Remember when Ubisoft announced Beyond Good & Evil 2? I’m sure some of you don’t, since that happened in 2008. And another portion of you is going “Beyond Good & what now?” as you read this.
Well, the news, as funny as it is, is that Ubisoft pinky-promises it is still fully committed to the game, despite showing nothing more than a few teasers in almost 20 years of its announcement.
That’s all despite the remarkably criticized corporate structure overhaul Ubisoft announced last week, just so you know: the one where they said they’ll rely on GenAI while canning six games, killing two major studios and coming up with a “voluntary mutual termination agreements” proposal.
Here’s the statement, straight from Fawzi Mesmar, Beyond Good & Evil 2 Creative Director, on LinkedIn:
“Thank you for everyone who has reached out to me over the past few days in regards to recent news at Ubisoft.
Myself, my team and our project Beyond Good and Evil 2 are unaffected by the recent changes. I would direct you to the official press release for more information around the latest organisational structure.
Needless to say, I am saddened by the cancellations that has affected my colleagues in other parts of Ubisoft and the industry. I urge everyone – myself included – to offer support whenever and however they can during these times.
We remain committed and focused on delivering a remarkable game for our players to enjoy.”
The above statement contained a link to a Ubisoft press release on the corporate shenanigans they’re pulling (here), as well as the image that opens up this article.
Help me, I’m young: what is Beyond Good & Evil 2
Well, for starters, it’s a sequel (well, duh!).
As to “what” is a sequel for, the original Beyond Good & Evil was released in 2003, for PlayStation 2, Windows, Xbox, and GameCube. It was an action-adventure title that followed the adventures of Jade, a photojournalist who also happens to be a spy and martial artist as well as part of a resistance movement working to expose an alien domination conspiracy. You control her and a few other allies as you progress through levels that contain platforming parts, enemies spread out in every environment and use attacks and skills to dispatch them while taking photos for evidence.
It does sound simplistic — it is, in fact, simplistic — but it was praised by pretty much everyone who got their hands on it, press and users alike. Ironically, it was not a commercial success until much, much time later when it became a cult-classic (it had a lot of competition to fight against, like Tony Hawk’s Underground, Final Fantasy X-2, Mario Kart: Double Dash, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Postal 2, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Call of Duty and Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire).
The game did get a 20-year-anniversary edition, though.
In 2008, Ubisoft announced the game during its own Ubidays conference, with the first game’s director (and Rayman creator), Michel Ancel, to helm the new production. The teaser presented, however, was a concept of artistic direction, and even though we were promised Jade would have a new look, we would hear no more of Beyond Good & Evil 2 until 2016, when Ancel confirmed the game was finally in pre-production.
In 2017 and 2018, at those years’ E3 shows, Ubisoft showed new trailers for the game’s and…wow, that looks hella different — the latest trailer threw an interesting spin, suggesting Jade has become an antagonist of some sort. See for yourself with the videos below:
There’s also the gameplay trailer below, which, to be fair to Ubisoft, is quite detailed, but it is also from 2018, so it has been a minute and we don’t know if these things still stand.
Ancel justified this as a major change of direction during the initial development, but he himself would leave Ubisoft amid the company’s sexual misconduct scandals — reports on Ancel himself stated that the Beyond Good & Evil 2 team had to deal with a lot of abuse that led to the project being restarted many times. As of 2022, Beyond Good & Evil 2 broke the record for longest development time for a video game, beating Duke Nukem Forever’s 13 years time.
To this day, Beyond Good & Evil remains in pre-production state, and Mesmar’s statement above is actually the first bit of news we have on the game since…a long time. Too bad it comes in such a bad context, given Ubisoft’s latest moves.
