Feathers?
So... It's pretty much the consensus of the modern paleontological community that theropod dinosaurs like Velociraptor and possibly even Tyrannosaurus had feathers. Should Telltale incorporate the most up-to-date paleontological knowledge in their design of dinosaurs for the game, or should they stick to the more reptilian design aesthetic precedented by the movies? Of course, the idea that modern birds evolved from dinosaurs is a pretty big theme in the movies, particularly the first one. Perhaps it would actually be truer to the spirit of the movies to change the design and give the raptors bird-like feathers?
Which would you prefer:
reptilian, like in the movies?
or more bird-like, as modern science suggests?
Which would you prefer:
reptilian, like in the movies?
or more bird-like, as modern science suggests?
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and that is all I have to say about that.
True that. Plus the movie versions look cooler :P
Or just the "boss raptor" has a crest, just like the "boss gremlin" in the Gremlins movies.
A Gremlins adventure game should be great, by the way...
See I am too, but then again I'm 24 and those were the Dinosaurs I was shown in books when I was in 8th grade, so those are what I envision dinosaurs to look like and well there is no actual proof that they had feathers.
There's pretty convincing evidence that at least SOME genera of dromaeosaurs had feathers because we've found what are apparently fossilized impressions of them. Sinornithosaurus seems to have had the fuzzy, downy sorts of feathers that Niki mentioned, while Microraptor apparently had the true pennaceous feathers of modern birds. But you're right; there's no definitive proof that Velociraptors or Tyrannosaurs had feathers, and their hypothetical existence is based mainly on their relationship to these other species.
Also... Let's face it, 50 years from now, the dinosaurs in the Jurassic Park films are going to seem utterly unrealistic and laughably misconceived, much as people today think of Godzilla. I wouldn't want the game's dinosaurs to share a similar fate.
Plus, the "lumbering reptilian dinosaur" is really an outworn cliche that's hung around in popular perception despite being long debunked scientifically. I think it'd be good for the game to break the stereotype's mold, and do something totally new, fresh, exciting, and up-to-date with the dinosaurs' look, franchise consistency be damned.
And finally, I think the idea of feathered dinosaurs is really cool, plain and simple. Nothing beats Rule of Cool.
Although I will concede that the feathered dinosaurs would be much harder to model in 3D than the old-fashioned scaly variety of dino. You're up to the challenge, Telltale, I know it!
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20127005.100-were-all-dinosaurs-beasts-of-a-feather.html
Actually, the wiki article is really good reading;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feathered_dinosaurs
The Raptors look incredibly cool in the first two films, because they look menacing and reptilian, and they size is completely innacurate. That's awesome in my opinion, even if it's incorrect.
Classic Raptors, please.
I remember reading the Velociraptor from the movies are actually more like like Utahraptor
They are more like Utah Raptors and the funny thing is Utahraptor is being classified as a allosaurid and not a raptor.
You can probably get away with depicting either variation at this time, frankly. The question is far from settled. But only one answer can really be correct. Maddening!
The Velociraptor feathers, though, were apparently much more well-developed and birdlike, and thus more evolutionarily advanced than the "proto-feathers" of larger dinosaurs.
Wiki also notes that it's much more likely than not that the Utahraptor and its relatives also possessed dramatic, birdlike feathers, so it wasn't just Velociraptor proper. The JP movies may have modeled their raptors on Utahraptor, but in that case the depiction most likely did get them wrong.
I think Telltale ought to go for scientific accuracy on this one--that means feathers on the raptors. T-Rex is still up in the air.
But it's all just theory that they even had proto feathers, there haven't been in fossilizations of Velociraptor with feathers, just because some dromasaurid "May" Have had feathers, thats the thing with Paleontology it's all theories and Hypothesis, and well I honestly think with the JP game should show them how they are in the movie.
Actually, they have found feathered raptor fossils:
Paleontology is very much about what you call "theorizing". However, this is not just a "theory" in the sense that "The Moon is made of green cheese" is a theory. It's a scientific theory, that is, an extrapolation based on generally accepted starting points.
