This is an idea I've had for a while, and it's recently reared its head again with a recent announcement. A while back, a project called Kyoryu was announced, and I thought it was a very, very interesting concept.
More information about the setting can be found here and here, as well as their official social media.
So the idea is simple: sometime in the future, humans genetically engineered dinosaurs. Why? Who cares. Pets, entertainment, research animals, humans will do anything if given power. Eventually the humans disappeared, leaving behind these dinosaurs (and other prehistoric creatures including pterosaurs, marine reptiles, and mammal-like reptiles like Dimetrodon) in a world. What have the humans left behind? What is life like in this new world?
However, the angle of this story I have planned is what makes it a little different. There is no dialogue. The world is explored through the senses of the dinosaur characters--what they see, what they smell, what they hear. Think of it as a dinosaur documentary, with the story-telling of Robert Bakker's "Raptor Red" or Genndy Tartakovsky's "Primal".
As for dinosaur knowledge and design, what I have in mind is that human science had grown so advanced that they could manifest certain traits in dinosaurs fairly easily (think the process of selective breeding, but all with some tweaks to the genetic code between generations), resulting in different "breeds" of dinosaurs; for example, you could find a breed of T. rex that is what's accurate to modern reconstructions, another that looks like a T. rex from the 90's, another with feathering, or even armor and spikes.
Again, I realize this is an extremely niche idea, but I think it would be a fun exercise to explore a world as a character that's not able to think or speak like a human, especially if they can explore what humans have left behind.
Any thoughts? Comments or critique? Let me know!
More information about the setting can be found here and here, as well as their official social media.
So the idea is simple: sometime in the future, humans genetically engineered dinosaurs. Why? Who cares. Pets, entertainment, research animals, humans will do anything if given power. Eventually the humans disappeared, leaving behind these dinosaurs (and other prehistoric creatures including pterosaurs, marine reptiles, and mammal-like reptiles like Dimetrodon) in a world. What have the humans left behind? What is life like in this new world?
However, the angle of this story I have planned is what makes it a little different. There is no dialogue. The world is explored through the senses of the dinosaur characters--what they see, what they smell, what they hear. Think of it as a dinosaur documentary, with the story-telling of Robert Bakker's "Raptor Red" or Genndy Tartakovsky's "Primal".
As for dinosaur knowledge and design, what I have in mind is that human science had grown so advanced that they could manifest certain traits in dinosaurs fairly easily (think the process of selective breeding, but all with some tweaks to the genetic code between generations), resulting in different "breeds" of dinosaurs; for example, you could find a breed of T. rex that is what's accurate to modern reconstructions, another that looks like a T. rex from the 90's, another with feathering, or even armor and spikes.
Again, I realize this is an extremely niche idea, but I think it would be a fun exercise to explore a world as a character that's not able to think or speak like a human, especially if they can explore what humans have left behind.
Any thoughts? Comments or critique? Let me know!
