Rayman and Beyond Good & Evil director Michel Ancel gave the world a long look at his new PS4 game Wild at Paris Games Week. What he showed off looks very different from his past games and frankly most games out there.
Wild allows players to become a shaman in a world of cannibals and dangerous animals. The player will control this character from youth to old age and try to protect his people from a variety of dangers. The shaman isn't a warrior so instead he'll have to rely on his power to possess animals. Developer Wild Sheep said at gamescom last year that the game's open-world is the size of Europe.
He'll start out only knowing how to control a few types of animals but can expand his selection over time. There's no set progression path, it seems, so you can decide to possess the animals that suit your playstyle. A stealthy player could learn how to use a small animal like a rabbit that can slip past enemies unnoticed. A less subtle friend might opt to control wolves that can pounce on these enemies.
The gameplay video gives us a brief look at how you can combine these animal skills. The shaman calls down birds to peck at a village of cannibals. While they're distracted, he then rides into the village on a bear to fight them.
This segment also introduces another important aspect of the game: divinities. These powerful animal spirits can grant the shaman special powers but their help won't come cheap. We don't get to find out what the giant serpent lady asks of the player in this trailer but I suspect we're not going to like it.
Wild isn't just a single-player game, though. Ancel indicated that we may get to see Bloodborne-like multiplayer in the game, with players entering each other's games to help or hurt them. Players' appearances will be differentiated in online play by the different abilities they learn because each adds a new tattoo to their body.
There's still plenty we don't know about Wild, including the release window. However, we're interested enough to keep an eye out for new updates on this PS4 exclusive.
