Beyond Good & Evil 2 Creator Explains What’s Been Taking So Long

We got our first look at Beyond Good & Evil 2 all the way back in 2008, but since then, there hasn’t been a peep out of creator Michel Ancel or the team at Ubisoft Montpellier except for assurances that the game hasn’t been canceled. That is, until earlier this month, when Ancel began posting images from the game to his Instagram account with short descriptions like “Thanks #ubisoft for making this possible !” and “Game in pre-production – Stay tuned !” But finally, after eight long years, Ancel has offered up an explanation why the game seems to only now be getting off the ground.

Along with a picture of high-res visualizations of Jade, Pey’j and Double H, Ancel posted the following message:

2008 Characters . The game was playable with many prototypes . All videos where realtime but we had too much technical issues . We wanted planet exploration , space travel , cities … All this was also supposed to be in BGE 1 … 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 . We still have loooooots of work but now the tech is ready and the team is fantastic !

Apparently, Beyond Good & Evil 2 was too advanced for its time and so it was put on the back burner while the team made Rayman: Origins and Rayman: Legends and let technology catch up. This comment lines up with something Ancel said to Eurogamer back in 2010, calling BGE2 an “ambitious game” and comparing the tools needed to make the game to Peter Jackson’s visual effects company Weta Digital.

Considering how anticipated the game is already, Ancel doesn’t seem too worried about hyping it up even further (despite another too-hyped game promising planet exploration and space travel just recently came out to a mixed response). Honestly, considering how good the latest Rayman games are, maybe it’s all for the best that we’ve had to wait so long before getting more Beyond Good & Evil. That said, it’s good to know that development is finally in full swing.

You can see Ancel’s full Instagram post below.