Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown was just announced a few days ago but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been investigating the potential of the game for some time. We loved the first two from Eden Games and have followed the drama of the Test Drive Unlimited licencing through to where it is today with Kylotonn and BigBen Interactive holding the franchise rights. Today we use some guesswork to figure out based on all of the game’s leaks whether Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown will have flamingos.
Rumours have been circulating about the possible location of Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown, and here at Rocket Chainsaw we have a resident flamingo fanatic who we tend to tease a bit by finding and killing any video game flamingos we come across. The fact that there were flamingos that we could hunt in Assassin’s Creed Origins devastated that Rocket Chainsaw staff member, but that didn’t stop his love for the series.
Accurately, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey had no flamingos as they’ve never been found in Greece throughout recorded history. This made us wonder whether we would get some Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown flamingos to play with. There have been two key locations in the world that the game is presumed to be located in, both being quite far apart yet still within the realms of the flamingo.
Firstly, let’s take a look at the where flamingos are naturally found in the wild (Image courtesy of Wikipedia):
As we can see, flamingos stretch from Sri Lanka to Chile, from the Caribbean to Florida, but where is Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown rumoured to be located, you ask?
BRAZIL – SOME FLAMINGOS
There are two parts of the world that the leaks and rumours continue to point towards. The first is Brazil. Flamingos can be found in the State of Amapa which is on the coast of far north Brazil, but we’re not convinced that Kylotonn would travel there, so unfortunately if the game is set in Brazil we doubt there will be flamingos.
There are plenty of populous areas further south along the coast such as Salvador, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo but none of them have that distinct Test Drive Unlimited island feel to it, and none have flamingos either, so we’re really starting to form an opinion of completely ruling out the idea of Solar Crown being set in Brazil.
Let’s move to the other rumoured location, the two islands nestled between France and Italy. The islands of Corsica and Sardinia. These islands have a lot of history though you may have never heard of them. Corsica is actually owned by France, while Sardinia is owned by Italy.
CORSICA – NO FLAMINGOS
As you can see in the map above courtesy of Google, Corsica (pop. 339,178) is mostly national park. There are plenty of windy roads that meander from one side of the island to the other, but the fact that this is the third Test Drive Unlimited game and is launching on the next generation of consoles, we have to believe that the island they choose would be a little bit more exciting than Corsica.
Looking at a map of these two islands, you might say, ‘but surely there are flamingos on both islands!‘ Well that is where you are wrong. As we discussed earlier with there being no flamingos in Greece, across all of its vast islands in the Mediterranean Sea, there are also no flamingos whatsoever on the French island of Corsica.
SARDINIA – FLAMINGOS!!
Sardinia (pop. 1.64m) on the other hand is a beautiful populated island filled with both human and wild life. Its capital Cagliari on the south coast has existed for over a thousand years. It also has a few other decent cities such as Sassari, Olbia and Oristano but most importantly there are several thriving flamingo habitats across the island.
We may have a bit of a flamingo bias here at Rocket Chainsaw, but after summing up all of this evidence we can only assume that Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown will be located on the Italian island of Sardinia. Who knows, maybe they’ll add Corsica as an expansion, but don’t expect any flamingos there.
Whether the game will have any wildlife at all still remains to be seen though, we’re still in very early days in terms of actual official information about the game. We are hoping for large flocks of flamingos in Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown though, and hopefully they’ll be interative too, if you catch the drift.
Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown is expected to launch in 2021 on Windows PC, Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 platforms. For more information, head to the official Steam store page.
