A newborn’s first look at the world becomes a brisk tour through nine eras in BETC’s tactile announcement commercial for Humankind 2. It is part origin story, part production flex, and a smart attempt to make a strategy game feel like a shared human epic rather than a feature list.
What happens
The film opens at baby level, where faces, light and noise arrive before context. A newborn is carried through a world that keeps changing around them: settlement gives way to spectacle, conflict, invention and modern scale. The camera stays close to the child’s point of view, making history feel less like a textbook and more like a succession of overwhelming first impressions.
At roughly 73 seconds, the trailer has little time for exposition. Costume, production design and movement do the explaining; each era is a visual punchline and a new promise of scale.
Credits if known
BETC Paris created the debut, directed by Creative Directors Benjamin Le Breton and Arnaud Assouline. The client is Amplitude Studios; Sega is the publishing context. The game is due on PC in 2027. VFX came from LiveFX, with filming at Nu Boyana Film Studios in Sofia.
The Execution
The film’s cleverest choice is its scale. Rather than illustrating a game interface, BETC puts the camera close to a baby and lets the world build around that unblinking point of view. A hand, a costume, a wall of extras and a change in light do the storytelling before any marketing language arrives. The transitions are brisk but legible: nine eras pass in roughly 73 seconds, with the newborns curiosity acting as the through-line. Filmed over three days at Nu Boyana Film Studios in Sofia, the spot uses practical staging and traditional CGI from LiveFX to make history feel physical. That density gives the Humankind 2 commercial a tactile edge many game launches lack; it feels made, not assembled from gameplay captures.
Why it works — and where it fails
The strongest idea is the contrast between a universal human story and a very specific game pitch. A baby’s gaze makes the spectacle instantly readable, while the quick-cut chronology hints at Humankind 2’s central pleasure: watching choices accumulate into culture. The craft also became the subject of a fight. Almost immediately, parts of the internet dismissed the trailer as “AI slop,” a reflex that says as much about advertising in 2026 as it does about this film. The accusation challenged whether the impossible-looking newborn-eye montage had been made by people or generated by a model. Amplitude and BETC pushed back with behind-the-scenes footage released after the backlash. It shows live-action work at Nu Boyana Film Studios in Sofia, practical performers, sets and props, and the traditional CGI/VFX work from LiveFX that built the tornado, nuclear destruction and space-bound imagery. That evidence does not make the commercial immune to criticism—the cut can still reduce huge historical shifts to postcard shorthand—but it changes the terms of the conversation. The skepticism became marketing oxygen, sending more attention toward a spot whose craft viewers suddenly wanted to audit. In that sense, the controversy is part of the campaign, not an afterthought. For Humankind 2, it reinforces the commercial’s tactile promise; for advertising in 2026, it exposes a harsher standard of proof. When synthetic-looking spectacle is easy to make and easy to distrust, showing the locations, physical decisions and human work behind the image becomes a creative asset. The making-of short is worth watching alongside the trailer: https://youtube.com/shorts/acJyM3ZK6nI
Watch it here
Watch the official announcement trailer from Amplitude Studios below, then judge whether the newborns point of view earns its sweeping promise.
The DailyCommercials take
Score: 8/10. A tactile, ambitious launch film with a clear human hook, even if its history montage sometimes substitutes breadth for detail.
Your turn
Does Humankind 2’s newborn-eye view make you want to play the game, or would you rather see more of the strategy beneath the spectacle? The trailer’s strongest idea is its scale: history is not presented as a timeline to memorize, but as a sensory problem for a character who has no context yet. That perspective keeps the spectacle intimate and makes the commercial feel like an invitation rather than a lore dump. BETC also understands that a game announcement needs a memorable image before it needs a feature list. The newborn’s gaze supplies that image, while the abrupt shifts in costume, lighting and production design give the montage a physical rhythm. It is a confident promise, even if the finished game still has to prove the strategy underneath.
