Beyond Good and Evil is a nice game, made by Michel Ancel’s team (the original guy behind Rayman and much later fucking Rabbids at Ubisoft) around 2003 for 6th gen. It’s a quite decent sort of Zelda-esque action/exploration game with good characters, humour, a bit of short alternate gameplay phases like stealth, boat races, etc.
It’s a bit short, but the time it lasts is very enjoyable. And then first problem, it doesn’t really end. It needs a sequel, badly. And unfortunately the game doesn’t seem to have been a huge success commercially.
So a small group of dedicated fans waits for a sequel announcement, that doesn’t come for a long time. After a couple years, a video trailer “leaks” randomly showing the two protagonists on a… road trip? Maybe? And basically nothing else. It’s enough to get people excited though.
Mostly radio silence for a looong time, fast forward to E3 2017, and big announcement at E3 on Ubisoft’s stage with Michel Ancel and company. No, we didn’t abandon the BG&E 2 project. Except now it’s sort of a procedural, planet-wide multiplayer oriented game. A prequel too, with different characters. Also we’re making a weird collaborative contest thing where you people submit art to us and we’re including it into the game.
It was awkward. It looked nothing like the first game was, and it wasn’t a sequel. Fans of the first game are like, where are my tiny but carefully crafted world and Zelda-like dungeons? When will we finally know what happens to the guys whose story we began 15 years before? Why is this turning into “generic Ubisoft game #47”?
None of that mattered, since we’re in 2024 and that game still doesn’t exist.
So yeah, fond memories for the OG, but mostly a huge disappointment.
Oh shit that’s crazy! Thanks for the detailed answer, I had no idea. Hopefully the reason it never released is cause they realized no one asked for that shit and went back to the drawing board… I mean it is Ubisoft so prolly not but one can hope.
I don’t have much hope for that really. As I said, BG&E never was a commercial success, and republishing it twice doesn’t seem to have changed much.
I am pretty sure they went for something completely different at E3 because they knew that fans of the first game were already not a lot, and part would have already moved on. They were not going to continue a story like 15 years had not happened in between episodes.
Oo boy, no they didn’t.
Beyond Good and Evil is a nice game, made by Michel Ancel’s team (the original guy behind Rayman and much later fucking Rabbids at Ubisoft) around 2003 for 6th gen. It’s a quite decent sort of Zelda-esque action/exploration game with good characters, humour, a bit of short alternate gameplay phases like stealth, boat races, etc.
It’s a bit short, but the time it lasts is very enjoyable. And then first problem, it doesn’t really end. It needs a sequel, badly. And unfortunately the game doesn’t seem to have been a huge success commercially.
So a small group of dedicated fans waits for a sequel announcement, that doesn’t come for a long time. After a couple years, a video trailer “leaks” randomly showing the two protagonists on a… road trip? Maybe? And basically nothing else. It’s enough to get people excited though.
Mostly radio silence for a looong time, fast forward to E3 2017, and big announcement at E3 on Ubisoft’s stage with Michel Ancel and company. No, we didn’t abandon the BG&E 2 project. Except now it’s sort of a procedural, planet-wide multiplayer oriented game. A prequel too, with different characters. Also we’re making a weird collaborative contest thing where you people submit art to us and we’re including it into the game.
It was awkward. It looked nothing like the first game was, and it wasn’t a sequel. Fans of the first game are like, where are my tiny but carefully crafted world and Zelda-like dungeons? When will we finally know what happens to the guys whose story we began 15 years before? Why is this turning into “generic Ubisoft game #47”?
None of that mattered, since we’re in 2024 and that game still doesn’t exist.
So yeah, fond memories for the OG, but mostly a huge disappointment.
Good summary but you missed the part where Michel left Ubisoft and they 100% shitcanned the whole project.
Oh yeah, you’re right, that was a thing.
Wasn’t there a bird game thing he was supposed to do on the side? I don’t even know what happened to this.
Iirc they (Ubi) shoot themselves in the foot, because they released BGE at same time (or right after?) as Price of Persia SoT
Oh shit that’s crazy! Thanks for the detailed answer, I had no idea. Hopefully the reason it never released is cause they realized no one asked for that shit and went back to the drawing board… I mean it is Ubisoft so prolly not but one can hope.
I don’t have much hope for that really. As I said, BG&E never was a commercial success, and republishing it twice doesn’t seem to have changed much.
I am pretty sure they went for something completely different at E3 because they knew that fans of the first game were already not a lot, and part would have already moved on. They were not going to continue a story like 15 years had not happened in between episodes.
And now, we’re 20 years later…