Lead designer Michel Ancel has hinted that the long wait for this ambitious sequel has a lot to do with his team’s vision for the game’s story.
Since its release in 2003, Ubisoft’s critically-acclaimed Beyond Good and Evil has developed a powerful cult following. Having said at E3 this year that the sequel “needs a certain power” that modern consoles are unable to provide, lead designer Michel Ancel has now hinted that those “needs” find their cause in his team’s big ambitions for the game’s story.
In an interview with Gamesradar, Ancel said that, “Yes, we’ve been working on [Beyond Good and Evil 2] for a long time, but we’ve had some technical issues. It’s a complex game.”
“The idea is to be deeper in this [artistic] direction, and to have this… involved storytelling. That’s the main thing that we have to focus on,” he continued. “And of course, the scope of Beyond Good & Evil is large…But the space ship was designed to go from planet to planet…my thing is that we really want to make the game that was previously imagined, with all this feeling of traveling. Mass Effect did a good job on that side, and I think that there are a lot of things to do to continue in that direction, with storytelling and a massive world.”
Eight full years have now passed since the release of Beyond Good and Evil, but that hasn’t dampened the enthusiasm of its fans. This apparent footage from the sequel, leaked last year, only whetted appetites; the release of an HD version of the game on the Xbox Live Arcade (which is a total steal, and very much worth the disk space) added more people to the group keen to experience the next chapter of reporter Jade’s story. While it isn’t surprising that Ancel and his team don’t want their vision for Beyond Good and Evil 2 to be at all restricted by technology, they should be mindful of how long we’ve already been waiting for this game; as powerful as the original is, they will need to be careful to ensure that they don’t lose the interest of their fanbase before the sequel is complete.
Source: Gamesradar
