Beyond Beyond Good & Evil

Coincidence is a funny thing. There we all are griping that us Euro-folk can't buy the fabulous adventure-platformer-everythinger cult classic Beyond Good & Evil over Steam, while the US-folk are, no doubt, busy replaying the thing with unfettered joy in their spoilt, spoilt hearts. And then the sequel gets announced. Lummee.

Well, sort of. BGE and Rayman creator Michel Ancel's been chatting to France's JeuxVideo magazine, and revealed the exciting news that he's been working on a follow-up for some time now. The bad news? Ubisoft hasn't actually green-lit it yet.

Here's his quotes, parsed through my faltering Francais (with a spot of online cheating):

"I'm working on Beyond Good & Evil 2. We have been in pre-production for a year, and we're carrying out research as a small team. But for the moment, this is at outline stage, Ubisoft hasn't given its agreement yet.
We want to be in the continuity of the first: a large variety of play types, lots of emotions in the gameplay and from the supporting characters. This time we are dealing with the future of the planet, the rapport with the animals..."

What's particularly odd about this psuedo-reveal is that Ancel is employed by Ubisoft. He's one of their most valued staffers I'm sure, but I can't imagine they'd be terribly happy about him jaffing on about unannounced projects. So, donning my conspiracy theory hat (which is, admittedly, pretty much my only hat), I wonder if this is a testing the waters kind of thing. BGE was a cult hit, not a smash hit, so it's something of a risky investment for a publisher. Slipping out a quiet word and waiting to see whether the internets go nuts or not is a fairly easy way of establishing whether BGE2's worth going ahead with.

Well then, internets: whether or not I'm a wrong-headed, paranoid buffoon, are you going to go nuts about BGE2?

(The correct answer is yes).

Thanks to the various folks who mailed us about this story.