Ubisoft is a well known French studio in the gaming industry. It is the home of Rayman, Assassin's Creed, Splinter Cell, Just Dance and those annoying Rabbids.
Also in the mix is a game that has almost been forgotten, with a sequel stuck in development hell. Despite this, Beyond Good and Evil is almost 20 years old and has stood the test of time.
Let's go back to 1999. Michel Ancel and his team have just finished off the development of a sequel to Rayman. Originally in 2D, the game was made in 3D as Ubisoft were mesmerised with the graphics of Crash Bandicoot.
Rayman 2: The Great Escape was released to universal acclaim, with many regarding it as one of the best platformers of all time. It's also the game I most adore from my childhood. This sequel was relased on the Nintendo 64, PlayStation, Sega Dreamcast and PC. Over the next ten years, the game would be ported to the PS2, Nintendo DS & 3DS and Apple IOS.
While Ubisoft celebrated the success, Ancel wanted to work on a new project; something different from the world of Rayman. And he had a codename for this project, 'Project BG&E'.
His main goal was to pack an entire universe on a PS2 CD with a meaningful story akin to sci-fi movies. Ancel explained to IGN, "The idea was to make the player feel like an explorer, with a sense of absolute freedom".
Inspirations throughout development included movies from Hayao Miyazaki, the aftermath of 9/11 and the political landscape at the time. The main character's design, un-named at the time, was inspired by Ancel's wife.
In E3 2002, the game was finally revealed.
Ancel and Ubisoft returned back to Montpellier and quickly went back to work to polish the game and change things that did not please the E3 crowd.
The original character, originally a teenager, was aged up and became more powerful. She would be named Jade. Along with her, a sidekick was created, an anthropomorphic named Pey'J. And finally, the exploration mode was cut to make the game shorter.
The main story-line involves Jade, a reporter and martial artist that teams up with a resistance movement in order to expose and reveal a huge conspiracy in Hillys. During all of this, Jade also has another goal, taking pictures of species throughout her adventure. The game-play includes platforming, combat, action, puzzle solving and stealth.
The music scored was composed by Christophe Heral, who did the score to the 2011 Tin Tin movie.
During the development of the game, another team was working on Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc, Ancel chose to focus on BG&E.
In an interview with GameSpy in 2004, he explained why he chose to take a break from Rayman.
"The main reason I think is very personal and quite selfish. Just because I had spent more than five years with Rayman ... maybe more, six years? So from 20 to 26 you become different. You like different things, you acquire different tastes -- you are different. And sometimes it's good to change and work with different characters. I don't understand how it's possible to use the same old character for 20 years. I think that people are always changing, and I was not comfortable in doing another Rayman. I had so many ideas for another world, and other types of stories"
Beyond Good & Evil was revealed again at E3 2003. This time, the game gained positive feedback; Ubisoft were relieved.
Six months later, on the 11th of November, Beyond Good & Evil was released on the PS2, Nintendo Gamecube, Xbox and PC to positive reviews. Many journalists praised the story, animation, designs and the variety of game-play. Some critics were not pleased with the combat as they felt it was a little janky.
Things were looking good for the game; but unfortunately, there were a lot of hurdles that would negatively impact the success of the game.
The main impact was the release of another Ubisoft game. Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time. The first Prince Of Persia was released by Broderbund on 1989 and was well known for using rotoscoping.
Ubisoft acquired the franchise and would release The Sands Of Time to highly positive reviews. It would outsell Beyond Good and Evil by selling 2.4 million copies worldwide. It is unknown how much copies BG&E were sold.
Other games that came out on November 2003 that damaged the success of the game included SSX3, Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando, Mario Kart: Double Dash and True Crime: Streets Of LA.
The game had become a commercial disappointment and Ubisoft had no idea how to promote the game. Laurent Detoc, former Executive Director of Ubisoft North America said that his worst marketing decision was "Not applying enough market research on "Beyond Good & Evil." It was a good product, but it didn't sell. Heartbreaking.".
The game was originally the first in a trilogy, its under-performance killed the idea.
Despite this, one movie director was a massive fan of the game. Peter Jackson had just come out of the Lord Of The Rings trilogy and was looking for a studio to make a game for his adaptation of King Kong. He enjoyed the game and asked Michel Ancel if he wanted to work on a game for his next movie. Ubisoft and Ancel agreed and would released the game version of King Kong in 2005.
Years after release, Beyond Good & Evil would slowly gain a cult following. Destructoid ranked the game 6th in the best game in the 2000s and in 2010, IGN ranked it at #34 in the best 100 PlayStation games.
A sequel to the game seemed likely and Michel Ancel was happy to continue the story of BG&E as soon as possible. What he and Ubisoft didn't expect was how long the game would take to make. The development began in 2008 but was delayed due to Rayman Origins.
The first trailer for the sequel was released in E3 2017 and millions of fans were hyped. However, this game would instead be a prequel.
It seemed that the game was close to completion; however, Michel Ancel would step down from Ubisoft in September 2020. Libération, a French Newspaper, had reported a series of sexual assault organisations. They also learned that Ancel's team during the making of the game was unorganized and suffering of exhaustion and burnout. A year later, Ubisoft said that the game was still progressing, yet a release date was not yet revealed.
Ubisoft has found it hard over the past 10 years. The latest Assassin's Creed games have caused people to believe that the series has become over-saturated, their new IPs such as Watchdogs and The Division haven't been the smash hits Ubisoft were expecting and trailers for Ubisoft games are known to look more better than the final release.
Beyond Good & Evil 2 still remains in development as of writing, 15 years of development.
A Netflix live action adaptation of the game was announced in 2020, yet no updates have been given. However, both Jade and Pey'J from the game made appearances in a Netflix show named Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix.
20 years later, Beyond Good & Evil remains an anomaly in the Ubisoft family. While it has its fans and acceptance as a standalone game, it never reached the peaks that Ubisoft wanted it to. Despite the chance of a prequel, the franchise still remains in dormancy.
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