Every human on Earth can trace their lineage back to a single ancestor who lived in Africa about 60,000 years ago, and now it looks like someone is going to make a game about that.
Noted game designer Patrice Desilets revealed a teaser trailer for his new game Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey today. The video starts with a Charles Darwin quote before opening up on Africa 10 million years ago. We then get several quick shots of animals before we see a primate sneaking around the jungle and jumping from tree to tree. The teaser doesn’t show anything beyond that, but between the Darwin quote, the title, and the missing-link imagery in the game’s logo, it seems obvious that Desilets is looking to explore the origin of humanity.
Desilets started making Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey at his Panache Studios after leaving Ubisoft for the second time. Desilets oversaw the Assassin’s Creed franchise through the release of the third game in that series, but then he left to pursue other projects. That led him to THQ to star work on a game called 1666: Amsterdam. But Ubisoft acquired the rights to that game and Desilets’ THQ studio in the fallout of the THQ bankruptcy. And then Ubisoft cut ties with its former director and canceled development of 1666.
Following his ouster from Ubisoft, Desilets promised to fight to get the rights to 1666 back, which he eventually did after working out an agreement with Ubisoft. That project is on hold while Panache works on Ancestors, which it began developing while Desilets and his lawyers battled with the Assassin’s Creed company.
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Ancestors is approaching release, which will mark the first Desilets game since Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood — although 2009’s Assassin’s Creed II is the last time he was the creative lead on a game. That’s a long time to go without releasing a game, and it makes Ancestors an especially curious upcoming release because who doesn’t want to see what’s next from the person who launched a thousand Assassin’s Creed games?
