Quick Look: Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey

This game seems crazy. Very excited for this Quick Look.

Heard about this in Beastcast. Looking forward to this

The baby he comforted was the baby he played as at the beginning of the game. His mission was to go find the missing child.

"it's a neuron something or other" yeah dan's definitely the guy to take the lead on this game

*plays as a lost child monkey hiding from predators, cut to larger monkey, tooltip reads FIND LOST MONKEY BABY* "so now that's me, i'm older now."

Not even ten minutes.

Aw damn, Epic exclusive.

This looks crazy weird in a good way.

This feels like a game that is best experienced or played in quiet, patient style, reading the text on the screen and paying close attention to what's happening. I can see that being super-frustrating for a lot of people, but I find myself being intrigued. Intrigued enough to want to buy? Dunno. But this opaque and detail oriented approach feels refreshing and worth considering.

not the gd egg thing again, no...

Between Ape Out and this, 2019 is looking like the year of the "monkey."

a game fpr smart ppl

I don't understand, where are the multicolored bananas?

This honestly looks pretty cool and I also kind of want to play Tokyo Jungle.

I feel like all of the things that didn't work at the start of the video were because Dan understandably forgot that you have to go rescue the baby that you hide as during the very beginning of the game. In the very least it would've stopped that screeching. Its a tutorial and probably the most linear section of the game from what I've seen.

This QL was kinda frustrating.

Now I can see why tutorials are so dumbed down these days. Halo would be an epic 1000 hour game if they didn't tell you which light to look at.

Wow .. so they just create educational software that lies to kids? Everyone knows the earth is only 6000 years old, carbon dating is inconclusive, dinosaurs rode on noahs ark and man was created by God not that we slipped in some primordial ooze and started swinging nunchakus and launching pizzas from our sewer vans but ... I guess it IS just a video game so why not take some creative liberties, like making up an origin story when we already have the whole story DOCUMENTED in what is called a "biblio".

What's next? Kerbal space program 2 going to try to tell me the world isn't flat?

"I was probably supposed to do that a long time ago."

"I have not seen this before."

GOD DAMMINT DAN!

Dan leading a quick look on evolution.

*Chef's kiss*

Dan doing some monkey business...

Oh this is just a DK64 rip-off.

Despite Dans best efforts to sabotage anyone's enjoyment of this Quick Look, I very much want to play this!

Is the point of a quick look to show off a game or to figure out how to play the game?

At 26:55 Dan said, "Dude, I've played like 8 hours of this game and I don't know."

Can you please just continue to play this every week and listen to Dan explain evolution. I can't get enough of this...

I try not to post this too often (please don't look at my post history!), but GB East's PC Quick Looks are, again, back to limited HDMI levels (16-235).

The limited HDMI levels coupled with YouTube compression and this particular game's color palette make this a hard watch.

Man. I studied evolutionary biology and ecology in college and work as a wildlife biologist now - 10 mins into this quick look plus what I've heard discussed on podcasts and I already know this game is *extremely* my shit. Really wish it was coming to console same time as PC... don't think my Macbook could handle it and December's a long ways away haha damnit!

"I can try to have some monkey sex" - Dan Ryckert

Patrice Desilets finally shipping a game is a momentous event in and of itself.

Wait. If evolution takes tens of millions of years then how come intelligent species evolve from nothing in only 50,000 years according to Mass Effect?

The point of the Quick Looks has always been to see a game from one of the staff's perspective. If that includes still trying to figure out how things work, then so be it.

PSA: There is a help menu accessible from the pause menu that explains a lot of the confusion encountered in this QL. Including what the "minimap" thing is.

@max_cherry: From what I remember the species (asari, turian, human, salarian, etc.) that have fully evolved (intelligence, space travel, etc.) by the time the ME trilogy takes place were not starting from primordial ooze at the start of those 50,000 years after the protheans were extinguished. In other words, early humans/neanderthals were present and evolving when the protheans were the dominant species and were not advanced enough to be considered for the reapers' objective (same with all the other species - Javik mentions salarians being little frog-like things that lick their eyeballs when protheans were around). ME1 has some material suggesting protheans and reapers both were monitoring early humans on Earth as well.

No wonder Dan has difficulty understanding the game if he can miss the first objective. The game looks so interesting. I am definitely going to try it!

To clear up the confusion from this game:

Dan ignored the tutorial quest pop up at the start of the game when he was switched to an adult (it's not a timeskip). The first thing you do is rescue the child from the hiding spot, once you complete this quest it unlocks all the features that dan said were not functioning.

He randomly stumbles across the child's hiding spot about 30 mins later and comforts it out of hiding. This is why everyone is confused about there being 2 children. The cutscene at the tribe's home is shown because he completed the tutorial quest. This gave him access to the neuron skill tree which he tried so many times to access earlier.

@lesliemagnafuzz: But, I thought the Reapers wiped out “all organic life” which would include every thing from intelligent species to even bacteria. Their must be a log explaining this accelerated evolution somewhere in the Mass Effect trilogy.

I hate how the staff would rather remain ignorant than actually learning something. Stop being lazy or just call them simians.
And a lot of confusion can be solved by just reading the screen, IDK why this is a constant problem for Giant Bomb but it's really annoying.

I'm an ape man.

yuuuup

real strong ODE (old dan energy) in this QL

This game looks incredibly interesting and unique.

And that it is 100% wasted on Dan and he will get NOTHING out of playing it.

Dan: admits he doesn't know the difference between apes and monkeys

Abby & Vinny: pretty clearly lay out a guideline to differentiate between them (tail/no tail)

Dan: "okay, so they're probably apes"

Dan not five seconds later: "well, I'm gonna say monkey"

I think it's "all advanced organic/sentient life" and none of the species that play a role in the trilogy were advanced (which likely means space travel and/or ability to reach the citadel) enough when the protheans were wiped out 50,000 yrs prior.

That deck about legs breaking had me burst out laughing. Well done, Abby (I assume)!

It's a cool concept and I'm glad it tries to show evolution happening in context.

The understanding of the subtlety and progression of evolution is something that is often missing from the way people conceptualise it (i.e. the slightly improved metabolism in the next generation along as a mechanic). Genetic babysteps on the road to evolution.

Looks cool, I'll be getting it when it's no longer an epic exclusive. Thanks for the quick look guys.

Love Dan, but he is not the right choice for this QL

This is totally a Drew game, if he was still around

Why Dan though???

mmmmmm, milk eggs.

Oh cool, I didn't know they would drop the second episode of "Burgle my BANANAS" so soon.

@faux_x:

He's the one that has been playing this.