Beyond Good and Evil 2 Has Been in Development Longer Than Duke Nukem Forever but Expected to Be in the Best State in Years
It seems that work on Beyond Good and Evil 2 has finally started to go well. The team working on the game has new bosses, and the early version of the title is pleasing Ubisoft's executives.
Yesterday we reported on the disbandment of the team responsible for Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. Fortunately, contrary to current trends in the industry, this did not result in the dismissal of developers. Ubisoft has delegated them to support other teams. One of them is the team responsible for Beyond Good & Evil 2, thanks to which we learned a bit more about the state of this production.
Many people suspected that the game was quietly cancelled. In reality, it wasn't. The work is still ongoing and is said to finally be back on track.
- The project has been in development for several years. Initially, Michel Ancel and Guillaume Brunier were at its helm. None of them work on it anymore. Ancel left Ubisoft in 2020 after accusations of creating a toxic work environment, and the latter was removed from his role by the publisher earlier this year. The reason was the lack of progress in work on Beyond Good & Evil 2 and a clear vision for the project, which resulted in frequent concept changes and in practice made it impossible to develop at a reasonable pace.
- Despite these failures, Ubisoft does not give up. Francis Coldeboeuf, who has been with the company for three decades and was a long-time member of the Beyond Good & Evil 2 team, has been promoted to head of the team.
- Emile Morel, who was the creative director for BG&E2, passed away last year. Ubisoft announced that his role in the team will be taken over by Fawzi Mesmar, who was previously the vice president of the company's creative department.
- These changes were said to have benefited the game. The developers recently presented an early version of Beyond Good & Evil 2 to Ubisoft management and it was reportedly met with an enthusiastic reception. The team still has a lot of work ahead, but many of its members believe that under the leadership of Coldeboeuf and Mesmar, a solid vision for this project has finally crystallized, and the work has started to move in the right direction.
The first trailer for Beyond Good & Evil 2 was shown 16 years ago. This game has currently been in development for longer than even the infamous Duke Nukem Forever. In the case of DNF, after acquiring the rights to the brand, Gearbox quickly finished the game, just to cut losses. The results were disastrous - I had the dubious pleasure of reviewing this game and even with my great fondness for Duke, I couldn't rate the game higher than 5/10. Only recently, stubborn modders have brought this shooter game to a level that makes it worth playing.
It's clear that Ubisoft doesn't want to repeat Gearbox's mistakes. Despite such a long development cycle, the company is determined to not only complete Beyond Good & Evil 2, but also ensure that the game is of a suitably high standard.
