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With eight core games under its belt as of last year's Unity, Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed series has become an annual event, and one of the most successful game franchises out there. Over the course of those games, players have leaped across the canals of Renaissance Venice, swashbuckled across the Caribbean, and scaled Notre Dame cathedral while the French Revolution unfolds below. While the Assassin's Creed series certainly isn't perfect, it deserves huge credit for taking players to times and places few games bother to explore.

Patrice Désilets created the Assassin's Creed series and served as creative director the first two installments of the franchise. When Désilets left Ubisoft in 2010, many wondered what would be next for him. AC 2 was an outstanding game that built upon the strengths of the flawed first game and improved on virtually every one of its weaknesses. The thought of what Désilets might create after applying all the knowledge and lessons learned from Assassin's Creed was exciting indeed. Now the French Canadian game designer has given the world a first look at his next project, entitled Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey.

While delivering a keynote speech at the Reboot Develop conference in Croatia, Désilets debuted the above teaser for Ancestors, which is being described as a "third person action-adventure survival episodic game." The cryptic video doesn't give much of a feel for what to expect from Ancestors, but does suggest it will continue Assassin's Creed's fascination with various historical eras and turning points of civilization. The footage tracks backwards from modern day, marking noteworthy moments such as the discovery of the Higgs Boson in 2013 and the Wright Brothers' first flight in 1903. And it just keeps going, past the fall of Rome, beyond early man's expansion out of the African cradle, all the way back to the so-called "missing link," some 5 million years ago. Clearly, whatever Ancestors is, it won't lack scope.

Ancestors will be the first game from Désilets' Panache Digital Games, and Panache's website already has a small section dedicated to the project. The site doesn't provide much more detail than the teaser, but it does say, "through each episode, 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." Combined with the "action-adventure survival" description, it sounds like Ancestors might take Assassin's Creed's addictive exploration of real history and jettison all the science fiction claptrap – which, let's face it, has never been that series' most enjoyable part anyway.

Prior to Ancestors, Désilets was actually working again with Ubisoft on a project entitled 1666. Described as  "the new Assassin's Creed," the game was shelved by Ubisoft after an ignominious split between the developer and Désilets in 2013. Interestingly, 1666 is one of the dates that appears in the Ancestors teaser video. While Ancestors definitely appears to be something brand new, there's no way that inclusion is a coincidence. In the context of the video, the date appears to be referring to a mathematical work of Isaac Newton.

Panache's website says to expect lots more information about Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey later this year.

Source: AGB Videos