Michel Ancel is best known in the gaming industry as the creator of Beyond Good and Evil and the Rayman franchise, but he has now been retired from the gaming world for nearly five years. Following his departure from Ubisoft in 2020, the creative has turned his attention to wildlife-related projects, but he’s a prominent voice who’s still keeping a few secrets about his final years at the French company. And now some of them have surfaced about the long-delayed Beyond Good and Evil 2.
According to an interview in Superpouvoir (thank you, VGC), the problems with the game, which still has no release window even though it’s officially still in development, were already many four years ago.
“In some projects, we set ourselves huge challenges and put together teams with passion, but without knowing how long and complex the road will be,” explains Ancel. “Passion is a fabulous energy, but it can also lead to clashes between enthusiasts. In Beyond Good & Evil 2, for example, there were too many problems between managers.”
“The art director wanted to redo everything over and over again, the game director wanted to make a dungeon crawler, and I was dreaming of a space adventure. We just couldn’t agree, and the game director took the project in a different direction”.
“In this kind of situation, teams go back and forth and don’t even know who’s in charge and who’s making the decisions. The producer is supposed to bring order to the situation, but that didn’t happen. Yves Guillemot even had to go down to Montpellier to get things back on track, but it wasn’t enough, and the game director continued in his obstinacy”.
It is precisely Guillemot’s leadership that has been one of the main criticisms of Ubisoft’s investors in recent times, and it seems that depending on his decision on whether or not to stay on as CEO will depend on how much the company and its projects will change.