Beyond Good & Evil 2, while not yet greenlit at Ubiosft Montpellier, could be announced within the next year, creator Michel Ancel has said.
“We’ve made a lot of things already,” Ancel told Eurogamer. “Now we need to put them together and make that game. If there would be any communication it will be in the next year, just trying to talk about the fact we are on it. But so many people in Ubisoft want to make that game, honestly.”
The sequel was once formally announced in 2008—before being put on the back-burner. According to Ancel, the project was too ambitious for the current generation consoles. The vision for the first game was much more high-reaching than it came to be, which is something Ancel does not want to see happen with the sequel.
“In Beyond Good & Evil 1, at first it was a full planet, you could go to the North Pole and see the eternal day,” he explained. “But we had to limit it as we were only 35 people. We couldn’t fill the whole world with all the things we wanted. We were frustrated at the end of Beyond Good & Evil 1, and when we started the sequel we started again with this idea – you’re free and can investigate and travel the world as much as you want.”
Ancel wants Beyond Good & Evil 2 to be more of an open-world game.
“We wanted to not make this experience [Beyond Good & Evil 2] linear, to give the player freedom to explore planet to planet, city to city – and not empty cities, of course,” he said. “So these are things we worked on.”
But what of the Ubisoft bosses? Are they as passionate as Ancel about the project?
“The Ubisoft bosses are very careful about keeping the company on track at the right time,” Ancel concluded. “If we make the sequel – and it’s something we want to do – we will do it because they are convinced it’s the right thing to do. And we need to be convinced that they will be convinced, and I’m really confident with that.
“They’ve done really well with the different games that are coming out right now and the ones they’ve already released. They’re in a good place in terms of the business, and it could be very interesting to make a game like that as there aren’t too many games out there right now that would be like ours. So I think it’s the right time and I’m confident that they will follow the team.”
Let’s go then, Ubisoft. Greenlight it!