Assassin’s Creed creator announces new game, Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey

Patrice Désilets, twice formerly of Ubisoft and the creator of Assassin’s Creed, has revealed the latest game he is working on with his studio, Panache Digital Games. Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey doesn’t sound too far astray from his blockbuster franchise with Désilets hyping it as a third-person action adventure survival game doused in stories of mankind throughout the history of civilization.

Yup, we’re going back in time again with Patrice Desilets. When last we checked in with him, he had filed lawsuit against Ubisoft over his game 1666: Amsterdam, another game based in history, but Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey believes that one year with Rembrandt is simply not enough. The studio claims it will allow gamers to “relive the greatest moments of mankind with a documentary twist.”

“Our civilization is one idea away from extinction… or evolution,”

Gematsu has compiled a list of human events that was shown in a trailer at Reboot Develop in Croatia. No release date or platforms were mentioned, but the game will be released episodically.

• 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
• 1091 – First Crusade
• 355 – Fall of the Roman Empire
• 2578 BP – Siddhartha Gautama
• 5000 BP – Tartaria Tablets
• 10,000 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

Désilets further commented on how he plans to take Panache Digital Games forwards, focusing on short AAA-like experiences that won’t be crippled with the risks that come with an enormous budget.

“The first thing we want to create is Tom Cruise. Why? Because Tom Cruise is believable. He’s believable in a wheelchair. Or when he falls down from a skyscraper, or when he’s mad on a phone. So if I want to create believable situations in games, I need that actor.

And these days in triple-A everything has been done. You can’t create this new mechanic like you used to, and hope that will be enough. If you start to feel like, ‘oh man, everything has been done,’ you need that actor.

We’re at a crossroads. In fact we’re always at a crossroads. Don’t do what was popular last year. Blockbusters won’t die. Triple-A won’t die. They will transform and change themselves.”

He wants to challenge the definition of game length, and also speaks a lot about about what makes a game too short.

“We need a revolution of the subject matter. We can’t always talk about the same thing all over again. There’s other subject matter out there that we should attack. It cannot always be about space marines. I’d eventually like to make games with a cultural point of view. I’d like to make a game that takes place in Croatia, for example. I’m tired of games about San Francisco and New York. The core, which is game design, has no language barrier.”