The last appearance of the game came in the form of a few screenshots shared by creative director Michel Ancel in 2017, following which there’s been complete silence on the matter. The game was unveiled during Gamescom 2014, and the scarcity of information surrounding WiLD does suggest that the project has long been abandoned. Michel Ancel also announced his departure from the industry altogether, further supporting the sentiment.

Ancel was also working on Beyond Good and Evil 2 prior to his departure, which is another Ubisoft project that’s in development hell at the time of writing. Ubisoft claims that progress is being done on the game, but it seems unlikely that fans will get to hear anything about the game anytime soon.

In a rather sudden announcement, Rayman and Beyond Good and Evil creator Michel Ancel has moved on from video games. On Instagram, the former director said he was stopping work on video games to “fully focus on my second passion: Wild Life!” Ancel is currently planning to create an open wildlife sanctuary that will be dedicated to “education, nature lover and wild animals.”

As for how this impacts Beyond Good and Evil 2, which Ancel has been trying to get made for years now, and WiLD, he responded, “No worries, since many months now the teams are autonomous and the projects are going super well. Beautiful things to be seen soon.” Beyond Good and Evil 2 senior producer Guillaume Brunier also provided some new details in an update on the game’s development.

Brunier noted that Ancel “hasn’t been directly involved in BG&E2 for some time now, as the team have been hard at work building on top of the solid creative foundation he helped shape. The team’s collective strength has us well on our way to developing a flagship next-generation action-adventure game.”

The development team has passed an “important internal milestone” that offers “hours of gameplay and an incredible level of freedom in a seamless online sandbox, building upon the promise of our tech demos shown at E3.” Ubisoft Paris, which developed Ghost Recon Breakpoint, has been announced as a partner studio with the development team’s size being ramped up.

“Next milestone: We are aiming to share more and show you the game in action sometime next year, once we pass our next internal production milestones,” said Brunier.

Beyond Good and Evil 2 was first announced at E3 2017 with no platforms confirmed. With Brunier mentioning “next-generation,” it could possibly see a release for PS5 and Xbox Series X. Stay tuned for more details in the meantime.

When you think of WiLD (if you even know what WiLD is at this point), I imagine it comes naturally with the word vaporware in your head. Announced almost 6 years ago from Sony and Wild Sheep Studio and after only minimal footage, it went totally silent. Well, it seems that whether it’s dead or not, someone wanted to share some new concept art.

You can see the new artwork below. All five images were uploaded randomly at the official site, which you can see through here. There’s obviously very little actually here, but the concept art matches the aesthetics for what little we did see in the past. What’s interesting about this, though? It was almost exactly one year ago that the game’s Facebook page randomly became active and posted new artwork. You can read about that through here.

What does any of that mean, if anything? It’s hard to say. At this point, it’s hard to believe the game is still a PS4 title (or at least, an exclusive PS4 game) if it is indeed being worked on. There is at least someone who aims to keep the thought of it alive at least once a year for whatever reason. I guess we can only wait and see.

This is what makes the PS4 exclusive Sony published game WiLD a bit of a concerning situation. WiLD was revealed way back in 2014 at Gamescom and stunned audiences with its vast world, beautiful landscapes, and fairly unique concept. Using the magic of a Neolithic shaman to possess various animals throughout a prehistoric continent is a fascinating concept to be sure, but WiLD seemed to be pushing the idea to some very interesting extremes by giving you complex tasks to accomplish with the various strengths and weaknesses of bears, eagles, rabbits, wolves, and so on. Mixing the tried and true open world format with a fairly unique take on strategy and a fun art direction.

The game was elaborated on even more at the following year’s Paris Games Week, which showed much more of the lavish landscapes and the game being demoed in real time, showing just how in depth it can get if the player decides to play it in a thoughtful way. It was also fairly apparent that the game was fairly far along with its development as it was running quite well. The high point of the demo showed the player using a group of ravens to distract and pester a rival tribe as a precursor to a full-frontal attack from a marauding bear. This cleared the path for the shaman to continue pushing forward to the next area of interest. Since then, more information has come out about WiLD here and there, including some online functionality, and it just seems to get more and more impressive. So, as to the concerning part; we haven’t really seen anything about the game since 2015. Five long years have passed since the enthusiastic marketing campaign began and just simply stopped dead in its tracks. It doesn’t take a marketing genius to see that this probably wasn’t the plan. Somewhere along the line, something, somewhere, has likely gone wrong.

Surely open-world games are a challenge to make and can be rife with issues and unforeseen obstacles. Understanding this, and seeing what an open-world games can require of even the most seasoned development teams behind long-running franchises like Assassin’s Creed or Grand Theft Auto, it’s not too hard to imagine that perhaps Wild Sheep Studio has bit off a bit more than they anticipated chewing. If that is the case, then we could be in for even more of a wait than we’ve already seen.

If you check the developer’s website you will likely learn nothing other than that this game still exists, and if you check PlayStation’s website you’ll see about the same. In fact, even a google search will reveal little more than its mere existence and a handful of tweets poking fun at its notable and extensive hiatus from the gaming conversation. This could mean a few things, but most likely, Wild Sheep is likely working hard with their heads down, trying to overcome whatever issue was encountered around 2015. This could be an adjustment to the art style, a switch to the marketing style, or maybe even a total overhaul of the mechanics in some way, like going from a set predetermined world to a more randomly generated style of development. Something like that might seem like a big reversal this late in the game, but crazier things have happened, and it would explain the silence. Why speak about a project if you’ve largely started from scratch and have nothing to show? This is what many games do when they are in the middle of some sort of overhaul; keep things quiet until there is something to talk about.

Despite all of the relative silence, Michael Ancel, the game’s lead designer, did randomly decide to post some images of the game in early 2017, so that, if anything, can serve as a small indication that things aren’t totally bleak just yet, and the game is still well on its way in its development cycle.

Another theory, and a far more convoluted one, is that Michael Ancel has been pulled away from WiLD to work on another project, Beyond Good and Evil 2; another game that was probably announced too early and has seen its share of disappearances from the limelight. This could potentially have some truth to it as both teams behind these games have close ties to Ubisoft, and perhaps somebody over in the Beyond Good and Evil 2 side of things was willing to write a bigger check than Sony. This could easily cause WiLD to be put on ice for a while, without being cancelled, until Ancel’s work was completed with that game and could return to WiLD. Again, crazier things have happened. If that is the case, then there’s no telling just when WiLD would get back on track, as Beyond Good and Evil has been just as silent for almost just as long.

Something else to consider is that, now that we’re in the year of 2020 and a new round of consoles are on the very near horizon, any game that has been falling behind schedule is wise to consider switching over to those newer consoles, or at least having competent versions available for them. Despite whatever other issues might be or were going wrong with the game, the fact that a Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 version are now being thrown into the mix, either as replacements or as additional versions, is surely going to add some months if not years to the development cycle.

At this point, there’s not much left to speculate on without going far deeper into multiple more layer of assumptions than we already have. All we know is that it’s not cancelled, and we can probably responsibly assume that it won’t be. For a game to exist for this long and not ever release would be a huge loss for all parties involved and that would make very little business sense to anyone. There’s no reason to invest this much time and energy into anything and have it all just add up to a cancellation. Surely that does happen, but odds are that’s not the case here. Likely, it is being worked on diligently by at least some fraction of the team that started it. We just don’t know what aspect of it has caused the trouble or whether or not various personnel issues are related. It could just as easily be some sort of a combination of all of the elements I mentioned above as well. It’s tough to say for sure. All we know for now is that the game is likely on the way despite its various bumps in the road.

It’s been over 5 years now since Sony and Wild Sheep Studio’s announced WiLD, an adventure game for the PlayStation 4 headed by Michel Ancel, creator of Beyond Good and Evil and Rayman. While it did receive a brief gameplay trailer in 2015, it has largely been MIA and not talked about by either party since. It was assumed cancelled, especially since Ancel is now at work with Ubisoft on Beyond Good and Evil 2. But it seems some new life may be coming back, if the game’s social media revival is anything to go by.

