With the recent livestream, we are able to have a deeper look at the Amargasaurus!
With the new species field guide, we take a closer look at what looks the be one of the smaller prehistoric residents in JWE2!
Besides looking unbelievably adorable, these small dinosaurs do show us 3 features:
1) The Amargasaurus leaves the hatchery at the same time.
One of the new intubation features that was brought up in the gameinformer article was how dinosaurs could leave the incubation lab at the same time. At first, I thought it would be a one at a time procedure, where dinosaurs would give themselves enough space leaving the incubation lab, but it looks like the dinosaurs could leave as a group!
Now this does leaves us wondering, do they leave as a group if they are small enough? Or do giants like Brachiosaurus would need the space to leave one after the other? And how many could we release at a time? 2? 6? 34? Regardless, this new way of exiting the hatchery as a group would make handling the more social dinosaurs a lot easier, and in situations like these, a lot more alive and adorable.
2) Different skin options, shared skin pattern, and resting animation.
Looking at the new amargasaurus footage, we could see 2 new skin color options for the tiny sauropod. Green and a brownish-dark maroon. All of them share the same side stripe pattern, which interestingly, gives them a tiny blue hue at the tip of their spikes! This means that there could be 5 other patterns we have not seen (we have seen the striped and basic), as well as 9 other color options. So even this new dinosaur could sport so many new looks!
And like the triceratops before, we could see an amargasaurus resting on the grass by the brachiosaurus. Overall, it is a cute species to focus on in this field guide.
3) The size of the Amargasaurus!
She is tiny! Like wow! She is super tiny. I love her size, as not only is it adorable, but it looks to be close to the estimated size of her studied counterpart, about 9-10 meters.
And I am mentioning this because back in Jurassic World Evolution, we had the nigersaurus as the smallest sauropod. And back then, promotional material would emphasize her 9 meter length as well, because that dinosaur is notable for being so small.
Yet the thing was... She was actually about 14 meters in length! 5 meters longer than her official description!
This was okay back in JWE, as despite her larger size, she was still technically the smallest sauropod in the game. And there were many cases of small dinosaurs that were notably larger than their real life counterparts in JWE. Still, she was not 9 meters...
But looking at the amargasaurus leaving the hatchery, and in comparison to the fence and brachiosaurus. This small sauropod looks to actually be about 9 meters in length... because she looked smaller than the nigersaurus at least, and she was meant to be 9 meters in JWE...
To make sure if this is actually the case, I took a picture of the amargasaurus leaving the hatchery, and the nigersaurus leaving the hatchery. And if they are the same hatchery, they would share the same door system, and I drew a line where the 3rd bottom lock metal....thingy... to the 3rd bottom socket where the door would lock into. And this is the result:
There is so much breathing room! This has gotten me excited as the amargasaurus could actually be 9 meters long in JWE2!
And this observation is not meant to be a Nigersaurus Vs Amargasaurus topic, but rather how big (and in this case small) the dinosaurs could be in JWE2.
A good portion of dinosaurs, especially the early base game herbivores, are larger than their real life counterparts. Some of them are accurate based on Jurassic Park/World canon, like the nasutoceratops being larger than her real life counterpart. However, new and non-canon dinosaurs like the huayangosaurus, crichtonsaurus, and chasmosaurus are notably bigger than their real life counterparts.
Besides Universal Studios having a say with the dinosaur sizes, I have 2 design theories why they were sized that way: Feeders, and scripted dinosaur conflict. Dinosaurs are expected to reach the designated feeders in JWE1. The ground feeder especially is unique, as it is slightly elevated from ground level, and certain species of dinosaurs that would naturally have their heads close to the ground would have a hard time reaching the feeder, especially if it is a small animal that isn’t as nimble as a homalocephale. So scaling the dinosaur up would help the herbivores in this regard.
The 2nd design theory is that the dinosaurs, if they are part of a hunting or fighting sequence, are going to be part of a scripted sequence, and it would help if the dinosaurs of similar anatomy were part of a similar size, as it would make the sequences easier to implement in jwe.
With JWE2 being so much looser thanks to the natural vegetation as a source of food for herbivores, the herbivores could browse whatever vegetation is closest to them, be it ground, bush, or tree, and is not restricted to a single food source height. Likewise, carnivores have a new dynamic fighting and hunting system, and with the restrictions of the scripted takedowns gone, predators and prey could be closer to their source sizes (movie or studies) and could adapt to the conflict they are in.
Overall, this is still a theory, but it looks to be exciting if it means that a dinosaur's size is not restricted by the gameplay mechanics and system, with the only restriction being if they could leave the hatchery. We would still need to observe more dinosaurs to see how this theory stands, especially if we notice any returning JWE exclusive dinosaurs getting a resize treatment in JWE2. But overall, this is very promising!
UPDATE EDIT:
We also get to see the brachiosaurus browsing the leaves from the tree.
Amargasaurus Species Field Guide