We’re Going Beyond Good and Evil Again

Late last year, we received assurances from creator and director Michel Ancel that Beyond Good and Evil 2 was being developed. But given what’s transpired with the project in the last decade, it was tough to believe him. Incredibly, it’s been over nine years since the original teaser was first shown at the Ubidays event in May 2008, and over eight since the target gameplay video featuring Jade running through a city leaked. Ancel claimed he was waiting until next-gen (and now current-gen) consoles to realize his vision, and last year’s confirmation suggested he was living up to his word. But when he claimed it would likely skip E3, it was implied that it was still very early in development.

As it turns out, Ancel is somewhat of a liar.

By now, it’s no secret that Ubisoft’s big reveal at the end of their E3 2017 conference was for Beyond Good and Evil 2. Despite his claim, Ancel was there in the flesh, who cried after finally showing his devoted fanbase what he’s been working on after all this time. After seeing the trailer and reading info about what kind of game it will be, and how its development will progress, it makes sense as to why it had to be saved for current-gen consoles. The project is also far different than what anyone not on the development team expected.

The trailer showed how its tone will be markedly different from its predecessor. It started by showing hybrid monkey Knox making a deal for a mysterious CD with hybrid pig and crime boss Zhou Yuzhu and accomplice Li Daiyu within a restaurant in Ganesha, a city founded by colonists from the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia. Despite some tension, the deal goes fine until Zhou Yuzhu realizes he’s been duped. Knox escapes with Somalian biker and mechanic Shani to their space pirate hideout on the Gada, and hands the CD to their captain, Dakini. While the tone is clearly edgier than original Beyond Good & Evil, mostly shown by the excessive f-bombs, it still contains some of its predecessor’s whimsy. The suggestion that it’s on par with the transition from Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time to Warrior Within isn’t quite valid. The scene also took influence from The Fifth Element.

Also, note that the presence of a desert and the city of Ganesha show how they haven’t discarded everything from the early concepts.

The all-CG trailer would make anyone who watched it think this project will have the same structure as the original, albeit with an altered tone to attract a larger audience. While it won’t continue the adventures of Jade and Pey’J, as a prequel set generations before the original, it will still be an adventure with a diverse set of main characters. The idea of traversing the vast universe of System 3 in the 24th century, and all the secrets and colonies inhabited by different cultures of people contained within it, sounds great on paper.

It isn’t until reading further information that you’ll understand how different this project really is, and it’s understandably disappointing some people. BG&E2’s world will be a seamless online experience, a massive procedurally-generated solar system that players can venture through by themselves or with friends. The details say players will fight alongside “unforgettable” characters, which likely refers to the group shown in the trailer. Players will create their own character to directly control throughout the game, whose appearance can be adjusted depending on their preferences. It’s currently tough to tell what kind of online implementation this will have at the moment.

The game could resemble Destiny or Bioware’s recently-revealed Anthem in being a multiplayer online co-op game. But the behind-the-scenes video suggested how this could be a fusion of No Man’s Sky and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, whose online elements could resemble the Souls games’. They’ll clarify this sometime in the future, but it doesn’t sound like an experience that can be played offline.

The edgier tone might have been the only way this could get green lit by Ubisoft’s higher-ups, who feel a game with a style as colorful as the original BG&E wouldn’t sell, at least as a AAA title. But Ancel is still at the helm, and his appearance at Ubisoft’s conference shows that he’s passionate about the project. After seeing that, it’s tough not to trust him with its direction.

However, it’s been over nine years since the last official CG trailer, and all he and the development team at Ubisoft Montpelier had to show to the public was yet another CG trailer. Ancel confirmed to the press behind closed doors that full development is just starting, and the game didn’t have any graphics a little over two weeks ago. The developers showed a sample of gameplay behind closed doors, where Knox was a substitute for the main character. Ancel’s confident the team will finish its development, but that’s still tough to believe, especially with the Peter Molyneux-levels of ambition for it.

Hopefully there’s a team of higher-ups looking after this development team to make sure it’s created, and simultaneously tell them when they’re getting too overambitious. If that’s the case, we’ll also have to hope they remain in place if (or when) Vivendi takes Ubisoft over, who could be more cutthroat regarding which projects get green lit or deserve funding. It doesn’t sound like the development team wants to keep their fanbase in the dark for too long, given the blog they’re keeping, and hopefully they’ll update it at a good pace.