Patrice Desilets grounds his games in the past. That has been the video game developer’s calling card.
His most famous work, “Assassin’s Creed,” was essentially historical fiction with an appealing sci-fi shell. The project ended up being Ubisoft’s flagship franchise and led to a long line of sequels. Since then, he has moved on and started Panache Digital Games in Montreal. The first title from this fledgling studio aligns with his M.O.
“Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey” also delves into history, but Desilets takes that concept to the extreme. He drops players 10 million years in the past as they take control of an early hominid. Players have to make sure this ancient ancestor thrives in the wild and evolves.
It’s a fascinating exercise in survival. Ideally, the player will go into the campaign knowing the bare minimum, and they’ll have to use their personal knowledge to guide the creatures to become more human. The goal of “Ancestors” is to evolve the hominids faster than science, and the game tracks progress with every feat, neuronal advancement and offspring. There will be plenty of experimentation as players figure out how to make tools with rocks and dead branches.
The player’s learning process reflects the struggles that the hominids likely had as they tried to negotiate their environment. Players have to realize that these creatures were more beast than man initially. They couldn’t do things such as hold items with two hands or eat meat. They couldn’t even walk on two feet for longer than a few seconds.
Players can change that by experimenting with the environment, repeating positive actions and having children. The last part is important because offspring is how the hominids retain their advancements in “Ancestors.” That’s visualized through a neuronal map that acts as a skill tree, showing abilities that make the characters more human. Children let players retain key pieces of knowledge as players move from one generation to the next.
All that leads to an evolutionary leap, which players activate once they fulfill certain criteria such as feats, the birth of kids and certain neuronal upgrades. The shift takes players forward thousands of years and puts them in a new environment. The jump also activates mutations that randomly emerge in the young. The process is akin to entering a time machine and emerging in a different era.
Players will have to adjust to the new locale and situation. Sometimes they’ll be in a precarious position trapped between a saber-tooth tiger and giant snakes. They’ll have to set up structures such as walls and create sharpened sticks for defense. Other times, they’ll have to look for a settlement in a cave because the starting position offers no shelter from the rain.
The evolutionary leap can be a way to save a lineage if players are having a rough time. I was in a situation where saber-tooth tiger ate five family members, and with my prospects looking dim, I jumped forward and reset the scenario. In another incident, I grew bored with my clan — we were thriving — and I hit the leap to mix everything up. Through the campaign, players have to keep in mind that any time their lineage is wiped out the game is over.
Although it’s a compelling scenario, “Ancestors” is plagued with the same issues that Desilets had with other titles — namely the control scheme. It’s comparable to “Assassin’s Creed” and suffers from the same problems when it comes to jumping. It never feels accurate or natural. The other issue is that the controls aren’t intuitive and feel shoe-horned in. That awkwardness shows up in combat, which took me a while to figure out. It’s not explained well and can be frustrating.
The other major flaw is that the evolutionary pace goes so slow that it becomes monotonous. Admittedly, the process is supposed to be slow and gradual in reality but “Ancestors” isn’t a rigid simulation. Panache took liberties with the science to make it more of a game with plants healing lacerations and certain vegetation being able to protect against bone-breaking falls. The team even recycled environments during leaps and it left the same structures and materials that should have disappeared in the time span.
Part of the reason that players will see the same environments twice is that evolution is onerous. Players will need to constantly churn out offspring and push for evolutionary leaps to advance the campaign. Frankly, it takes too long to advance the species.
Despite that, “Ancestors” has an addictive quality to it. The game will draw comparisons to survival titles like “The Forest,” but the project feels closer to the “Civilization” series. Because it’s based on scientific research, the game feels grounded in reality like Sid Meier’s creation. In many ways, it acts as a prequel to the epic strategy title, one that zooms in so close to the action that players are in the dirt. Panache just needs to find a way to speed up the pacing so that players feel that sense of progress and discovery without that punishing grind.
‘Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey
2½ stars out of 4
Platform: PC, a console release is planned in 2020
Rating: Teen
