Patrice Désilets newest project, Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey, is a weird one to describe. After action filled hits like Prince of Persia and Assassin’s Creed, the director has turned his eye toward a more episodic approach in a new game that explores the milestones of our species, revisiting events that have wholly changed our history, often in radical ways. Newton’s manuscript on infinite numbers, the introduction of modern medicine and penicillin use, even our migration out of Africa and first tools, taking us all the way back 5 million years into the past and visits our divergence as a singular species.
This will mark the first game out of Désilets’ new studio, Panache Digital Games and describes the project as wanting “the player to relive the greatest moments of mankind with a documentary twist. Our civilisation is one idea away from extinction… or evolution."
At the Reboot Develop conference in Croatia, Désilets explained how the Panache team has focused on delivering a believable character and pivotable casting was in this process, "The first thing we want to create at Panache is [an actor like] Tom Cruise, 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."
That said, we haven’t seen any actual gameplay so far, so it’s hard to judge just what direction this game will take, but Désilets did explain that every choice that is made by the player will give a butterfly effect that can dramatically impact the tribe or family unit the character is born into. This is definitely an ambitious project and Désilets promises more details will be revealed as the year goes on.
A release window has not been announced, nor have platforms, as yet.
