After years of work, the Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey release date is official and it isn't far off. You know, that game from one of the creators of Assassin's Creed where you evolve a clan of hominids from apemen to sorta-humans? It's coming out on PC via the Epic Games store on August 27, 2019, and it will hit PS4 and Xbox One later this year in December.
Ancestors was announced way back in 2015, and it will be the first game Patrice Désilets has seen through to completion since 2010's Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (though he's still planning to get back to Amsterdam 1666 one of these days). Read our extensive Ancestors: Humankind Odyssey hands-on to get a feel for how far the game has come in all those years. This new video also features a brief playthrough with Désilets and shines some new light on the game, including its inventive approach to fear, the most primordial of human feelings.
"Fear is really an important feature of the game," Désilets explains. "You feel fear as soon as soon as you're a baby and you're far away from your clan, but also when you're going to unknown territories. This is done through a system of dopamine. If you have enough dopamine you can go through your fear.
"Now I've got two choices: I can go back, stay in my little paradise. Or I can say no, let's be curious and see what's on the other side of this. And eventually the more knowledge I have about this area, eventually I'll be able to go further, claim this territory, and conquer my fear."
As long as there's a layer of abstraction between you and what's happening on-screen, even the best horror games will never make you feel true, mortal, turn-around-and-run dread. Turning fear into a mechanical limit on your exploration of the unknown is a novel alternative to the usual horror tricks and I'm eager to see how it plays.
Find even more to look forward to throughout the rest of the year and beyond in our list of new games 2019. Or see what's coming up just next week with our latest Release Radar video.
