Beyond Good & Evil 2 is a prequel, has multiplayer, has not yet condensed into actual material substance

By Brenna Hillier

Beyond Good & Evil 2 has miraculously not been cancelled in the few months since we last heard about it.

Ubisoft held a Beyond Good & Evil 2 livestream today, possibly to distract us from the delay to Far Cry 5. The hour long stream is available to view in full, but we’ve also got a much more manageable developer diary video below, as well as a text summary.

The best news is that the team working on the project has almost tripled in headcount since Beyond Good & Evil 2 was put under a spotlight at E3 2017. The reason this is such a big deal is that Ubisoft, Michel Ancel and others have said Beyond Good & Evil 2 has been in pre-production or production on and off for years and years without anything ever actually happening, so the idea that we might be ramping up into actual full development is very exciting.

That said, it’s still too early to say much. Apparently the team is busy right now building “a real, vibrant city”. There were some comments on the game engine, which apparently supports transitions from a small teahouse interior through a big city through a gigantic spaceship. Ubisoft also said the engine allows the team to create animal-human hybrids that resemble each other, so when we meet Knox’s family they’ll look familiar.

Ubisoft confirmed Beyond Good & Evil 2 is a prequel to the first game, and apparently will reveal some more information on Jade, who was described as a mysterious figure with a dark side.

Also, there’s multiplayer of some kind. Ubisoft’s really cagey about this, but after confirming the game can be played single-player and that there will be traditional narrative arcs, senior producer Guillaume Brunier said “a part of the story will be the story you tell as you meet and play with friends”.

It sounds like the traditional storyline will be pushed by the characters in your crew, such as Pey’J and Double H.

Anyway, here’s the Beyond Good & Evil 2 developer diary already: