Pretty much!
In one DLC announcement, all dinosaurs that made an on screen movie appearance is now available in JWE2, and the roster now contains the complete list of dinosaurs in InGen's list.
We brought the dinosaurs back into the world. Now it's our responsibility to protect them. Join the Dinosaur Protection Group now to help!
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To be in topic of this thread. I feel it would very much be the case that the 122 animals would transfer over to the new game.
During the course of JWE2, 84 animals were available at launch with the deluxe edition of the game. 65 of them were from the previous game aside from the hybrids trio which were added later, bumping it to 68.
In the current roster after all the DLC, the completely new animals after JWE1 are:
29 new terrestrial species
11 Aerial species
14 aquatic species
There is a total of 54 new animals added to the roster with Jurassic World Evolution 2, with 16 of them being available from the deluxe launch edition of the game and the remaining 38 being introduced over the next two and a half years as part of the PDLC content.
With the latest DLC being the Park Manager's Collection with a lot of highly requested animals + the Little Eatie Skin, alongside the small free update included, it feels to be the last one to be made for the game, as there is about a year left before the launch of the next movie, and potentially the launch of JWE3 as the movie would be out in the 2026 fiscal year.
I feel like Frontier would be more likely to retain the 122 animals over to the sequel, the sheer content of this roster is a good incentive for new players to jump into the new game instead of playing the old one with all DLC, similar to how JWE1 players got to enjoy their dinosaurs in the new game aside from the hybrids with the deluxe edition of JWE2.
I do not feel like JWE3 would be as big of a jump when it comes to animal behavior and animation as it is from JWE1 to JWE2, so we are likely to see the same animations used in JWE2 in the sequel. I could imagine them advancing the terrestrial dinosaur's navigation for steeper terrain modification and amphibious navigation if deep water is introduced, similar to how the animals navigate and behave in Planet Zoo.
With all of the effort put into these animal models and rigs, as well as the capacity to have aerial, terrestrial, and aquatic animals in the game, I feel like it would be more worthwhile if the current roster is retained in JWE3. New players and players who only played JWE1 would like the larger roster if they missed out on JWE2, and JWE2 veterans would have an easier time transitioning over to JWE3 if all their favorite animals made it into the new game. They could introduce some new animals from the upcoming Chaos Theory and Movie into the base game, as well as some additional animals for the lagoons, aviary, and some fan requested animals like Plateosaurus and Protoceratops.
If they really want to make the roster in the new game interesting, the implementation of amphibious behavior to veteran dinosaurs and new animals like Deinosuchus, as well as the introduction of a healthy roster of Cenozoic animals would really make the starting roster for JWE3 tantalizing. If 16 new animals are introduced in JWE3 alongside the 122 animals from the previous games, with plans in the future to add more amphibious, lagoon, aerial, feathered, favorites, Triassic, Jurassic, Pre-Mesozoic, and Cenozoic that occupy unique positions in the prehistoric animal kingdom, then it would would be a real roster to look forward to.
I just really hope that if JWE3 were to happen, none of the previous animals would get locked away via DLC or are part of the deluxe edition of the game. Players should not pay more for content they had access to prior, especially if said content was part of the base roster in previous games.