In his spare time, Double Fine’s Tim Schafer also hosts Devs Play, a webseries where he invites developers to visit the Double Fine office to play their classic games. Michel Ancel, the creator of Rayman, recently closed out the second season with an in-depth discussion of Beyond Good & Evil. Naturally, Schafer (and his co-host, Greg Rice), couldn’t resist asking about Beyond Good & Evil 2.
As usual, Ancel tried to steer the conversation away from the long-in-development sequel, but he did admit that the pressure to live up to the reputation of the first game is substantial (the exchange starts around the 48-minute mark):
Michel Ancel: We did a nice trailer for Beyond Good & Evil 2…
Greg Rice: What can you say about Beyond Good & Evil 2?
Tim Schafer: Yeah, tell us everything we should know about Beyond Good & Evil 2.
Michel Ancel: Um… maybe we could continue playing Beyond Good & Evil 1. That’s the problem, [we have] no choice. [Beyond Good & Evil 2] has to be great. When we started [Beyond Good & Evil] there was not that much pressure. The crazy thing is that [Beyond Good & Evil] was really not that successful and nobody talked about the game. And Miyamoto talked about the game at E3 and wasn’t very happy. […] And now, year after year, more and more people are talking about [Beyond Good & Evil 2].
And towards the very end of the episode (at 1:07), Ancel admits that Beyond Good & Evil 2 is still in the works:
Tim Schafer: You’re still in the headspace of this game because you’re making a sequel right. You’re thinking about [the Beyond Good & Evil] world still.
Michel Ancel: Yeah, but it’s difficult because it’s hard for me to redo the same game two times. I don’t know how you’re going to manage that for Psychonauts 2.
Beyond Good & Evil 2 was first revealed during Ubisoft’s Ubidays event in 2008. Ancel has spoken about the game a handful of times since then, but it looks like we’ve still got a very long wait ahead of us… if it ever comes out at all.
