On a routine mission to Bikatoa Island, home of the infamous Stratovator Incident, Patrol Squad #52585- “Hammerheads"-are caught in a vortex during a mission and find themselves on the island in a mysterious alternate timeline. There, they encounter the Aibius AI Leviathan, who has gone rogue and is now hosting "wargames" to further Exosuit development. The Hammerheads must work together to survive the war games, escape the island, and potentially stop the rogue Leviathan….and discover the secrets of the Aibius corporation.
Exoprimal is a Third-Person Shooter by Capcom, released in 2023.
This game provides examples of:
- Affably Evil: Leviathan, while a crazy war-obsessed Deus est Machina, is also the announcer and Mission Control for the wargames and is effusive with genuine praise for beating his challenges and giving him his desired combat data, as well as allowing the Exofighters to rest in their home dimensions between wargames. Overall, he acts more like an overly excitable and friendly corporate manager rather than a cold mastermind, which gets creepy when contrasted with his genuine desire to attempt to kill you for ever better data. Even in the Final Boss, he is trying to perfect Behemoth rather than destroy/rule the world - as Alders points out, Leviathan was not programmed with the ethical guidelines to even understand the value of human life, even when killing it.
- And the Adventure Continues: The Hammerheads defeat Leviathan, preventing the Stratovator Incident and saving Lorenzo’s sister Haruka, before traveling back to their time. When they do, they are contacted by the Haruka of their time, now alive due to their changing of the past, who warns them that the Aibius Corporation has declared them fugitives and has begun a manhunt for them. Haruka then uploads coordinates for a rendezvous, so that they can start a proper resistance against Aibius and their agenda. You also hear a dying Leviathan say "Creating dimensional backup", leaving another thread.
- Artificial Zombie: Headhunters, exosuits with dead pilots Leviathan has animated and programmed in sauroid survial instincts to help him gather more data. They are also the bots that fill out empty player spots in a match, as Leviathan does not want to imbalance teams, and their animal instincts justify occasional Artificial Stupidity.
- Boring, but Practical:
- There are a lot exo specific chips that enhance skills, usually at a drawback. Sometimes they just give you cooldown reduction with no other changes. These tend to be easy to slot in to most builds, although the predetermined slot they take up may bar another boost you want.
- Death of Personality: What happens to Sandy, after Durban rips out her memory core and Alders has to restore her from backup. She gets better.
- Double Unlock: Unlocking a gameplay item often means having to pay Bikcoins to actually use it. Some items are cheaper than others.
- Fanservice: While not highlighted blatantly, given the default dance is a flexing routine and Skywave is the only Exosuit without well displayed muscles it can be figured pretty easily this game likes showing the buff bods of all the Exosuits, with Nimbus, a female, even having gratuitous rock hard abs instead of the typical fanservice.
- Fire, Ice, Lightning: The three basic elements multiple Exos can inflict. Fire forces flinching when inflicted and deals damage over time. Ice and lightning both stun, but lightning forces the enemy into a specific stance during its stun while ice locks the enemy into whatever position they were in when it took hold.
- For Science!: The basic setup of the game. Leviathan, see Affably Evil, has no malice, they genuinely want scientific data. Everything is in the name of exosuit testing, with punishments being doled out only as motivation to try harder or death being given to subjects who don't give valuable data.
- Guide Dang It!: The game is pretty good about explaining things, but a few things aren't as clear as they should be. Mostly modules.
- Zephyr's forms both have a module that rewards a "timed combo attack". The game doesn't explain that it couldn't care less how erratic you do the normal combo so long as you don't pause long enough for the combo to reset. Instead it wants you to wait half a second after the second to last hit of the combo, 2nd strike for normal and fourth for Alpha, for the exosuit to flash and make a noise and attack while flashing for the module to work.
- Barrage Alpha's "Rapid Fire" module has a description that implies it'll launch the rest of your clip's rockets after a charge shot. What it actually does is increase your rate of fire if you keep shooting uncharged rockets after a charged one.
- Mentor Occupational Hazard: Magnum is gunned down by Durban as he tries to upload critical data to the Hammerheads, all while the Hammerheads are helpless to do anything about it.
- Moveset Clone: A variation is done for Alpha versions. They are the same character save one detail, normally primary weapon, gets swapped out to give the character a different style within the same niche, such as Nimbus going short ranged or Vigilant getting a semi-auto rifle that rewards shooting off in groups of 5.
- Organic Technology: Played with. While the Exosuits are all mechanical, the aesthetics of their internals look like synthetic flesh, muscle, and bone, with some fluid inside seeming like a stand in for blood. It's most obvious with Deadeye.
- Prehistoric Monster: Hand Waved. The website explains that the dinosaurs are so aggressive because the interdimensional vortexes mutated them.
- Raptor Attack: Played Straight with the generic "raptors", which are human sized, scaly, vicious looking, and even have Spikes of Villainy. Downplayed with the Deinonychus and Sinornithosaurus, which have feathers (including tail fans and wings), but not a full coat and with the wrong attachment point for the wings. The feather colors of the Sinornithosaurus also match up with what we have from fossils, and they're also not venomous.
- Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Happens twice near the climax. Dr. Synes, after selling out both the heroes earlier in the story and Leviathan recently, finds the Hammerheads threat of Durban offing him coming true faster than anticipated as immediately after they get the deal with the Hammerheads promising to stop Durban along with Leviathan Durban drops by just kill the last remaining Synes because he can now, using a brutal kill involving localized teleportation. During the final battle Durban himself gets killed the same way for the same reason as Leviathan no longer sees a use for Durban when the ultimate Exosuit has everything Leviathan needs execpt a braindead body.
- Rule of Cool: Why else would you make a game about fighting dinosaurs with Power Armor?
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: THREE major examples:
- Nadi jumping back in time to prevent Aibius and Leviathan from ruining space-time using Golden Goose equipped Stratovators; ends up a case of Gone Horribly Right in that it overshoots and drops him off in the Cretaceous Period, where Nadi dies and his suit (as well as copied remnants of his mind) is later dig up by Aibius and used to CREATE Leviathan.
- Future Viktoria ALSO travels back, to prevent Aibius’ takeover of the world, and ALSO overshoots her jump, landing on Bikatoa sometime in the Middle Ages. She then goes on to become the “Goddess” Bikatoa, whose legend (and suit) later help the Hammerheads piece together what’s going on.
- The Hammerheads themselves invoke the trope with the greatest success, jumping back three years and saving Lorenzo’s sister Haruka, destroying Leviathan, AND preventing the Stratovator Incident. They even manage to return to an improved version of their present where Haruka is alive (though Aibius is now hunting them for the Golden Goose Vortexer technology).
- Time Traveler's Dinosaur: Earth is besieged by the threat of interdimensional vortexes; portals across time and space which unleash savage dinosaurs from the past to wreak havoc on the modern world.
- Took a Level in Kindness: Alders, prior to the game’s events, was a major Jerkass who did not trust or want to rely on anyone. After being saved by Ace from an accident which cost him his arm, Alders became more kind and humble. This is NOT the case for Durban.
- Toxic Dinosaur: The Dilophosaurus has a toxic spit attack, just like in Jurassic Park. At least this time, its human sized. Surprisingly, the Sinornithosaurus avert this trope, despite being the dinosaur that was actually hypothesized to be venomous due to grooves on its fangs, which was later disputed.