The game’s Facebook page had largely been inactive over the last year, with most posts even before that being nothing new for a long time. Out of nowhere, it has seen a revival with new never before seen artwork, which it’s changed to be the page’s cover art. You can check it out here and see the banner art below.

Sony also renewed the trademark for WiLD earlier this year. That in and of itself means little (companies renew trademarks to properties frequently, whether they intend to use them or not), but mix that with this sudden activity- and do we have something here? Only time will tell, but hey, we are living in a world that’s getting a Beyond Good and Evil 2, so anything is possible.

Remember WiLD? The game from Michel Ancel, the creator of Rayman and Beyond Good and Evil, which Sony and Ancel were apparently working on together, until they just… weren’t. The game sort of fell off the face of the earth, we stopped hearing anything about it, and Ancel went on to announce Beyond Good and Evil 2 with Ubisoft, while Sony put out a crap ton of generation-defining games, leading folks to assume that WiLD might be dead.

While that assumption is a reasonable one, it may also be an incorrect one, because apparently, Sony has filed for a renewal of the trademark for WiLD, Gematsu reports on Twitter. Some time ago, Ancel did say that “[they are] working hard on it”, so officially, we had no reason to suspect the project had been silently binned, but I guess this is more evidence, should anyone have wanted it, that Sony, for now, still plans to do something with the IP.

Maybe it will be a PS5 launch title, at this rate.

New trademarks:

WiLD from Sony Interactive Entertainment (trademarked in the US): https://t.co/gloVBvo7rJ – Michel Ancel last said they were "still working hard on it" in July 2018

Bon! Bon! Journey!! from Bandai Namco (trademarked in EU) https://t.co/JJZvq96vAy pic.twitter.com/u6ObB4RzzT

— Gematsu (@gematsu) March 18, 2019

Though Michel Ancel’s Beyond Good and Evil 2 seems to be making a positive step in development (read: Actually being real), this raises questions about WiLD.

The PS4 exclusive is developed by Wild Sheep Studio, a developer that Ancel founded in 2014 and which focuses on open world survival adventure in the Neolithic-era. We haven’t heard a whole lot about it since its PS4 exclusive status was announced in October 2015.

Fortunately, it doesn’t seem that development on WiLD will simply cease. Replying to Instagram followers on the fate of WiLD, Ancel said that the studio is hard at work on the game and fans could expect “strong updates in the coming year”.

Since it’s a PlayStation 4 exclusive, perhaps that could mean more information at PlayStation Experience 2017, which takes place on December 9th to 10th in Anaheim, California. Then again, it could also appear out of the blue at Gamescom or Paris Games Week.

As for Beyond Good and Evil 2, Ancel shared more information on the same in a recent Twitch interview. Check out some of the juicier bits here.

WiLD does not yet have an official release date, though most rumors have circulated around late 2016 at the earliest.

• 1. Development
• 2. Story
• 3. Gameplay
• 4. Characters

Development

WiLD began development in 2014 at Wild Sheep Studio, a company founded by former Ubisoft employee Michel Ancel. The game’s first gameplay trailer was shown off at Gamescom 2014 and another development gameplay trailer was shown at Paris Games Week 2015. At this particular event, Ancel and Wild Sheep Studio some more light on what the game is going to be and how users will be able to interact with the characters.

Shortly after officially unveiling the game, Wild Sheep studios placed ads for a 3D Environment Artist as well as a 3D Character Artist for the game. The studio is adding team members in order to keep working on the game and stay on pace for a release date sooner, rather than later.

Story

There isn’t a great deal known about the actual story of WiLD other than the user is invited to step back in time more than 10,000 years and strive to survive in a vast living world. The game is set during the Neolithic period (6000-500 BC) in a procedurally generated world around the size of Europe. The player takes over the part of a tribe’s shaman and there will likely be quests and missions that will need to be completed in order to continue to survive in this world. There are humans that you can interact with as well as animals that can be summoned as part of the larger story.

