Assassin's Creed creator Patrice Désilets will bring his open-world expertise to episodic gaming in his next game.

Announced earlier this year, Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey aims to address the issue of what players do between episodic game cycles.

The game's central concept sees players assuming the roles of human beings at key stages of the species' evolution in each episode - the discovery of fire, the domestication of animals, making the first tools, landing on the moon, and so on.

But in between episodes, the player will be left in an open setting in which to play.

"You could call it a mission or a level – we still haven't decided what to call it – but each time we introduce a new feature that is laid with the story of humankind," Désilets told GameInformer. "We're putting a lot of Hollywood stuff in, and then we leave you with a systemic, persistent open world where it becomes Day Z or Minecraft."

Désilets says he wants to go beyond violence wherever possible. "Our ancestors back then weren't that violent. They weren't fighting each other. Cooperation and compassion are really part of the reason why we survived."

"There's no evidence of war before the invention of agriculture on this planet. That doesn't mean they didn't exist, but we've never found any evidence of it."

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey has no release date yet, but a tiny bit more information can be found on the studio's official site.