Patrice Désilets, the creator of the Assassin’s Creed series and director of 1666: Amsterdam, has said he will make a sequel to open-world human evolution survival game Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey.
Désilets, talking to me at a recent 1666: Amsterdam event, said 2019’s Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey was written as a “volume one”. “I’ve designed different volumes to eventually be growing the game,” he said.
I didn’t think he owned the Ancestors franchise – I thought Take-Two’s defunct publishing label Private Division did. However, Désilets replied: “I own the IP. But it’s complex.”
So he could make a sequel if he wanted to. “Yeah,” he confirmed. “I will. I will. And people can believe me because I’m ready to wait 16 fucking years to finish what I started [with 1666 Amsterdam]; I finish what I started.”
Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey was an imaginative concept, a game that charted humankind’s evolution from primate into upright walking human, across millions of years of time. As a player, you survived through different eras of third-person action survival gameplay, as the game lurched millions of years through time.
We liked the idea though not so much the execution. “Ancestors is ambitious and clunky and not much fun,” wrote Donlan in his Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey Eurogamer review, “and it’s often quietly thought-provoking too.” But despite its clunkiness, Ancestors managed to find a sizeable audience, selling 2m copies as of April 2024.
However, Ancestors was really a stepping-stone to Désilets’ long-held ambition to make a dark Amsterdam-based open-world adventure in 1666: Amsterdam. The idea had been knocking around for a long time but was redesigned in COVID lockdown and entered production shortly after.
And again, 1666: Amsterdam is imaginative, but again, the execution is uneven, as Donlan elaborated on in his 1666: Amsterdam early access review. There is also a side of gen-AI-helped controversy to be aware of.
Crucially, 1666: Amsterdam is not finished yet. This is an early access release and there’s “less than half” in the game of what Désilets wants. The Steam page for 1666: Amsterdam estimates early access will take “approximately a year”, but also: “It is difficult to accurately predict precisely how long early access will last.”
To me, Désilets said: “The toughest part is done. Now it’s all about production and making – we would say ‘the poutine’.” It took several years to get to this point, but now the groundwork is laid. “Now it’s all about ‘let’s make pizzas’,” he said, by way of a reference.
More importantly: “We have a plan,” he said. “That’s important. We have a plan. We have stuff we want to make, there’s space for comeback from the community in the plan, but it could go on forever at the same time. That’s not the main plan; you’ll have a 1.0 version.”
It’s also worth noting that 1666: Amsterdam currently sits at a “mixed” reception on Steam with only 720 reviews, suggesting it hasn’t found a large or very receptive audience yet. Whatever Ancestors sequel there may be, then, not only has to wait until this game is finished, but may also depend on if it succeeds.
