PlayStation 4 Gamers Surprised With Free PS5 Remaster, No PS Plus Needed

Published Oct 16, 2026, 11:08 AM EDT

Tom Wilson is a Gaming Features Writer at Screen Rant. Over the past five years, Tom has worked as the Editor-in-Chief at The Game Crater, as a Staff Writer for GamingIntel, a List Writer at TheGamer, and, of course, as a Senior Writer at ScreenRant. Tom has experience writing reviews, guides, news, and features, and has been responsible for teams of writers, training them and editing their work.

Tom graduated with a Masters in Multimedia Journalism, and has since gone on to build up his portfolio of games journalism work.

There are so many games on PlayStation 4 that have not yet received their PlayStation 5 upgrade. From massive AAA titles destined to remain last-gen experiences to lesser-known gems that need to be rejuvenated for modern-day consoles, these games are very much deserving of the remaster treatment, and yet their developers and publishers have forgone the opportunity to give them one. It is a shame, especially for fans, but an expected result from an industry perpetually moving onto the next new thing.

Fortunately, that isn't the case with the latest PS4-to-PS5 remaster. This time it is for a game that few may have heard of, a title that had lofty ambitions and managed to pull many of them off. This unique experience definitely needed a little modernizing, and fortunately this new remaster seeks to do just that. It's also great that this remaster is being given away for free to gamers without the need to have PlayStation Plus.

If there were any PlayStation 4 game one wouldn't have expected to get a PS5 remaster, it would probably have been Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey, a game that was received rather tepidly at launch. One cursory glance at its Metacritic score (which is 64) would have you think that Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey was a flop, a mere blip on everyone's radar. While there is obviously truth to that, Ancestors is also a wildly ambitious title the likes of which we'd never really seen before, albeit one marred by fundamental flaws that held it back from being truly great.

Seven years later, its developer, Panache Digital Games (created by the man behind Assassin's Creed, Patrice Désilets), has seen fit to attempt to reconfigure a little bit of the game through an official PlayStation 5 remaster. Bringing the game into Unreal Engine 5 for a slight visual upgrade and adding in a few gameplay tweaks here and there, Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey's PS5 re-release absolutely wants to give the game another chance, something that it likely deserves on account of simply being a beautifully bizarre experience.

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey, for those not in the know, is an open-world survival game in which you take your clan of primates from monkey form all the way to human form. Ostensibly, it covers evolution, albeit at a much faster pace. The game was somewhat criticized for its lack of handholding, its objectives and goals were made a little opaque by the developer's desire to have players venture out into its tropical wilderness and figure things out for themselves.

Those who really committed themselves to the game found a lot to love, including what is one of the most beautiful open worlds on PlayStation, even if it has aged a tad since 2019. This PlayStation 5 remaster adds a photo mode, the aforementioned visual improvements, a documentary-style narration mode which one suspects will alleviate some of the handholding difficulties players had, and a few quality-of-life improvements.

It exists, however, largely because the game is also being ported to the Nintendo Switch 2, marking its debut on a Nintendo console. However, those on PS5 who already own the base game of Ancestors will get this new remaster completely for free, no strings attached, and no PS Plus needed. So, if you're on PlayStation 5 and have been meaning to crack out your copy of Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey, now is your chance.

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