WiLD is an upcoming open world survival game that is being developed by Wild Sheep Studio and published exclusively for the PS4 by Sony. The game is set in a prehistoric world (suggested to be 6000-500 BC) and has a number of fantastic aspects such as dealing with gods, animals and prehistoric man. The game is being produced by Michel Ancel who is a veteran of the video game industry and best known for his work in the Rayman series and Beyond Good & Evil.
WiLD does not yet have an official release date, though most rumors have circulated around late 2016 at the earliest.
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.
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 and gods that can be summoned as part of the larger story.
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 but will also be able to call up powerful nature-gods. Ancel explained that while he wants the game to be grounded in reality, he doesn’t believe something supernatural like these gods are 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.” The producer added doing something like this will come with a price and summoning a god could mean sacrificing a member of your tribe.
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.
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 and actual nature gods that will appear in the game, but other than a serpent goddess, 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
