
This week saw the return of Jade, Pey'j and friends in Beyond Good & Evil: 20th Anniversary Edition and while it's well worth celebrating this special occasion, many fans are now wondering what's going on with Beyond Good and Evil 2, which was announced a lifetime ago.
In an official update earlier this week, the game's social media account confirmed that "yes" - the second game is "still in development". This confirmation was attached to a message about the new Anniversary Edition of the first game:
Ubisoft: "Yes, Beyond Good & Evil 2 is still in development, and we cannot wait for you to discover more about Jade's past in the 20th Anniversary Edition!"
Beyond Good and Evil 2 is a prequel to the original game, and the Anniversary Edition of the first game actually includes a new treasure hunt that unlocks cosmetic rewards that "tie into Jade's past - and to the pirates of Beyond Good and Evil 2".
The second title was originally teased by Ubisoft in 2008, with a brief trailer featuring Jade and Pey'j. Nearly a decade later at E3 in 2017, the game got a world premiere cinematic trailer, featuring two other characters. Since then, the director Michael Ancel has exited and last year the game's designer and creative director Emile Morel passed away.
If you didn't catch Beyond Good & Evil during the GameCube generation, be sure to check out our review of the Anniversary Edition for the Switch:
Do you think Beyond Good and Evil 2 will ever see the light of day? Let us know in the comments.
Comments 41
If I remember right, this has now been in development for longer than Duke Nukem Forever. I'll believe it when I see it.
I'll believe it when it's actually released, lol.
They spent 7-8 years on Skull and Bones which is basically completed after 5-6 hours.
AAAA game as the UBI Boss said.
After more than a decade, "in development" just means "we're too embarrassed to admit we cancelled it".
Yahtzee was right, we should all just pick a game and say that's BG&E2 from now on.
Beyond Good & Evil 2: Bayonetta 3
Should come out in time for my retirement.
What they’re calling BG&E2, looks and feels nothing like the original BG&E game. I want the one from 2008.
I’ve never played the original, but what the heck is happening with this game? It just seems like it’s never going to see the light of day because of the lack of significant updates, development issues that have been reported on the game, and the original director leaving alongside its creative director unfortunately passing.
I don’t even think it seems to be an actual sequel, since it’s going to be a prequel and not an actual follow-up to the original.
@Ryu_Niiyama School leaver?
Yeah. And I’m king of mars.
At this point they should include the first one with it as a package. I liked when Bayonetta 2 did that for the Wii U release.
Hey, maybe if it takes long enough, it can become the first AAAAA game!
@locky-mavo
Exactly. That last horrible trailer with foul-mouthed edgelord monkeys, weirdly sexualized characters, and terrible writing... they can keep it.
As much as I love BG&E, I would rather have no sequel than THAT sequel. Whoever is on the team now has a complete misunderstanding of the source material.
Remember when Michel Ancel said he'd like to make a new Rayman game after this game was finished?
@locky-mavo Yeah I’m really not interested in whatever that is. I don’t understand why Ubisoft let the scope of it balloon into what it did when the original was a massive flop.
I’m hoping they’ve rebooted it again into something that actually looks and feels like BG&E- if it really is still in development. A “safe” sequel is all it ever needed.
According to an article on pcgamer.com from last year, Beyond Good & Evil 2 has been reported in some way to still be in development nearly 30 times since it was first announced!
Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/all-the-times-ubisoft-has-said-that-beyond-good-and-evil-2-is-still-in-development/
They should really just admit it's been cancelled and end this saga already.
I beat the first game 20 years ago as a teen. Now in my 30s I know I won’t be playing this game until well into my 40s. So maybe the ps6 will get it. But I know before that happens we will get like 10 to 20 more assassins creed games. Still can’t get how a big open world game gets this many games in a series. But beyond good and evil 2 is just a thing that maybe exist now that exist just to torture me. And how does it take three teams at Ubisoft to remake prince of Persia? That company makes no sense to me anymore.
We'll see, but glad that in the meantime we got a remaster of the original, especially for those like me who have never played it!
