Well, dang, it’s been quite a ride. Fear not, though, long-time followers of Amsterdam 1666. It is coming, even if they have to start all the way from scratch to get it right.
Now, if there’s one thing that’s super tough for devs (other than, you know, making darn games in the first place), it’s owning their mistakes and having the guts to admit that they done goofed. There may not be a lot to admire about Anthem’s shonky launch, but when BioWare admitted that it was as disappointed as the rest of us and vowed to do better going forward? Kudos for that.
Even more admirable is a team having the chutzpah to admit that what they had so far just wasn’t good enough and starting over to get a game right. As aggrieved as fans were over the announcement that work on Metroid Prime 4 was starting afresh, they knew that the title they’d eventually get would be well worth the long delay.
While Amsterdam 1666 may not be quite at Metroid Prime 4’s level of hype, it has an even longer and shadier development history going for it. As VG247 reports, the game was originally conceived under the wing of THQ Montreal, then grabbed by Ubisoft when THQ went under. Patrice Desilets was at the helm of the title and had to fight for the rights to it, winning out back in 2016.
For the uninitiated, this dark title has a bleak, foreboding atmosphere, and centers around dark magic and the concept of being “worse than the devil.” Yikes. The general presentation is very Assassin’s Creed (unsurprisingly), and the limited footage we’ve seen so far sees the player controlling a mysterious figure, as well as birds and cats.
Desilets and his team are currently working on Ancestors, an Ark: Survival Evolved-esque experience. He hasn’t given up on Amsterdam 1666, however, and believe that Ancestors may give him a sort of launchpad from which to start on the game anew.
“For sure, Amsterdam 1666 is gonna happen,” he said, before explaining how Ancestors (in which you parkour your way around as an ape) has inspired him: “You put the cape on the ape and you’re pretty good to do another game…If you think about it, climbing up a tree trunk, climbing a rock, climbing a building façade… It’s like now I’ve got a toolbox.”
“Now I am thinking about it a little bit. It’ll probably change a little bit... you were more like the devil’s apprentice than the actual devil. Once I finish this and then, ‘Okay what’s next?’ If it’s Amsterdam 1666, I’ll probably restart from scratch.”
So, what we’re looking at here is a free-roaming experience similar to Assassin’s Creed, in which you climb around as an ape in a cape tangling with Beelzebub himself. We don’t know how or when you’re going to make Amsterdam 1666 happen, Desilets, but it’s sounding like game of the year material for sure.