poisonous? You’ll need to eat it to find
out. Is there fruit in these trees? Climb
up and see. Is this cave a safe place
to sleep? Settle in for the night and
get ready to run if you hear a growl...
As you explore, learn and adapt,
your apes grow new neural pathways
in the game’s unique take on a skill
tree. The abilities you earn seemmundane at first, but they’re the
building blocks of transforming from
beasts into men. One of your first
unlocks is the motor skills required
to pass an object from one hand to
another. It seems a humble action,
but it allows you to hold a stick in your
left and strip the branches off with
your right, creating a crude spear. Now
you’re working with tools, monkey boy.Gorilla tactics
As your clan develops, you’ll be able
to play successive, more advanced
generations, even evolving into new
species and eventually homo sapiens
over the course of its 8 million year
runtime. (Don’t worry, it’ll only take you
about 50 hours in real time, we’re told.)
But new forms bring new challenges.
As resources dwindle and your clan
expands, you’ll be forced to explore
new biomes and ways of surviving,
coming down from the relative safety
of the trees and learning to walk the
harsh savannahs.
The game even represents the
effects of your fear of the unknown,
desaturating your screen and filling
the edges with hallucinatory predators
as you range far from home. It’s here
that the age of each ape becomes
important – children are easily
frightened, and though adults are your
strongest, healthiest clan members,
it’s your seen-it-all-before elders who
are bravest at leading the way.
We’d expect no less ambition
from lead designer Patrice Désilets- after all, he is the original creator
of Assassin’s Creed. By bringing his
flair for the historical all the way back
to pre-history, he’s brought us what
promises to be one of the year’s most
unique gaming experiences. Q
Are you really smarter than the apes
that came before you? Ancestors:
The Humankind Legacy sends you 10
million years back in time to find out,
putting you in control of a clan of pre-
human missing links and challenging
you to keep them alive long enough
for them to evolve into... well, us.
While you play as one ape at a time,
you’re free to switch between any
member of your hairy family at will.
If one dies, you simply move on to
another – but if they all die, you’ll have
to start all over again. In other words,
this is a survival game where you have
to keep your whole species alive.
Without prescribed objectives,
story missions or even a map, you’re
left to simply experiment as our real
ancestors had to. Is this mushroomYou wouldn’t think it from its 8 million year time frame and ambitious open world, but the game is being made by a team of just 35 developersBELOW Skills are
unlocked in your
‘neuronal
network’
reactively based
on how you play.
Ancestors:
The Humankind
Odyssey
Monkeying around
Robin Valentine
PUBLISHER PRIVATE DIVISION
DEVELOPER PANACHE DIGITAL GAMES
ETA DECEMBER“You’ll be
forced to
explore new
biomes and ways
of surviving”
PREVIEW
More Xbox news at gamesradar.com/oxm THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 033