Ubisoft takes to Facebook to officially confirm the development of Beyond Good & Evil 2, and reveals which studio Michel Ancel is working with to develop the game.
For fans of the cult hit Beyond Good & Evil, the last decade has been a whirlwind of emotions. The sequel, Beyond Good & Evil 2, has
gone through many stop-and-goes, yet there has been very little
concrete information on the game in the years since its initial
announcement. However, this past week has been a change of pace, with
series creator Michel Ancel teasing that the sequel is in development
with posts on his Instagram account. Ubisoft has now officially
confirmed Beyond Good & Evil 2, and has revealed the studio Ancel is working with to develop the game.
When it comes to the development of Beyond Good & Evil 2, Michel Ancel is cooperating with a studio that he is very familiar with. The team at Ubisoft Montpellier, who worked on Rayman Origins and Legends with Ancel, will be helping him realize his vision for the long-gestating sequel. Unfortunately, further details on the game are unavailable at this time.
There are a number of theories and rumors surrounding Beyond Good & Evil 2 that Ancel and Ubisoft will need to address in the coming months. Firstly, based on the first piece of concept art that Ancel revealed on his Instagram account, many have theorized that the new game will actually be a prequel to the original, as opposed to a direct sequel. That concept art appears to depict a young Pey’j – Jade’s anthropomorphic pig-uncle – on the shoulder of a man that is presumably Jade’s father, teasing that the new game will explore Pey’j’s origins.
Theories on the game’s plot aside, there is one big rumor surrounding it that may be confirmed or denied within the next few weeks. The rumor cropped up earlier this year that Nintendo is funding the development of Beyond Good & Evil 2 for Ubisoft, in exchange for the game being exclusive to the Nintendo NX. We have yet to see any concrete evidence for this rumor, but Nintendo has carved out similar deals with other games, like when it secured Bayonetta 2 as a Wii U exclusive a couple of years back.
So, there’s certainly a possibility that Beyond Good & Evil 2 is an NX exclusive, and with Nintendo expected to unveil its new console any day now, fans should find out soon enough one way or another. In the meantime, it would be nice if Ancel and Ubisoft explained how exactly development on Beyond Good & Evil 2 is being handled, considering both Ancel and Ubisoft Montpellier are currently busy with other projects.
Before the announcement of Beyond Good & Evil 2, Ancel was hard at work at the ambitious open world game Wild. Ubisoft Montpellier, meanwhile, has been assisting Ubisoft Paris in the development of Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands, arguably the company’s biggest game in 2017. It’s possible that this split in attention will cause Beyond Good & Evil 2 to take longer to develop, but for the sake of the fans that have been waiting almost a decade for the sequel, hopefully that’s not the case.
Beyond Good & Evil 2 is in development for unspecified platforms.