Beyond Good and Evil 2’s appearance at this year’s E3 came as a surprise. The fancy trailer that aired during Ubisoft’s presentation didn’t offer any actual in-game footage, but it at least proved the game’s existence. Yesterday, an hour-long livestream provided a progress update—that was condensed into the following five minute developer diary.
First, let’s have a gander at that:
“Our goal now is to keep this very hot, you know, and continue cooking, remaking it, making it more polished and final,” says lead designer Michel Ancel there. “And we are really focusing on what you’re motivations are in the game… You are a pirate captain and you have a crew. The whole game is based on how you make the relationship interesting. We are thinking about the background of the characters and the background of the world—it’s about [putting] people into a complex and mysterious world.”
Some of that is teased above, as the devs show off a handful of ship designs and character models. Blink and you’ll miss it, but there’s also the odd snippet of non-E3 trailer in-engine animation that looks pretty neat. But, as Ancel and his team openly admit, it’s all very early in development.
Around halfway through the short above, the narrator says that we should “keep in mind that Beyond Good and Evil 2 is still in the conception phase—a time when most games keep their cards close to the vest. But this team is laying them out on the table because they want you to be part of the process through the Space Monkey Program.”
This seems a wee bit optimistic given how long BG&E 2 has been floating around, however the fact the team has trebled in size over the last six months hopefully means full time development isn’t far off. More information on the game’s Space Monkey Program can be found over here.