Fans were hoping to see Beyond Good and Evil 2 at Ubisoft Forward 2022, but it ended up being a no-show. The future of the game has been uncertain since director Michel Ancel left the company in 2020, and the last details we heard about its development were in a 2019 livestream. When questioned, Ubisoft executives have stated that progress was being made on the game, but rumors point to an increasingly troubled development cycle.
Why wasn’t Beyond Good and Evil 2 at Ubisoft 2022?
It’s obvious that Beyond Good and Evil 2 is in development hell. It was first teased at Ubidays in 2008, and nine years went by before it was officially announced at E3 2017. Ubisoft revealed a partnership with Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s HitRecord collaborative media platform as well.
Between 2017 and 2019, six developer diaries were released. However, in 2020, news on the game went silent. Ubisoft claimed that when Ancel left that year that he hadn’t been involved with BG&E2’s development for “some time.” However, it seems like something happened around the same that had a negative effect on the team.
Unfortunately, there’s a good chance the game won’t be coming out. There are very few instances (if any) of a 15-year+ development cycle ending well.