ANCESTORS: THE HUMANKIND ODYSSEY May Be Unique and Pretty, But It Drives Me Insane
Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is a very unique game from Patrice Désilets and Panache Digital Games. It is a game that explores human evolution. The game became available on PC via the Epic Games Store last week, and I’ve had the luck to give it a go. If you want to play the game on PS4 or Xbox, it will be available December 2019.
As I mentioned before, Ancestors is very unique. It has a lot of ideas thrown into it, and they can work, but it can also be very aggravating to try to figure things out. My first frustration was that the game recommends you use a controller, but my controllers wouldn’t work with it. I was using some wired Nintendo Switch Pro controllers that work beautifully on Steam, but I guess Epic hasn’t sorted them out yet (I’m guessing it has more to do with the store/launcher and less with the game). This meant that I had to play with a mouse and keyboard which most PC players I know prefer anyway. While this worked, I did find it annoying that the game tells you every time you start it that you should really use a controller and will sometimes use the controller buttons to guide you instead of the keyboard equivalent.
Once you’re in the game and have controls that work, you can then choose if you want a tutorial or not and if you even want a HUD. I opted for both since I was brand new to the game. The tutorial is a bit of a mess in my opinion. It tells you the bare minimum controls and at no point is anything about your goal really explained. Throughout the tutorial and in the game descriptions and such everything says that it’s designed to not have a specific way to play the game and that the goal is to carry on and evolve. The problem is that they never fully explain how to evolve, they don’t fully explain what the purpose of many mechanics are for, and they do not give you any tips about how to do anything besides move and activate your intelligence and senses. This got really frustrating really fast as everything is trial and error and when you get something wrong, you find out in a guide later that you just didn’t do it enough times.
An example of no explanation given when it would be nice is grooming. You can groom your fellow hominids in order to grow bonds that will in theory let you mate and evolve (my guys kept dying as they explored). When you groom, you’re picking out fleas and what not, but if you don’t release the button for grooming at the right time, you get elbowed in the face. I thought everyone was just being pissy until I accidentally let go at the right time (there are clicks to indicate when to stop) and a bonding meter showed up. Then, I experimented with a few things to see if I could improve the efficiency, and I swear it was sometimes better and sometimes worse, but I couldn’t figure out what adjusted how well you bonded.
One feature that I still don’t know how to do right is dodging. It says to press the button and then release it “at the right moment” to dodge, but I cannot figure out what that ideal time is, mostly because the camera goes crazy when your hominids are scared.
Now, I will say this, a lot of these problems I have are not simply things that weren’t thought of. They are deliberate design choices. They tell you straight up that they won’t hold your hand on everything. I want to applaud them for not holding our hands and for giving more freedom to players. However, I feel like they could’ve given us a tiny bit more or given us a manual where we can learn more.
Ancestors is a pretty game (albeit not the prettiest). It also gets points for being unique and for being the most free and open game that I have played. You can try to do whatever you want. There’s a lot of room for experimentation. I know a lot of people will love this game. However, I got extremely frustrated at a lot of simple things and feel lost and aimless throughout the game. Sure, I can go over to explore a new piece of land, but why? The game gives you a lot of prompts to do things and after doing them I just have to ask why did I do that? What purpose does that mechanic serve? Sadly, the answer is always no answer and that drives me insane more than anything.
