This autumn has been an exciting time for fans of the original Beyond Good & Evil. After Michel Ancel posted concept art on Instagram that teased Beyond Good & Evil 2, rumours have been flying around about the game’s development and its potential to be a Nintendo NX exclusive akin to Bayonetta 2. Nothing has been confirmed yet, except for the fact that Ubisoft is certainly letting Ancel work on the project. Now, a new post from Ancel on Instagram explores a little bit of the development background behind Beyond Good & Evil 2.
In the post, Ancel discusses Beyond Good & Evil 2‘s prototyping in 2008. According to him, there was already a significant amount of work underway, but the current technology wasn’t quite capable of fulfilling his vision for the game’s release. “The game was playable with many prototypes,” Ancel wrote in the post. “We wanted planet exploration , space travel , cities … All this was also supposed to be in BGE 1.” However, it appears Ancel and his crew had to wait for the tech to develop in gaming before implementing these kind of features in the sequel. “Instead of not doing the game of our dreams , we decided to return to 2d , have fun with Rayman and go back at work for Beyond good and Evil 2 [sic],” he wrote. “We still have loooooots of work but now the tech is ready and the team is fantastic !”
However, Ancel isn’t ready for a full reveal yet. When one fan asked about the game’s release platforms, he simply responded “No specific platforms for now.”
Still, the news from Ancel provides a significant amount of information on Beyond Good & Evil 2‘s potential features. It seems planet exploration, space travel, and city access may be on the table in the upcoming sequel. The fact that Ancel originally wanted these features in the first game, too, suggests that Beyond Good & Evil was actually quite an ambitious project that was scaled down due to the technical limitations of the era. Had it been created just five years later, some of those original ideas might have been included.
It’s hard to say for certain. But Ancel is certainly interested in continuously teasing new information about the game. With a Nintendo NX reveal hopefully on the horizon, time will only tell if Ancel’s game ends up being one of Nintendo’s hottest upcoming titles. Until then, stay tuned for more updates and rumours.
