Ancestors: The Human Kind Odyssey

[Mavrick]

https://www.polygon.com/2015/4/23/84...-creed-creator

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey Full Trailer 2015 - YouTube

The next game by Patrice Desilets, the original creator of the Assassin's Creed series, is called Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey. It is described as a third person, episodic action-adventure survival game. The short, episodic triple-A experience and will be produced by his new studio, Panache Digital Games.

At the Reboot Develop conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia today Desilets announced the title to a crowd of attendees with a short teaser. In the trailer, the clock ticked back from the modern day highlighting cultural and scientific achievements along the way. It began with the discovery of the human genome and rolled backwards through the fall of the Berlin Wall, the landing of the first man on the moon, on and on for hundreds of thousands of years to the creation of the first tools and beyond.

Here's a complete listing of the milestones mentioned in the teaser:

• 2003 – Human DNA Decoded
• 1996 – Dolly the Sheep
• 1989 – Fall of the Berlin Wall
• 1969 – Man on the Moon
• 1928 – Penicillin Discovery
• 1903 – Wright Brothers First Flight
• 1850 – Human Population Reaches One Billion
• 1809 – Charles Darwin’s Birth
• 1666 - De analysi per aequationes numero terminorum infinitas
• 1091 – First Crusade
• 355 – Fall of the Roman Empire
• 2578 Before Present – Siddhartha Gautama
• 5000 BP – Tartaria Tablets
• 12,000 BP – Agricultural Revolution
• 30,000 BP – Chauvet’s Caves
• 100,0000 BP – Out of Africa
• 500,0000 BP – First Domestication
• 1,500,000 BP – First Tools
• 5,000,000 BP – Missing Link

"After having fought millions of templars, hidden in haystacks, and chased a pope it is time for something new," read the teaser's final few slides. "For the greatest adventure of all — our own."

"Through each episode," reads the game's announcement page, "we want the player to relive the greatest moments of mankind with a documentary twist. Our civilisation is one idea away from extinction... or evolution."

In his presentation at Reboot, which covered his entire career, Desilets talked about how his team at Panache spent most of the last year creating a believable actor to carry their episodic vision forward.

"The first thing we want to create at Panache is [an actor like] Tom Cruise," Desilets said. "He is believable in a wheelchair, when he falls down skyscrapers, or even when he's mad on the phone. ... I need that actor to do a lot of things, especially these days when everything has already been done."

Desilets went on to ask the audience, "What is too short?" While it brought chuckles from the crowd at the expense of Cruise, to Desilets the question was all about the length of the gameplay experience. Why, he asked, were games longer 35 hours long when movies are only two hours, and sitcoms less than 30 minutes.

[Mavrick]

Patrice Désilets has been designing video games since 1997, most of that spent at Ubisoft where he was the creative lead on the acclaimed Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and then the first three big Assassin’s Creed games. He’s less seasoned as an office architect but has had to wear more hats now that he’s trying to make games as an indie. We met most recently at E3 at a cut-out in the Los Angeles Convention Center far away from any big gaming publisher megabooths, just him and a longtime producer colleague from Ubi who co-founded Panache, which now boasts a seven-person team.

They’re making a game called Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey, which Désilets wants to be nothing less than a third-person action/survival game about the dawn of humanity, from the predecessors to Homo Sapiens to our kind’s eventual dominion of the planet. The game? “It’s Civilization tech tree meets Assassin’s Creed,” Désilets suggested.

“For me it’s fascinating that those little one meter chimp with a kind of weird brain kind of took control of this planet and is totally destroying it,” he said. You’ll play through that. “Your character and family will have the scars of your decisions... We’re not into caveman yet, we’re before that. We go up.”

In truth, there doesn’t seem to be much game there yet. Désilets’ E3 trailer for the game is mostly conceptual and ends with just a brief glimpse of the game’s starting character. The map is there, he told me. “The first-draft character is in it. We’re working on behaviors, how you work with the jungle.”

He’s thinking they’ll start players as an Orrorin Tugenensis, a pre-human species from some six million years ago. Then evolve from there, skipping players ahead, from episode to episode, through evolution. “So we do an action sequence telling you the first time when we stood up,” he postulated. “We let you sprint, see forward then leave you in an open world and you survive as long as you can. In a later chapter you will eventually have a family that needs to survive, a tribe that needs to survive, but that is in the next chapters.” He wants to tell the story of the discovery of fire as part of his video game, and do the same with animal domestication, all chapters of this adventure.

The game will be released in episodes, each one polished by his small team to look and feel as good as the kind of big-budget games he was making at Ubi. His dream is to release a whole bunch of chapters and wind up with a big 25-hour game like the kinds he used to make.