Gameplay

The game has a third person point of view as the main character of WiLD. The character has a number of different powers that allow the character to interact with the world around him. Among those powers the shaman has are that animals can be controlled by astral projection/possession. The developers have said that once the character is ‘possessing’ an animal the gameplay moves to the point of view of the controlled creature, and then proceeds using the skills and characteristics of that animal. Smaller animals all the way down to fishes in the rivers and seas can be used to spy on others, while the larger animals can be used to support the player and their tribe in fights with other humans and attacking forces.

The game is said to have a fully interactive environment which means that the world has dynamic weather and seasons and the way a character can interact with the world changes during the different seasons. At the latest presentation, Ancel said players will need to use their instincts and intuition to thrive in a hostile environment that is trying to kill them at every turn. There are going to be aspects that can pose a danger to the character or end providing an important piece of the puzzle when it comes to figuring out how to survive. This goes right down to the plants that are in the game. Some of the plants will be able to revive health and save a character or member of his tribe. Other plants will be extremely poisonous and can lead to almost instant death. Learn how to control living creatures, and venture into your friends’ game worlds to help them survive.

While there is plenty of combat, using a whole host of different approaches, exploration and survival, such as rounding up supplies play a large part as well. During the game’s official unveiling, the development team said players should actually schedule “exploration days.” When it comes to battling other tribes, players will be able to morph into the bodies of animals. Ancel explained that while he wants the game to be grounded in reality, he doesn’t believe something supernatural  is out of place, because the period of time the game is set, “the spirits are a mix of animals and humans, because nature was the most powerful thing on earth.”

Death in the game was covered at the presentation, as the producer explained that when a player is possessing an animal and that animal is killed by an enemy, the spirit of the player will automatically return to the body of the human. If the human is killed in the game, there are going to spawn points where a player can pick up and continue going without much fuss. In this regard the game is set apart from other true survival games like Don’t Starve.

Ancel also said the game is designed to randomly generate a good portion of the world, so the gameplay will be different every time you go to a certain area, no matter how many times a player has been there before.

Characters

During the official reveal of the game, none of the characters were made known specifically, other than the Shaman main character. There are other tribe members who the main character will interact with but they have not been named so far. There are also a number of different animals that will appear in the game, but they haven’t been announced or specifically laid out by the developers.

Note: This wiki will be updated once we have more information about the game

Undoubtedly, Ubisoft’s most talented designer and developer was Michel Ancel, who was responsible for the Rayman franchise, the Rabbids franchise, as well as Beyond Good and Evil. However, his newest game, WiLD, is being developed by his independent studio, in conjunction with Sony, leading many to speculate that maybe he had ended his relationship with Ubisoft. It seems that all of that speculation was wrong.

“It’s very simple,” Ancel told Eurogamer in the wake of his Paris Games Week showing of WiLD on stage during Sony’s press conference. “I’m working half and half – I’m still working at Ubisoft. Here, because it’s my studio, it’s a very special game and I’m trying to do very crazy things on this game. It’s two different things.”

That other game that Ancel refers to- could it possibly be Beyond Good and Evil 2? The sequel to the cult hit action adventure game has been long awaited, long anticipated, and something that has apparently been in development at Ubisoft for a while now. Maybe this game he is referring to is that one?

Whatever it is, it is good to see Ancel is still working with Ubisoft in some capacity, if only because this means I will get to see more good Rayman games.

Rayman and Beyond Good & Evil creator Michel Ancel finally showcased more of his upcoming game WiLD, developed by former Ubisoft Montpelier members as part of Wild Sheep.

WiLD is unlike anything Ancel has created before. Inspired by his youth and traveling in the wilderness, WiLD has you playing as a member of an old tribe, exploring the land and embarking on different experiences. These experiences are inscribed on your character in the form of tattoos, each one signifying the journey you’ve been on. There’s really no limits to where you can go in the world, which is massive and size, and WiLD appears to have its fair share of survival elements as well.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the game looks good at such an early stage.

WiLD will be out exclusively on PS4. What are your thoughts on the gameplay footage? Let us know in the comments below and stay tuned for more information in the coming months.