Beyond Good and Evil 2 ‘Ship and Crew Update’ developer diary

Ubisoft has released a new developer diary for Beyond Good and Evil 2 providing an update on the game’s ships and crews.

During an hour-long live stream today, the development team at Ubisoft Montpellier shared more information about the game. Here are the notable tidbits, via Eurogamer:

• The game can be played single-player, but the team wanted users to be able to play with friends. Senior producer Guillaume Brunier said, “A part of the story will be the story you tell as you meet and play with friends,” and added that there will also be traditional narrative-lead stories “with a beginning, middle and end, with strong characters, which will emotional.”
• Your crew will help progress the story, rather than chat with an AI helper. “Here we want [to feature] the crew members, the officers, you will meet on your journey,” said creative director Michel Ancel. “Like Pey’J and Double H. We don’t want to force an AI – we want players to meet characters. A bit more digital and a bit less physical”
• In one storyline, you meet a chimp named Knox whose planet you visit and meet his family. Because of the game engine’s ability to create animal hybrid characters that look like others, Knox’s family will look similar to him.
• The game engine allows for seamless transition from a small teahouse somewhere in a big city to a giant spaceship in space.
• The development team has almost tripled in size since E3. Right now the focus is building “a real, vibrant city for people to explore,” according to Brunier, referring to the city shown in the E3 2017 trailer.
• Regarding whether Beyond Good and Evil 2 is a prequel, Ancel said, “The first idea for Beyond Good & Evil was to make three games, a trilogy. But when we started thinking about the next game we thought the [series’] world was so big, so dense it would be a shame to not talk about its origins. Who is Jade? She’s very mysterious. She has a dark side. We want to go deeper into these things.” He continued, “And will continue going through the episodes, the stories of this world,” he added. “But we wanted to start with a prequel.”

Watch the developer diary below.