Assassin’s Creed Creator Announces Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey

The original creator of the Assassin's Creed series has unveiled Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey, an episodic, action-adventure survival game .

Polygon reports that Patrice Desilets, the creator of the Assassin's Creed franchise, has revealed his new studio's debut title. Desilets is known for being the creative lead on Assassin's Creed, Assassin's Creed II and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Desilets revealed that Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey will be the debut game of his new studio, Panache Digital Games. He announced this project alongside a video teaser (featured above) at the Reboot Develop conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia. The teaser doesn't really show much except a timeline of the various scientific breakthroughs of humanity throughout history. Given Desilets' groundbreaking work with Altair, Ezio and the Animus, we might be traveling back in time once again. He mentioned that Ancestors will be much shorter in order to provide a concentrated, AAA experience, questioning why games have to be 35 hours long with a ton of filler when some of the best movies ever made are only 1.5-2 hours.

"After having fought millions of templars, hidden in haystacks, and chased a pope it is time for something new," Desilet's presentation slides said. "For the greatest adventure of all — our own."

Ancestors' trailer mentioned the following milestones of humankind:

• 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
• 1666 - De analysi per aequationes numero terminorum infinitas
• 1091 – First Crusade
• 355 – Fall of the Roman Empire
• 2578 Before Present – Siddhartha Gautama
• 5000 BP – Tartaria Tablets
• 12,000 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

"I believe wholeheartedly that this medium we call 'video games' can be a positive force for change in our society and that AAA quality gaming experiences have unmatched strength to achieve this," Desilets said a few months ago in terms of this mysterious project.

Here's how Panache's official website described Ancestors:

Our first game is Ancestors : the Humankind Odyssey.

Our game is a third person action-adventure survival episodic game.

Through each episodes, we want the player to relive the greatest moments of mankind with a documentary twist. Our civilisation is one idea away from extinction... or evolution.

Stay tuned much more to come in 2015!

Based on Ancestors being an episodic game and Desilet's comments on gameplay length, we're guessing you shouldn't expect anything as ginormous or open world as the Assassin's Creed games. Nevertheless, Desilets' contributions to the series were groundbreaking, despite how much we wish he was still working on the series. We have a feeling we might see some more of The Humankind Odyssey around E3 2015, which is roughly six weeks from now. Unfortunately, no intended consoles or any kind of launch window was revealed for Ancestors.