Games hatched in creative game designers’ brains all sound amazing, as does Désilets’, as did the famously over-promising Peter Molyneux when he talked a decade or so ago about a never-released caveman role-playing game called B.C. Désilets can say nothing other than that he knows what he’s doing and is keeping the initial scale of the game small so that Panache can deliver. He wants to show something playable at E3 next year.

http://kotaku.com/assassins-creed-cr...ium=Socialflow

[jsteinhauer]

Originally Posted by Mavrick

Desilets went on to ask the audience, "What is too short?" While it brought chuckles from the crowd at the expense of Cruise, to Desilets the question was all about the length of the gameplay experience. Why, he asked, were games longer 35 hours long when movies are only two hours, and sitcoms less than 30 minutes.

LOL! Sitcoms are virtually free. When I buy a Blu-ray copy of a movie I often get several hours of content for a fraction of the price of a game.

I don't feel very interested in this game from what is described here.

And, if all of those milestones are meant to be episodes, I think it's a very risky venture to try and hold interest for that many gaming episodes. Knowing gamers, they're just going to wait until it's done and buy it at a steep discount or get it free.

[Mavrick]

Some more info

“Let’s tell the story of the ‘the day when’” he said. “[When] we did something unique. The first chapter is about being able to stand up. Let’s tell the story of this new feature. Why did we survive because of it?”

Each episode will spill over into the next providing continuity. One such example of this continuity revolves around the Queen of England.

“The bloodline’s important,” said Désilets. “Well the bloodline goes back until this ape. There is a caveman that is connected to the Queen. You want to become the Queen somehow. That’ll be the goal. That’ll be your family, there will be a link between the big jumps.”

Choices will carry over the bloodlines and history, according to GamesRadar, and it will contain RPGs mechanics such as a “Civilization-style tech tree.” Choosing hunting or herbal upgrade skills, will have a impact on the tribe or family unit created.

[Mavrick]

Been some changes to the game it seems.

ANCESTORS: The Humankind Odyssey Teaser 2017 (Pre-Alpha Footage) - YouTube

Assassin’s Creed creator Patrice Desilets has detailed his new game, Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey, at a live presentation at Reboot Develop in Croatia today. Here’s every significant he said about it:

• The game is no longer episodic as it’s grown too big.
• The game is currently playable but isn’t ready to release anytime soon. Panache does have a date in mind for release so it’s not a “ship when it’s ready” affair.
• “It’s a third-person action adventure game set 10 million to 2 million years ago,” according to Desilets.
• There will be resource management and survival elements.
• The team has discussed cannibalism and whether it should feature in the game as it has in human history.
• On fighting or tribal conflict in the game: “Eventually, maybe, there will be conflict [in the game] but it’s not there yet.”
• The game was originally about playing “hour to hour” when episodic, now it’s “open, bigger” and “has systems working together”.
• The same animator who created Ezio in Assassin’s Creed and the prince in Prince of Persia is working on the characters of Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey.
• A significant part of the game is set in Africa: “the game world is big,” says Desilets, but he’s not keen to spoil too much of the game ahead of the release.
• “It’s the first time I’ve created a character who interacts with the jungle. There are no walls. What’s the light like? I’ve never worked on that before. There’s no sword, no swordfights. Eventually you get a branch…”
• Desilets wants players to “have fun with the toy I’m giving you and you’ll create the story of your ancestors.”
• Desilet’s other project, 1666: Amsterdam is currently on hold while work continues on Ancestors.
• The project is “well funded” and being built by 32 staff at the studio in Montreal. When you work at Panache, no one works on a Monday (!).
• On hiring female staff to work on his game: “If the candidate has a dick he’s not hired. I’m not telling the story of humankind only with guys. It didn’t happen that way. You need to make babies.”
• On the Assassin’s Creed and Prince of Persia movies: “I never participated in them.”

[The Apocalypse]

I really like the idea of this game, it's something I'd pick up when it releases. Glad it's not episodic anymore.

[Leonidas King]

Heartbreaking this game is not getting acknowledged. Let me revive this thread with this:

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey - 101 Trailer Ep. 2: Expand | PS4 - YouTube

[The Apocalypse]

Thanks for that, it seems to have been forgotten among the many others, but there is perhaps not enough publicity at this stage.

[DetroitSportsFan]

I didn’t know anything about it, but I recently saw an ad for it (the video above) on YouTube and it looks impressive.

[Zivouhr]

While searching for new games, I found news on this recently too, but am surprised to see it's been in development since 2015 already. That's crazy it's taking so long, but they must have a tiny team.

It looks interesting. The survival stuff sounds like a chore though, so hopefully there are parameters to reduce the bad effects of not drinking, eating and sleeping. I wonder how large the game is.

When the ape jumps onto a branch, the animation automatically shows leaves falling, even on branches without leaves. But no big deal, since it's a smaller developer.

[Leonidas King]

It's probably my most anticipated game alongside TLoU: Part II.

[MosHighDef]

This shit looks epic! Perfect stony atmosphere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEn3...ature=youtu.be

[Leonidas King]

Always wanted to get it, but never did. I bet it'll be on PS+ sooner than ever