This should come as a surprise to no one, but we have to discuss this elephant in the room. JWE2 is a huge step up from JWE in a multitude of ways with the deepening of gameplay mechanics creating far more opportunities for the narrative game modes to shine. The Campaign has really embraced the idea of wild dinosaurs we once craved seeing Sorna in the first game, but there are a lot of relics and missed opportunities in the objectives we are tasked with across it and into Chaos Theory.
We are still dealing with comfort timers, transporting dinos off map, and building simple structures as a basis for many objectives across the board. For the early tutorial maps, that's fine, but it goes too far. Even with a disclaimer ahead of Chaos Theory maps, we are repeating some of the same things and having objectives to build a certain arbitrary number of structures and so forth like the Campaign and this has persisted from JWE into JWE2. Honestly, sometimes objectives in both games are just big highlights and at other times its repetitive and boring.
Jurassic Park 3's Chaos Theory is the worst offender by a mile; it's short, simple, and unsatisfying. Why are new gameplay mechanics reduced to planting Ranger Posts, performing status and medical checks and quickly achieved comfort threshold fixes? There are enough mechanics in the game to use as a basis for something far more intuitive and interesting. Who doesn't remember the Spinoraptor from the Secrets of Dr. Wu? It is so memorable since for the first time you couldn't solve the problem by simply tranqing it, you had to engage the game a little more by utilizing another pair of teeth to be rid of it.
There could be objectives more centered on settling territorial disputes between wild species without letting them kill each other. For instance, you would be locked into manually using the Ranger Jeep and would have to break up the fight. In order to do that you would need to utilize the tools built into the Jeep. Honk the horn, play music, and in the case of carnivores the Jeep would act like prey that would naturally distract and lure away an animal. Time it poorly and you could have all the animals pursuing you and fail to break them up. Another mission could have you dealing with a poacher camp, here they are harming the wild species and its your job to set things right.
A direct human threat is a very different beast than our current objectives. Think of a situation similar to eliminating the Spinoraptor but grander in scale. You would have to use flares to a attract a large carnivore to the poacher camp. Other missions could require you to deploy the MVU to perform an investigation into the source of a disease that has left behind a trail of bodies, and you would need to locate a patient zero from among all members of its species roaming the wild, isolate it, and develop a vaccine from this animal to inoculate all other animals to stem the spread of the disease. Functionally its very similar to the analysis to track the Allosaurus in the Campaign's second mission, but with a twist.
How about a mission where high winds and storms ground your Capture Teams for significant periods of time requiring more caution about potential breakouts and reliance on early weather warnings and weathering the storm rather than recapturing the loosed species? And would it kill us to have an actual objective to open the bloody emergency shelters or have some sort of weather station to make it feel more like a survival situation? You could easily have an objective that also says don't let any guests or [Insert Placeholder Number] of guest to die. This would be way more challenging and force the player to respond accordingly to a very real dinosaur threat.
This is an improved variant of the typical storm survival objectives we have seen. Sandstorms and Snowstorms already have an impact on your ground teams, these objectives could just outright shut them down in an inverse forcing you to rely on the helicopter. A later mission could also relate to a hurricane grounding your helicopters, but the power is knocked out leading to your raptors climbing out of their enclosures. You must manually control the Jeep and wind your way through the environment to an isolated backup generator to restore power dodging and evading the raptors strategically wandering along your route. Power restored you now have to research an upgrade for your helicopters I have named "Storm Rotors" that allows the helicopter to operate in high winds for you to capture the raptors.
If my proposal for a Vehicle Maintenance Depot were to come to fruition, the gameplay only would get more interesting, now in these scenarios loosing a Ranger Vehicle could be a death sentence for some of these missions. You wouldn't have the time to wait for repairs and that raises the stakes. You can't just instantly replace it and move forward, it would be a genuine Game Over, try again. You only got the one vehicle to command, so those raptors chase and attacking the vehicle is a real threat as you try to boot up the backup generators.
These examples aren't that big of a stretch, but look how much more engaging and interesting the gameplay scenario becomes with relatively simple tools. We got lots of toys to play with but no reason to use them. Take away the safety net of the helicopter and the game becomes way different, its more visceral and engaging when you are boots on the ground dealing with your rampaging species. Always being in an overhead isometric view isn't conducive all the time for mission objectives. Frontier understands this and they have consistently pushed for the player to be more in charge of the Ranger teams, its a different experience to have limited options and face your creations up close and personal. The park building aspect would precede the disaster, and Sandbox would exist for those who wouldn't enjoy this kind of scenario. Building your park then being tasked with responding to the chaos you helped to create is the most Jurassic thing you could possibly have.
