Beyond Good and Evil 2 has languished for several years and is considered to have been in
development hell. The game is being developed using a new engine called the Voyager Engine, developed by
Ubisoft Montpellier. Composer
Christophe Héral, who scored the music for the original game, will be returning for
Beyond Good and Evil 2. The original
Beyond Good & Evil, released in 2003, was critically praised and gained a
cult following, but was considered a
commercial failure.
Michel Ancel, the game's director, explained that as he wrote out the game's
universe, he found it was bigger than what he could practically include within a single game, and thus anticipated the game would be the first of a
trilogy of works. However, poor sales left its publisher,
Ubisoft, reluctant to invest in a sequel.
2007–2016: Rumors and leaks Rumors about a sequel began to circulate around 2007, starting with a
Nintendo Power interview with Ancel, who stated he was working on a new project that was very personal to him and mentioned his hopes to reuse Jade, the protagonist from
Beyond Good & Evil, in a future project without changing her personality. Ancel said in a May 2008 interview with the French magazine that a sequel to
Beyond Good & Evil had been in
pre-production for a year, but was yet to be approved by Ubisoft. Later that month, as part of their Ubidays event, Ubisoft released a trailer for the next yet-unnamed project from
Ubisoft Montpellier, which had worked on
Beyond Good & Evil. The trailer used
Beyond Good & Evil music, and featured Jade and Pey'j from the original game. Ubisoft stated that the trailer had all been recorded within the
game engine, showcasing high-resolution graphics representative of
seventh generation consoles capabilities. A second, leaked trailer started circulating on the internet around May 2009, showing a character that appeared to be Jade running through a crowded street. The trailer was confirmed to be authentic by Ancel, while Ubisoft denied that they had purposely released the footage. Following these trailers, the state of
Beyond Good and Evil 2 was unclear, with conflicting statements made by both Ubisoft and Ancel. While both reported several times that the game was still in development, rumors circulated that Ubisoft had put the game on hold, that Ubisoft had yet to officially announce the title and thus production was not officially started, and that Ancel had left Ubisoft Montpellier. By 2016, Ancel confirmed that they had put
Beyond Good and Evil 2 on hold to focus on
Rayman Legends (2013), which enabled them to develop tools that would help with the production of the former; once
Rayman Legends was completed, they returned to
Beyond Good & Evil 2. Ubisoft later noted Ancel's time was split between
Beyond Good and Evil 2 and
Wild, a title developed by Ancel's independent Wild Sheep Studios. In September 2016, Ancel posted concept art on his
Instagram account showing what appeared to be a younger Pey'j, hinting that
Beyond Good and Evil 2 may be a prequel. The following month, Ubisoft officially announced that the game was in development at Ubisoft Montpellier.
2017–2019: Formal announcement On June 12, 2017, Ubisoft premiered a trailer for
Beyond Good and Evil 2 during their
E3 conference. Additionally, the "Space Monkey Program" was announced in collaboration with
HitRecord, allowing fans to “create art and music that will be integrated directly in the game”. It received criticism over concerns of unpaid labor. A core element of the game is the ability to explore several different planets via space travel. To power this, Ubisoft Montpellier started building a solar system simulation tool about three years prior to the E3 2017 reveal to be used in the game's own engine called Voyager. This tool uses a combination of designed elements and
procedural generation to assemble those elements for a given planet. At
E3 2018, a new cinematic trailer for the game was unveiled, accompanied by an exclusive presentation held behind closed doors. This event was attended by game journalists and reportedly featured the game's key developers playing a live demo in co-op mode. It was also revealed that Ubisoft Montpellier was receiving additional development support from
Ubisoft Barcelona,
Ubisoft Bordeaux,
Ubisoft Sofia and
Ubisoft Blue Byte. In December 2018, Ubisoft announced that the game would require an internet connection to play at all times. but Ancel refuted these claims. The "Space Monkey Program" lists
Microsoft Windows,
PlayStation 4 and
Xbox One, however Michel Ancel stated that the platforms have not been announced yet, and that the listing was due to a bug. Ancel later told
Kotaku that the game is designed to run on many platforms.
2020s: Departure of Ancel and death of Morel In September 2020, Michel Ancel, the game's then-director, announced his departure from Ubisoft. While the project's new director has not been publicly announced, he stated that both
Beyond Good and Evil 2 and
Wild were "in capable hands". The French newspaper
Libération, which had been following Ubisoft's problems with a
series of sexual misconduct allegations against many high-level members of the company, learned that members of Ancel's team found his leadership on the project to be unorganized and at times abusive, causing the game's development to have many restarts. The Montpellier team had reported these concerns to leadership at Ubisoft as early as 2017, but the director's close relationship with
Yves Guillemot, Ubisoft's
CEO, prevented any major action from occurring until the 2020 internal evaluations that led to Ancel's departure. The company stated that Ancel "hasn't been directly involved in
BG&E2 for some time now" when he left the company. In July 2021, Ubisoft stated in a financial report that development was "progressing well", but did not answer a question regarding its release date.
Bloomberg later reported in February 2022, that according to developers working on the game,
Beyond Good and Evil 2 was still in pre-production at that time. That same year, the game broke the record held by
Duke Nukem Forever (2011) for the longest development for a video game, at more than 15 years. In July 2023, the game's creative director, Emile Morel, died at the age of 40. Fawzi Mesmar, who previously worked as VP of editorial, was subsequently appointed as the game's new creative director. In January 2026, Ubisoft announced that a major internal restructuring was underway, which included the cancellation of six different projects. Initially, only one title – the
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake – was publicly named, though it was later confirmed that
Beyond Good and Evil 2 was not among the games cancelled. == Notes ==