FRDT Author - The Meta Weta

Being the paleontology nerd I am, it's no surprise that one of the first things I put up on this blog is that a Far Cry game with dinosaurs would be totally friggin' sweet .  Hell yes.  On a similar note, I recently got hooked on the topic of speculative zoology. In particular, a specific website dedicated to one rather bizarre thought experiment: what if you seeded a world with just enough life to support a population of canaries, and just let natural selection take its course for millions of years? That website is Serina: A Natural History of the World of Birds  (the brainchild of artist Dylan Bajda, a.k.a Seather888 ), which is one of the best hard-science speculative zoology projects I've ever heard of. Piece by piece, the reader is taken through a journey through millions of years of evolution on the moon of Serina, as the canaries and other creatures diversify and evolve into some truly bizarre and epic creatures. In fact, it's mostly the creature design ...

So I've been playing an inordinate amount of Far Cry 5 largely. Yes, I know, it was released almost two years ago, but I was futilely waiting for it to go on sale. I'm cheap like that.  It's alright, I guess.  Ok, I've more than once completely lost track of time while playing it. Despite the numerous irritations the game has (temperamental side quests, occasionally suicidal AI companions, the fact that the whole game is a blatant cash-in on the fact that America as a nation currently hates itself), I find it weirdly compelling and I can't help but enjoy it.  Best boy ever.  But as I fly in my attack helicopter blowing boats full of drug-peddling straw-man religious nutters to oblivion, I do think to myself: what does Far Cry really need?  Dinosaurs. Obviously. 🦖 The reason I say this are numerous: 1 . I really like dinosaurs, and most likely a large segment of the open-world-mayhem enthusiasts that like this kind of game do as w...