Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey's new trailer emphasizes crafting your own evolution story

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is one of the more intriguing games coming out this year, and it just got a new trailer. Well, sort of. It's actually more of a developer pitch with snippets of gameplay in between the talking. Still, the video sheds some much-needed light on Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey's narrative structure, which looks to be rather fluid and unique to each player's experience.

Patrice Désilets, known for serving as creative director for the first three Assassin's Creed games, is now in charge of adapting the story of human evolution to the third-person survival video game format. Désilets provides commentary over the new Ancestors trailer and emphasizes how individual playing styles can shape the trajectory of the story, specifically your skill tree and what he calls your "neuronal system."

"Every single experience will be different because your path to the next species is your own, and depends on what you're doing. I decided to kill the warthog. I managed to do it; I knew how. But the game didn't tell me, so right now it is my own little story of how we became omnivorous." Wait, so you can choose whether or not humans are omnivorous? Whoa.

Désilets also broke down the Generations mode, where you can take your character forward many years into the future to see your ancestors progress through their lives, from childhood to old age. It's certainly an intriguing system and one I'll be interested to see play out when the game launches later this month on PC.

Hyped for Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey? So are we, plus these other games coming in 2019 and beyond.

Jordan Gerblick

After scoring a degree in English from ASU, I worked as a copy editor while freelancing for places like SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG on the side. Now, as GamesRadar's west coast Staff Writer, I'm responsible for managing the site's western regional executive branch, AKA my apartment, and writing about whatever horror game I'm too afraid to finish.