Honestly, it feels weird even typing the name. Beyond Good and Evil 2 is less of a video game at this point and more of a collective fever dream we’ve all been having since the George W. Bush administration. Well, maybe not quite that long, but it’s close enough. If you were there in 2008, you remember that first teaser. The fly on the nose. Pey’j huffing in the dust. It looked like a gritty, beautiful evolution of Jade’s story. Then, silence. Total, crushing silence for years until E3 2017 when Ubisoft Montpellier dropped that cinematic trailer with the monkeys and the space pirates and everyone collectively lost their minds.
But here we are. It’s been years since that second "reveal," and the game has officially broken the record for the longest development cycle in history, snatching the crown away from the notorious Duke Nukem Forever.
Is it actually coming out? That’s the question everyone asks.
The short answer is: Ubisoft says yes. The long answer is a messy, complicated saga of shifting engines, leadership changes, and a scale so massive it makes Starfield look like a weekend project.
The Scope Creep That Ate the World
The biggest hurdle for Beyond Good and Evil 2 has always been its own ambition. Michel Ancel, the original creator (who has since left the industry to work at a wildlife sanctuary), didn't just want a sequel. He wanted a seamless, procedurally generated universe where you could jump from a dirty back-alley bar in a city straight into your ship, fly through the atmosphere, and land on another planet without a single loading screen.
That sounds cool. It also sounds like a technical nightmare.
Ubisoft had to build an entirely new engine—the Voyager Engine—just to handle this. We aren't talking about "faking" space. The tech was designed to simulate planets at real scale, rotating on axes, with atmospheres that actually interact with light. When you see footage of the game, you’re seeing a level of detail that puts most modern RPGs to shame. But detail costs time. It costs money. And most importantly, it costs focus.
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The game shifted from a sequel to a prequel. We’re suddenly in System 4 in the 24th century, dealing with the origin of the human-animal hybrids. It’s a prequel that somehow feels bigger than the original story could ever have been. Sometimes, "bigger" isn't better; it's just harder to finish.
Leadership Shuffles and the Loss of Michel Ancel
You can't talk about the delay of Beyond Good and Evil 2 without talking about the drama behind the scenes. In 2020, Michel Ancel left Ubisoft. His departure was followed by reports from French newspaper Libération alleging a toxic work environment and "chaotic" management on the project. While Ancel denied the claims, the impact on development was undeniable.
When the visionary leaves, the ship usually hits an iceberg.
Then came the tragic passing of the game's managing director, Guillaume Brunier, and later, the loss of lead designer Emile Morel in 2023. These aren't just names on a credits roll; these were the people holding the fractured pieces of this massive project together. Every time a major lead leaves or passes away, the new person has to spend six months just figuring out where the files are stored. It’s a cycle of "one step forward, two steps back."
What Have We Actually Seen?
Not much lately.
The last major "Space Monkey Program" update—Ubisoft's fancy name for their community dev blog—was ages ago. We saw some melee combat. We saw some ship customization. We saw a very early build of a city where the player could fly around using a jetpack.
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The most interesting thing, though, was the partnership with HitRecord, Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s collaborative platform. The idea was to let fans submit music and art to be featured in the game. It was a nice sentiment, but it also signaled that the game's world was so empty they needed the internet to help fill it up.
- Setting: System 4, a vast solar system.
- Characters: We've seen a younger, much angrier-looking Jade and a version of Pey'j.
- Gameplay: A mix of third-person exploration, dogfighting, and "crew management."
- The Hybrid System: Players can seemingly choose their origin and rise through the ranks of space piracy.
Despite the lack of a release date, Ubisoft’s financial reports continue to list Beyond Good and Evil 2 as being in active development. They’ve spent too much money to kill it now. It’s the "sunk cost" king of the gaming world.
The Technical Reality vs. The Dream
Let’s be real for a second. The gaming landscape has changed since 2017. When Ubisoft first showed off the Voyager Engine, "seamless planetary transition" was the holy grail. Since then, we’ve seen No Man’s Sky fix its mess and become a titan. We’ve seen Starfield attempt the "NASA-punk" space explorer vibe.
The "wow" factor of Beyond Good and Evil 2 is evaporating.
If it does eventually launch, it’s going to face a skeptical audience. People don't want a "procedurally generated" playground anymore; they want the heart and soul of the first game. They want the photography mechanics. They want the quirky, jazz-fusion soundtrack. They want a story about a reporter taking down a government conspiracy. If the sequel is just "Grand Theft Auto in Space," it might fail the very fans who have been waiting two decades for it.
Why It Might Still Work
Ubisoft Montpellier is a talented studio. They’re the same folks who gave us Rayman Origins and Legends. They know how to make games that feel "alive." If they can pivot away from the obsession with scale and focus on the character-driven storytelling that made the original a cult classic, there’s a path to victory here.
The lore of System 4 is genuinely fascinating. The idea of "slaves" (the hybrids) rebelling against their human creators in a distant star system provides a much darker, more mature backdrop than the first game. It’s got "Star Wars for adults" vibes, and honestly, the industry could use more of that.
The "Development Hell" Stigma
"Development hell" is a term thrown around a lot, but for this game, it’s a lifestyle. When a game stays in the oven this long, the ingredients start to spoil. Hardware targets move. You start developing for PS4, then PS5 comes out, and suddenly you’re looking at PS6 rumors. You have to keep updating the lighting, the textures, and the UI just so the game doesn't look ancient on the day it finally hits shelves.
This constant "polishing of a moving target" is why these projects balloon in cost.
What You Should Do Now
If you're a fan, the best thing you can do is lower your expectations. Stop checking for news every week. It’ll just hurt. However, there are a few ways to keep the flame alive without losing your mind:
Replay the 20th Anniversary Edition. Ubisoft recently released a remastered version of the original game. It includes a new treasure hunt that actually links the story of the first game to the prequel. It’s the first piece of "new" BG&E content we've had in forever. Play it. It’s short, it’s charming, and it reminds you why you cared in the first place.
Watch the "Space Monkey Program" archives. If you want to see the technical hurdles the team is facing, go back and watch the early dev streams. It gives you a lot of empathy for the programmers. Building a universe is hard. Building a universe that doesn't crash every five seconds is harder.
Diversify your space-game portfolio. If you’re itching for that "seamless space" feeling, check out Outer Wilds. It’s not a pirate game, but it captures the mystery and exploration that Beyond Good and Evil 2 is aiming for.
The reality is that we might not see a retail box for this game for another few years. Or it might be canceled tomorrow. But for now, it remains the industry's most fascinating mystery. It is a monument to what happens when a creator's vision outpaces the technology available to realize it.
Keep an eye on Ubisoft’s quarterly earnings calls. That’s usually where the most honest information lives. If they stop mentioning the game to their investors, that's when you should start worrying. Until then, the dream of the Gada is still alive, even if it's currently stuck in dry dock.