The Lost Wild, the preview with everything we know about Dino Crisis-inspired survival horror
The Lost Wild
After a couple of years of work behind the scenes, Great Ape Games has unveiled its project to the world: The Lost Wild, a dinosaur-themed video game that aims to attract the attention of Dino Crisis fans. The wait, we say it immediately, will be quite long since it will still take 24-36 months before the actual release, but in the meantime we can think locally about what we know about this interesting project. So here's our preview of The Lost Wild.Survival Horror
There will be large and powerful creatures in The Lost Wild What exactly is The Lost Wild? It is a survival horror, a single player adventure with a limited number of hours of play (from 6 to 10, according to the developers' estimates).Eliminate games like Ark or Second Extinction from your mind, the work of Great Ape Games does not aim to propose a sandbox or high-paced action for multiplayer. The Lost Wild draws inspiration from Resident Evil, Dino Crisis, Trespasser and the more recent Alien Isolation. The survival horror genre has been on the rise in recent years, but a dinosaur-themed adventure has long been missing: this should help The Lost Wild stand out from the rest, as well as attract longtime Dino Crisis fans.
Some herbivorous dinosaurs from The Lost Wild Another interesting detail is the fact that the dinosaurs in the game "will act like animals, not monsters" and we will take on the role of a human - named Saskia - who, at a Japanese research station, he must survive the wilderness by searching for useful items to craft tools. The team's goal is officially to "create a sense of vulnerability and resourcefulness", pitting us against creatures much more powerful than us against whom we will have little chance of victory. We will therefore not have to go around shooting and killing dinosaurs, but we will have to understand how to intimidate and scare them temporarily, so as to free us the passage.
We will in fact be able to create various types of non-lethal tools. However, it is suggested to us that there will be some rare exceptions to this rule throughout the adventure, so it is possible that at some point there will be a way to have our revenge against the deadliest creatures of The Lost Wild.
Linear or open?
A panorama from The Lost Wild Great Ape Games also explained that The Lost Wild will not be a linear adventure. The game world will be divided into regions connected to each other, with a power plant from which the strangest will open.The player will be encouraged to explore the various areas in a non-linear way and to return to known places , perhaps after obtaining new information or new tools. It also seems that there will be a certain variety, with areas similar to closed mazes and others that are open and spacious.
Obviously we will be able to understand if the structure of the map of The Lost Wild is really of quality only by trying it or at least by selling a version extended gameplay, but we are certainly intrigued by the idea of finding ourselves in a non-linear map, full of resources and challenges to overcome. The developers say they are also working hard on dinosaur artificial intelligence, which will act credibly within a large ecosystem. The goal is to "surprise and thrill" the players with a series of encounters with creatures that will beat the game maps.
A foggy area of The Lost Wild The developers then explain that there will be no mechanic of taming, as the dinosaurs of The Lost Wild are realistic creatures, with their own behavior and with a strong sense of self-preservation, but there will be (optional) methods to "temporarily create bonds with certain species of dinosaurs, which they can help you survive in the wild world. " For now there is not enough information to understand exactly what this means, but it suggests that there will be multiple survival strategies.
Adding this detail to the aforementioned free exploration, the impression is that The Lost Wild is Yes, a single player game with not infinite contents, but still devoted to freedom of approach and, we hope, also interesting to replay.
Trailer
In addition to the written information shared by the developers, we also have the opportunity to see a trailer, which you can find above. This is only a teaser of the pre-alpha version, but it is still a way to get a first idea of the technical and artistic level of The Lost Wild (the video indicates that it is in-game graphics).The Lost Wild game environments featured in this trailer, which come from a playable internal demo but not shared publicly, place us in the middle of a lush forest, full of ferns and tall trees. The rhythmically beating rain and the plays of light and shadows created by the thick vegetation add up perfectly and generate a tense and extremely promising atmosphere.
The video also gives us some examples of tools that we can use, such as a small torch to light to chase away smaller dinosaurs, but also a flare launcher that will probably be more effective with more massive creatures. It also lets us guess that we will have to find useful tools for our escape, such as an electric radio transmitter.
In terms of game mechanics, we can see exactly what we would expect: the need to move stealthily, unseen among the ferns , but also the obligation to flee when we are intercepted by dinosaurs that we have no way of intimidating. The character, for example, uses a hollow trunk to escape from a larger creature, which thus gets stuck.
The Lost Wild is an interesting project, which covers an empty area of the gaming market, that of Dino Crisis-esque survival horror, the return of which has long been in demand by fans. There will still be a long time to wait (a couple of years at least) and for the moment the game is only expected on PC, but with the PS5 and Xbox Series X | S versions in the queue. The premises are positive, between a free exploration system and the drive for stealth and exploitation of the few resources available. Of course it's still too early to make judgments, but The Lost Wild is certainly one of those games to watch.
