The Game Awards 2018 has had plenty of reveals, including brand new gameplay footage of Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey. It’s an open-world survival single-player game from former Assassin’s Creed designer Patrice Desilets and the team at Panache Digital Games which tells the story of millions of years of evolutionary history in Africa. You’ll be seeing the evolution of apes that led to humankind as you play through the Earth’s past.
Environmental diversity is one of the big features as you explore the jungles and savannahs of Africa while surviving the harsh ecosystems and fighting off predators. You’ll take part in multiple generations of human ancestry from the early apes to Lucy, the closest and earliest relative of humans.
Panache was started in 2014 and Ancestors is the team’s first project. It first surfaced in 2015 and had more revealed in 2017, and now its set for a 2019 release. In the video above, you can see the gameplay trailer shown at The Game Awards. Here on GameSpot, we’ll have an exclusive extended look at the game in which you can see it in action following the conclusion of The Game Awards.
Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast announced a new esports program for Magic: The Gathering at The Game Awards 2018.
The program, which is coming in 2019, includes a $10 million prize bool across digital and tabletop Magic contests, with a $1 million Mythic Invitational at PAX East 2019. The Magic Pro League (MPL) will establish a “new level of professional play” with 32 of the top ranked magic players worldwide. MPL players are offered play and streaming contracts worth $75,000, and members will play in weekly match-ups on Magic: The Gathering Arena.
The Mythic Champion events are new flagship competitions for Magic: The Gathering Arena and tabletop Magic, which feature MPL players battling against challengers from the Magic community. More details on how players can enter and climb the ranks to battle these MPL players will be revealed in 2019.
PUBG is getting its first 6×6 map, the snowy Vikendi, as well as a new assault rife and brand new Snowmobile.
Announced at The Game Awards, Vikendi is filled with snow, meaning players fighting for their chicken dinner will have to pay attention to their footprints as they trek through the wintry new map, as they can potentially lead others to their location.
Vikendi will be available tonight on PC Test Server, and will launch on PC Live Server on December 19.
Xbox One and PlayStation 4 owners will be able to try out the new map in January 2019.
Atlas, the next game from the developers of ARK: Survival Evolved, was announced tonight during The Game Awards.
The open-world survival MMO will be released on PC via Steam on December 13, before coming to Xbox One in 2019 through Microsoft’s Xbox Game Preview program.
Atlas is developed by Grapeshot Games, a sister studio of ARK developer Studio Wildcard.
Grapeshot Games describes Atlas as a “fantasy pirate adventure,” promising shipbuilding, sailing, PvP battles, exploration, a vast skill tree, and a wide variety of creatures ranging from shoulder-mounted parrots to “gigantic sea monsters of legend.” The developer also claims Atlas will support up to 40,000 players simultaneously.
After teasing an announcement coming sometime in December, BioWare took the wraps off of its next Dragon Age game during The Game Awards. A brief teaser trailer showed some slow pans across artifacts, and a hashtag that likely hints at a central story figure. It said, “The Dread Wolf Rises.”
The teaser was so brief it’s hard to glean much more from it, but with the announcement official, BioWare is likely to be starting up the promotional cycle and sharing more details. The last Dragon Age game, Dragon Age Inquisition, won the top honor of Game of the Year at 2014’s Game Awards. The tagline “The Dread Wolf Rises” is likely a reference to Fen’Harel the elven god of betrayal in the Dragon Age universe.
BioWare had been teasing a Dragon Age related announcement in the lead up to the show and, as of late, had been hinting at the future of the franchises that many of its fans have come to love. Along with Dragon Age, the studio has said it is working on the future of Mass Effect.
However, its next major release is Anthem, a sci-fi action RPG in which players take control of Freelancers, equipped with mech suits called Javelins. Anthem is set for release on PS4, Xbox One, and PC on February 22, 2019, but there will be two opportunities to play a demo of the game before then. You can find out more about Anthem’s upcoming demos here.
There have been a number of other big announcements from the show. You can get caught up on everything by reading our full roundup of all The Game Awards news.
Ashen is now available for download. The Xbox console exclusive is a part of Game Pass, so members can download the indie title for free.
First announced at E3 2015, no news for the game came out until its E3 2017 trailer. We saw the game at E3 2018 and enjoyed our time with it. The game’s developers, A44, promised the game would release prior to the end of 2018, but with only a few weeks left in the year, many thought the game might be delayed to 2019.
The indie action RPG takes inspiration from both Dark Souls and Journey to create a challenging combat experience that’s also relationship driven. Fans of Soulsborne games will feel right at home with Ashen’s stamina-focused combat, and the in-game world is inhabited by NPCs and players alike in a shared world, much like Journey.
Click To Unmute
Ashen – E3 2015 Announcement Trailer
Fortnite – Dance On Top Of A Crown of RVs/Metal Turtle/Submraine (Season 7, Week1)
You can commune with other players nonverbally in Ashen to get to out-of-reach areas and explore the world, as well as work together to take on the game’s difficult bosses. The launch of Ashen adds another console exclusive to Xbox One’s game library in a year that didn’t see all that many. The title is X-enhanced for Xbox One.
The Game Awards are going on right now, and there are plenty of announcements to go with the awards being handed out. You can watch the show right now, and be sure to stay tuned to GameSpot for our coverage of the event. We’ll be compiling all the announcements in one place at the end of the show, so if you happen to miss anything, we have you covered.
Tonight at The Game Awards, Ark: Survival Evolved developer Studio Wildcard announced a new game. Atlas, as it’s called, is an open-world survival MMO. It’s launching next week on PC, with a console version coming in 2019 through the Xbox One Game Preview program.
Atlas reportedly supports 40,000 concurrent players; and in terms of map size, it’s 1,200 times the size of an Ark server, the developers said. There are numerous different biomes in Atlas, including desert, tundra, and polar regions. You’ll encounter a series of animals ranging from regular livestock as well as mythological creatures.
Atlas will offer naval battles. The overall aim in Atlas is to build an armada, claim territory, and dominate the world. You can check out the announcement trailer above.
Hello Games, the developer behind No Man’s Sky and Joe Danger, has announced a smaller title called The Last Campfire at The Game Awards 2018.
The Last Campfire is described as an adventure, telling the story of a lost Ember searching for meaning and a way home. It’s said to be filled with lost folk, strange creatures and mysterious ruins set in a beautiful wilderness. The trailer shows the player walking, rowing and climbing on their journey home.
The developer is calling it a “Hello Games Short,” which, much like a Pixar short film, is designed to foster creativity and strengthen new voices within the studio on smaller titles. In this case, the creatives behind LostWinds joined Hello Games to create this passion project.