We are still dealing with comfort timers, transporting dinos off map, and building simple structures as a basis for many objectives across the board. For the early tutorial maps, that's fine, but it goes too far. Even with a disclaimer ahead of Chaos Theory maps, we are repeating some of the same things and having objectives to build a certain arbitrary number of structures and so forth like the Campaign and this has persisted from JWE into JWE2. Honestly, sometimes objectives in both games are just big highlights and at other times its repetitive and boring.
Jurassic Park 3's Chaos Theory is the worst offender by a mile; it's short, simple, and unsatisfying. Why are new gameplay mechanics reduced to planting Ranger Posts, performing status and medical checks and quickly achieved comfort threshold fixes? There are enough mechanics in the game to use as a basis for something far more intuitive and interesting. Who doesn't remember the Spinoraptor from the Secrets of Dr. Wu? It is so memorable since for the first time you couldn't solve the problem by simply tranqing it, you had to engage the game a little more by utilizing another pair of teeth to be rid of it.
There could be objectives more centered on settling territorial disputes between wild species without letting them kill each other. For instance, you would be locked into manually using the Ranger Jeep and would have to break up the fight. In order to do that you would need to utilize the tools built into the Jeep. Honk the horn, play music, and in the case of carnivores the Jeep would act like prey that would naturally distract and lure away an animal. Time it poorly and you could have all the animals pursuing you and fail to break them up. Another mission could have you dealing with a poacher camp, here they are harming the wild species and its your job to set things right.
A direct human threat is a very different beast than our current objectives. Think of a situation similar to eliminating the Spinoraptor but grander in scale. You would have to use flares to a attract a large carnivore to the poacher camp. Other missions could require you to deploy the MVU to perform an investigation into the source of a disease that has left behind a trail of bodies, and you would need to locate a patient zero from among all members of its species roaming the wild, isolate it, and develop a vaccine from this animal to inoculate all other animals to stem the spread of the disease. Functionally its very similar to the analysis to track the Allosaurus in the Campaign's second mission, but with a twist.
How about a mission where high winds and storms ground your Capture Teams for significant periods of time requiring more caution about potential breakouts and reliance on early weather warnings and weathering the storm rather than recapturing the loosed species? And would it kill us to have an actual objective to open the bloody emergency shelters or have some sort of weather station to make it feel more like a survival situation? You could easily have an objective that also says don't let any guests or [Insert Placeholder Number] of guest to die. This would be way more challenging and force the player to respond accordingly to a very real dinosaur threat.
This is an improved variant of the typical storm survival objectives we have seen. Sandstorms and Snowstorms already have an impact on your ground teams, these objectives could just outright shut them down in an inverse forcing you to rely on the helicopter. A later mission could also relate to a hurricane grounding your helicopters, but the power is knocked out leading to your raptors climbing out of their enclosures. You must manually control the Jeep and wind your way through the environment to an isolated backup generator to restore power dodging and evading the raptors strategically wandering along your route. Power restored you now have to research an upgrade for your helicopters I have named "Storm Rotors" that allows the helicopter to operate in high winds for you to capture the raptors.
If my proposal for a Vehicle Maintenance Depot were to come to fruition, the gameplay only would get more interesting, now in these scenarios loosing a Ranger Vehicle could be a death sentence for some of these missions. You wouldn't have the time to wait for repairs and that raises the stakes. You can't just instantly replace it and move forward, it would be a genuine Game Over, try again. You only got the one vehicle to command, so those raptors chase and attacking the vehicle is a real threat as you try to boot up the backup generators.
These examples aren't that big of a stretch, but look how much more engaging and interesting the gameplay scenario becomes with relatively simple tools. We got lots of toys to play with but no reason to use them. Take away the safety net of the helicopter and the game becomes way different, its more visceral and engaging when you are boots on the ground dealing with your rampaging species. Always being in an overhead isometric view isn't conducive all the time for mission objectives. Frontier understands this and they have consistently pushed for the player to be more in charge of the Ranger teams, its a different experience to have limited options and face your creations up close and personal. The park building aspect would precede the disaster, and Sandbox would exist for those who wouldn't enjoy this kind of scenario. Building your park then being tasked with responding to the chaos you helped to create is the most Jurassic thing you could possibly have.