For many of the modern generation of gamers, the name Beyond Good & Evil, as well as Michel Ancel, mean almost nothing, but to many others those two names have achieved almost legendary status and a massive cult following. So knowing this it’s easy to see why people have been clamoring for news on Beyond Good & Evil 2. It has been nine years since the original game, of a planned trilogy, was released, and since then we’ve only had snippets of information on Beyond Good & Evil 2. At times it was even feared that the game had been canned entirely as the original hadn’t sold that well and Ubisoft were reluctant to invest in the sequel.
But now some reassuring words has come via Michel Ancel himself: Beyond Good & Evil 2 is still very much in developement. The news comes thanks to some helpful members of the NeoGaf Forums who translated sections of an interview with Michel Ancel.
Q: This last teaser video is very reminiscent of Mirror’s Edge. Is it an influence for your game?
Michel Ancel: No, not at all. We had this concept even before Mirror’s Edge launched. And we have a different approach to the first person perspective that Mirror’s Edge has. Prince of Persia and Assassin’s Creed are closer to what we have in mind with the control of the character in a third person perspective. We use a very dynamic camera that shakes a lot during the action to add life to the camera giving the impression of an action news cover team following Jade. Maybe that could be similar to Mirro’s Edge but the game itself is very different.”
He went on to say during the interview that, “We focus on the game. We create it first, then we’ll see what can run it ” as well as, “we don’t say 2013 because we don’t know when it will come. We’re working to create a great game and it needs more tech”.
“GR: Can you talk about what’s going on with the sequel (Beyond Good & Evil 2)?MA: Yes, we’ve been working on it for a long time, but we’ve had some technical issues. It’s a complex game. The first Beyond Good & Evil, when I sent the technical document to Sony, it was the time of the Emotion Engine on the PlayStation 2. We had the feeling that we could do whatever we wanted. We sent them the document, it was about planets, going from planet to planet, towns to towns and all these things. But in the end, what we were really about to do was far less than what we wanted. And of course, the scope of Beyond Good & Evil is large – you’ve got the city, the ocean, the moon and the space ship. But the space ship was designed to go from planet to planet, and it was frustrating to have those limitations. And my thing is that we really want to make the game that was previously imagined, with all this feeling of traveling. Mass Effect did a good job on that side, and I think that there are a lot of things to do to continue in that direction, with storytelling and a massive world.
GR: Is that why it won’t appear on the current generation of consoles?
MA: Yeah, yeah. That’s the reason.”
It’s surprising that Ancel doesn’t believe Beyond Good & Evil 2 would be viable on the current generation of tech, especially given some of the titles we’ve seen come out, like the Mass Effect series which incorporates the world hopping that he was talking about. Yet still he is adamant that it just wouldn’t work.
One thing is for certain, talk like this is a sure-fire way to build up the hype for the game, not that it really needs after all this time.
All credit for the translations go to:
Carto
Unlucky Kate
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