Ah, Beyond Good and Evil 2. The follow-up fifteen years in the making (or rather, the waiting). We haven’t seen much of the game, but Ubisoft are here with just enough new gameplay footage to keep the hype train rolling.
2003’s Beyond Good and Evil was a curious one. It was brought to us by Michel Ancel, the creator of Rayman, but was no platformer. Instead, it was an action game that followed a journalist and martial artist (because why not) called Jade. As part of an underground band of resistance fighters, the player’s goal as Jade was to uncover a shady alien conspiracy. You achieved this mostly by balancing Jade’s two unique skills: infiltration and investigation, and bashing opponents with her staff.
The original was one of those titles that just deserved much better for itself. It was a great critical success on PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube and PC, but that just didn’t translate into sales. There was hardly a big name attached to the title, after all; philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s own Beyond Good and Evil notwithstanding.
Despite all of that, the game’s enduring cult popularity has ensured that all eyes are on the upcoming prequel. That’s right, it’s actually a thing, it’s set several years before the events of the first title, and it’s super, super ambitious.
Now that the prequel is officially confirmed (as of Ubisoft’s big conference at last year’s E3), we’re gradually getting a picture of how it’s coming together. At last. The title is going to have a much greater focus on RPG mechanics and space exploration. As all gamers know, the trend just now is for vast, open, explorable worlds, and that’s exactly what we’re going for here.
In the original Beyond Good and Evil, pirates were a mysterious presence within the game world. For the prequel, the player is cast as one, as we saw in the team’s earlier gameplay showcase back last December. In that clip, we saw how all the traditional elements of pirating (boarding ships, discovering treasure and such) are being realised in space pirate form for the game. It was a neat introduction to the range of ships and crew members we’ll have access to, and how integral they are to the gameplay.
Yesterday, Ubisoft released another behind the scene trailer, which focuses on two crucial elements of the gameplay: flight controls for the ships, and on-foot controls for your captain (primarily, staff combat). It’s all pre-alpha, and we’re a long way from the endgame, but this is shaping up to be something truly special.