In this case, the presence of quill knobs is believed to indicate the presence of large, birdlike feathers. This correlation is sound for today's animals, so it should hold true here as well.
(It's amazing how many people dismiss time-tested scientific ideas, like evolution, with those four simple words: "It's just a theory!" News flash: In science, words are often defined differently than in normal usage. Scientific theories, unlike what ordinary people think of as "theories," often have heaps of evidence to back them up.)
If a family of dinosaurs, let's say Dromosauridae, is known to have evolved the trait of feathers at one stage of evolution, it's logical to surmise, until proven otherwise, that all the later-evolving separate members of that family would retain such feathers. Remember, all the members of an evolutionary group share a common ancestor.
In fact the Wiki article suggests that the point at which birdlike feathers evolved was some time before the evolutionary distinction of Dromosauridae from other dinosaur families (and thus before the emergence of raptors), since other families in the infraorder Oviraptorosauria (to which Dromosauridae belong) also show feathered fossils.
Well thats the first problem right there your bringing wiki into this and if thats your main point than you have no idea if that Data is fact. Second Primates, Primates are a good example of this as an example we are humans, and if you trace back to....let's say 500,000 years ago humans had a lot more hair than we do now. So this Microraptor may have had feathers, but some of these animals live millions of years apart from their ancestors so who's to say that they all had feathers, sure I'll say earlier Dromarasaurs may have had feathers, but it doesn't mean they all dead.
You can't just dismiss something as being from Wikipedia when Wikipedia cites its sources. In this case, the information comes from a 2007 article in ScienceDaily. While this is a popular science magazine and not an academic journal, the article contains direct quotes from an interview with well-established and respected paleontologists from the American Museum of Natural History.
I'm not trying to be the villain here, I'm not..I'm just going by what I know of wikipedia, and by what i've experienced using it for papers, that most of the sites sourced were wrong.
Thank you so much for saying this. I have been trying to explain this very same concept on several other threads. It's frustrating to see years and years of careful research dismissed by "It's just a theory".
Can't we just agree that adding frog DNA may cause dinosaur baldness?
And unless we see some scientists cloning some feathered DNA in the game, I'd really stay away from such big change from the movies. Better stay true to the movies. Otherwise what's the point of calling it a Jurassic Park title in the first place?
I wonder if this game will be considered JP4 like the Ghostbusters game is set just after Ghostbusters 2.
Nope:
Personally, I think that, since these games are based on fiction and will be a part of an already established franchise, they should stick to dinosaur depictions as already established within the world of JP.
If you stand really still.... the T-rex will start to question its life wondering why you are not afraid of him and running away, he will then get seriously depressed and lose its appetite.... but the second you run he gets all pumped up like a T-rex king and eats you while you are on the toilet.
I don't get why so many people are wedded to old, outmoded ideas about what dinosaurs looked like. The scaly raptors of the first JP film may be a treasured childhood memory, but that doesn't make their appearance any less inaccurate.
Science marches on, and cinema and video games change to match. Wanting to preserve the old JP "raptor look" is a bit like declaring that T-rex should always be shown as he appears in the 1933 King Kong.
If that's the case, then the games could basically be set in a separate, parallel universe from that of the films. And of course, in both universes dinosaur cloning is a viable technology, though quite possibly the end results are different. Maybe that's the best way to resolve the thorny question of continuity in the velociraptors' appearance.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h5nxzcnlNVZIOXev0Elw-ub182YgD9G7MFF80
Quite what he means is open to interpretation, and if yours is correct, then yeah, what you say makes sense.
I think the telling line is 'add new backstories to the... mythology', which could mean the games are set prior to the first movie, or possibly between the movies.
I think feathered animals can be scary. I'm still afraid to go under a tree in spring... Australian magpies can be very territorial. Also, cassowaries are terrifying. I think of them as the closest living thing to velociraptors.
I don't know I think if they used the feathered dinosaurs, it will be like running from a bird, wich would lose some of the scariness.
Except Cassowaries are bigger than a raptor.
The funny thing about this is that in the books this isn't true. The people who stand still just get eaten first.:D