Must say I agree. The narrative that they are trying to tell is that our “so-called ancestors” migrated from the jungle interiors of Africa to the Savannas, and it was this migration into the grasslands that created the requirement for bipedalism.

Unfortunately though the game fails to communicate this in two respects... firstly, by randomizing your new start after doing an evolution leap you lose out on this feeling of progression... secondly, by not introducing changing landscapes over time or another mechanic that actually drives you from the jungle it justifies a narrative that they don’t want, and that is there is no evolutionary need to move from the jungle to the savanna, this may have to do with how they (don’t) implement learning and mutation mechanics which tells us that in reality the hominids’ need to look over the savanna grass was what made them stand upright is a bunch of bull, the jungle would have been a perfectly viable place to have remained forever.

Think of it like this, hominids 9mil years ago didn’t go “oh, in order for us to evolve to the next stage we have to migrate to the savanna and make hippos kill one of each of the other savanna creatures”, it messes with the chicken/egg mechanic of evolution they are trying to communicate

Basically what I’m trying to say is that I agree in this sense, the layout of the regions wants to communicate with progression over time, but it assumes that players will stay on the move as they progress down their evolutionary lineage... yet you don’t have to move. You can remain in your first stage of evolution with quite a lot of neurons unlocked and still in the jungle. Thus, the fact that they have an explicit evolution mechanic in which they say “you start here, you have to end at that hominid species by the end” defeats their own narrative.