*UPDATED* Beyond Good and Evil 2 in Preproduction
French magazine JeuxVideo recently had an interview with Ubisoft’s own Michel Ancel, the father of the Rayman franchise. He was also the creator of Beyond Good and Evil, a 2003 Zelda-esque action/adventure game that has been hailed by critics but never found large commercial success. The Gamecube version of it is one of the rarer and most sought-after Gamecube titles out there.
In the Interview, Ancel spoke about Beyond Good and Evil 2, and confirmed to the magazine that it is indeed in the very early stages of preproduction. My French is pretty rusty, but the gist of it is such…
“I’m working on Beyond Good and Evil 2. We’ve been in preproduction for a year, and we have a small team working on it. Though, for the moment, it’s in the outline stage. “
He mentions that there are currently 10-12 people working on the title at the moment.
“We want to keep the continuity of the first [game]: a large variety of levels, and lots of emotion in the gameplay as well as the characters. This time we look at the future of the planet, and the relationships with the animals.”
Ubisoft has yet to agree to the project, which is why it has yet to start development, though the article mentions the UbiDays event which is coming May 28-29 in Paris. Perhaps there will be an official announcement then.
*UPDATE* (Shaan)
It has been confirmed via a French magazine clip that the title will be for the PS3 and 360 ONLY. There may be a Wii version down the line, who knows, but nothing has been announced. It’s sad, I know. I personally am guilty of not trying the first one and I’m going to see if I can find it somewhere down the line, but even I’m saddened by this.
But in Ubisoft’s defense, and in defense of a lot of developers, the remark that only Nintendo games seem to sell well on their consoles is true. There were/are plenty of high-quality third-party games that have been overlooked and have undersold. When that happens, developers feel it isn’t worth it, and stuff like this happens. Maybe this is just a matter of the hardware limitations of the Wii, but you can’t rule out that possibility.
