair of koalas, which also would've resulted in new species being added. Just thought that was really interesting, with regard to the flying bird discussions that keep cropping up surrounding this game.
As much as I want aviaries, I think I'd be mostly okay with an animal pack of 7 different habitat birds. Something like, gray crowned crane, helmeted guinea fowl, emu, saddle-billed stork, black swan, golden pheasant, kiwi. Or name your species, I know some people really like the secretary bird or ground hornbill or whatever, and that's totally fine. No matter how you look at it, there's a drastic shortage of birds in this game, even just considering the mostly-flightless ones that would work well enough in open air habitats. I think that a substantial addition to the bird roster would help mask the fact that we wouldn't have aviaries... as it stands, 1 new bird roughly every other DLC release isn't ideal for this outcome.
Or, alternatively, would anyone be okay with throwing realism to the wind here and just getting your eagles and parrots and toucans and whatever else and have them function more or less like any other animal? I think that would be a massive letdown, much more so than being skipped over altogether.
Slightly off topic, but I discovered earlier that one of the semifinalists for the competition that resulted in Magnet the polar bear's inclusion in the original Zoo Tycoon was a bald eagle. It's kind of crazy to think we could've ended up with a bald eagle all the way back then in the first major zoo sim, but people voted on an actual clone instead. For the record, two of the other semifinalists were a fossa and a pair of koalas, which also would've resulted in new species being added. Just thought that was really interesting, with regard to the flying bird discussions that keep cropping up surrounding this game.
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