Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey

[lupinator]

Pisałem kiedyś o nowo powstałym studiu Panache - teraz przyszedł czas na zwiastun ich pierwszego projektu. Na razie w bardzo wstępnej wersji, ale dotykają tak dziewiczej dzisiaj tematyki, że nie można im nie założyć tematu. Wydane cyfrowe w epizodach, bo studio jest małe i składa się z ludzi, którzy odeszli z Ubisoftu. Założyciel pracował przy PoP: Sands of Time i trzech pierwszych Assassinach.

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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.

Tematyka jest przegenialna, nie wiem dlaczego jeszcze żadne wielkie studio się za to nie zabrało porządnie.

[lupinator]

• 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.”

[Iras]

• 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.

Nakimushi?!

[lupinator]

Wygląda to fatalnie Widziałem dluższe fragmenty gameplayu i po prostu nie da się na to patrzeć. Grafikę jeszcze można przeboleć, ale praca kamery i ANIMACJA - poziom dna. Straszny zawód

[POK]

Pomysł ciekawy, ale raczej nic dobrego z tego nie wyjdzie.