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It has been eight years since Ubisoft graced us with a CGI teaser trailer for its sci-fi adventure prequel Beyond Good & Evil 2, and a further 10 years since the media were treated to a clandestine demonstration of the long-awaited game "in action". And despite this almost two-decade dalliance in development hell, new reports suggest that Jade and Co.'s long-awaited return is yet to even enter full production.
That's according to French news outlet Origami, which claims to have spoken with people connected to the troubled project's development. The reports suggest that the prequel to the 2003 action-adventure has circled in and out of endless redesigns, switching from an initially multiplayer-centric title to a more single-player-focused endeavour.
Origami's sources report BG&E2's developer, Ubisoft Montpellier, was initially focused on developing a perpetually online, massively connected world, wherein players would embark on missions and hang out with each other in a cantina-like hub environment. As opposed to playing as original protagonist Jade, or Pey'j, or any of the core Beyond Good & Evil characters, players would create their own custom rebel to join Jade and her troublemaking posse on their escapades.
At some point, the idea was supposedly scrapped for a tighter, smaller-scale multiplayer experience, before the core concept changed again in favour of a more traditional, single-player adventure (though co-op multiplayer elements would remain). Reading between the lines of Origami's report (translated by Google), it's perhaps this lack of a secured vision that has BG&E2 trapped in its own development cycle.
The report suggests ideas are constantly considered, added, revised, and scrapped entirely - from combat concepts and character designs to the genre of the game itself. At one point, sources claim BG&E2 resembled "Zelda in Space" while having combat similar to Insomniac's Spider-Man. Whether either of these statements is true at the time of this writing is irrelevant, as BG&E2 strives to lock in its identity - a clear case of a project mired in uncertainty even during its pre-production era.
So, why is development still happening at all? It seems that, despite everything, Ubisoft does have faith in the project and has thus far refused to outright cancel the title (a benefit not afforded to the similarly troubled Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake, which bit the dust in January of this year). Regardless, no project is bulletproof, and with Ubisoft facing troubled times, reflected in layoffs and restructuring across the publisher's network of international studios, Beyond Good & Evil 2 is undoubtedly resting beneath the Sword of Damocles.
Not receiving a continuation, after all these years, would certainly be a disappointment. But when a project is overtaking multiple generations, with its key concepts apparently yet to be locked down, there comes a time when those resources can be more useful elsewhere, lest a project haemorrhage time, money, and talent for a further decade.
Many are hoping for a surprising and positive conclusion, but not all these stories end with a Dead Island 2.