I still remember the trailer with them sitting in the desert... at least it looked like Beyond Good and Evil at that point, those later ones looked like something else entirely.
So here's what I think is going on. They plan to fulfill their promise to eventually release BG&E2, but literally every other project they've worked on superseded it, so they tried asking fans to create assets for them. They received backlash for it because no duh, they should pay someone to make assets for them, not ask people to do it for free. Since then years have passed and we now live in an age where companies like EA and Ubisoft are looking at the potential to use AI to create resources for them without having to pay anyone. This is the only reason we're getting BG&E2. I will be happy as a clam to be proven wrong if they reveal the game and it's nothing but human-made assets, from someone they paid, but it's Ubisoft. Disappointment is second nature to them.
It's not even a real BG&E2 anymore anyway, so I don't really care.
(For those that don't know, the original ends on a cliffhanger with various revelations about the Jade's past/destiny. The BG&E2 that was most recently in development is a prequel that appears to have little to do with the original at all in gameplay or plot)
My oldest daughter was born right before this was first announced. She turns 18 next year. Imagine being in development for less time than a game.
So…the first game flopped(?) And now we have a sequel in development for several years. All good signs.
@Blast16 There were like 15 notable flops that generation, that are usually considered to be all time great games at this point. Okami, psychonauts, eternal darkness, etc. All very marketable titles. One of the things that happened with this game, was that someone wrote an article accusing Michel Ancel of being toxic, because he came up in the generation where you work really hard to get your game made. So he quit to go run an animal sanctuary, and that was around the last time I heard any progress for the sequel.
@speedracer216 that trailer was embarassingly horrendous! As I recall there was a trailer before that featuring Jade and Peyj and I think another after it that was again tonally different (negative response to the monkey thing perhaps). Frankly though I have relatives in secondary school who weren't born when the first trailer came out so it could be a farm life sim at this point for all we know.....
@glennthefrog @Pastellioli I feel like the most recent BG&E2 we saw was pretty much just a completely different game they wanted to make and they just shoehorned a BG&E story into it.
Just read there was a rumour a few years ago that it was rebooted again…hoping that’s true.
@larryisaman You're right on the money with your description of the last iteration we saw. It was another game wearing the BG&E brand to gain attention.
If they did reboot it a second time (or is it 3rd, 4th, 5th by now?) and actually continued from the ending of the original I'd be all for it.
Honestly the ship has sailed at this point for BGAE2 and wonder why ubisoft is not well liked right now.
@locky-mavo I'd rather get a remaster of BG&E every 10 years than whatever that 2017 trailer was attempting to be
I just hope that the awful sweary trailer for BG&E 2 which was clearly aimed at appealing to the X-Box 360 generation of gamers (the worst in history), is not what the final product is going to be, and we get a direct sequel that uses the original as its foundation instead.
Now just imagine how long until we get Beyond Good and Evil 3.
BG&E2 isn't even coming to a Nintendo console. Don't you have Time Extension for articles like this?
Get out the Silksong clown wigs, bois
@DrDaisy What? They just released the remaster on Switch this week.
If you mean BG&E2 then we don’t even know what platforms it’ll be on (probably Playstation 10 at this rate but whatever)
@larryisaman It's entirely possible they rebooted after Ancel's retirement. This kind of scope creep was a problem for his other vapourware project, PS4's WiLD. He seemed to insist on having his games become these massive experiences, and I could see the team narrowing the focus once he departed if only so they could actually have something to release.
@Poodlestargenerica interesting, I hadn’t heard that Ancel story. Thanks for catching me up 👍
On a related note, I guess flops these days don’t have the advantage of getting a sequel that often as even games that make multi millions are sometimes cited as failures by the publishers. Crazy! Seems unsustainable.
Yeah right…knowing how insanely long production timelines go, the final product will probably watered down and not nearly what the initial announcement promised.
@Savage_Joe I think I'd sooner place a bet on Silksong 2 coming out before Beyond Good & Evil 2.
By in development, they mean they keep shelving it.
@Savage_Joe @larryisaman
I meant BG&E2.
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