Michel Ancel talks Beyond Good & Evil 2 – development, game’s themes, more
French newspaper Le Monde recently conducted an interview with Michel Ancel. Luckily, Ancel was happy to talk about the new Beyond Good & Evil, going over the project’s development, themes, and more.
A couple of folks on NeoGAF were kind enought to translate the interview. Find a rundown of what was shared below.
– It’s Yves Guillemot who called Michel Ancel to make Beyond Good & Evil 2. He was going to leave after Rayman Legends (the article says Origins but it’s probably a mistake) in 2013, since he just co-founded his new studio Wildsheep, but he just couldn’t say anything else than “yes” to the Yves Guillemot’s proposal.
– The original project started in 2007, and was abandoned in 2009, at Michel Anciel’s will. They started to work on it again in 2012-2013, and he feels like he still needs three to four years to finish it, but even then he’s not sure.
– He calls it a “fabulous project”. It’s really ambitious, but possible with the actual consoles.
– He still works on (his independent game) Wild during the afternoon of everyday, and the morning he works on Beyond Good & Evil 2. Both games are open-world.
– In BGE2, the heart of the game is the “civilisation”. BGE1 talked about mass manipulation and the medias, but this one will be completely different. It will talk about conspiracy and the human aspect. There will be a lot of surprising characters.
– Something extremely important for him is the pace. If we’re moving fast, but the background is large and well-paced, with discovery to make, then we won’t get bored.
– Right now, they are creating the world of the game. It’s really its heart. Then, they’ll start to work on the narrative side.
– There’s no release date, both projects are “crazy”, they’ve made significant progression but they still cannot start the communication about them. These are unreasonable projects.
– He’s a bit scared that if Vivendi buy Ubisoft, they couldn’t finish the game.
“What is certain is that Beyond Good & Evil 2 is a fantastic project. Space, planets, travelling at 15 000 km / h … It’s something crazy. All of this can run on current consoles, and it works. With this kind of project, we can show video gaming is some crazy stuff, that still has a bright future”.
