Despite everything suggesting otherwise, Beyond Good and Evil 2 is apparently still happening and in development, with an Assassin’s Creed Shadows: Claws of Awaji developer announcing his involvement.
As spotted by IGN, over on Bluesky, Rik Godwin, lead writer and associate narrative director at Ubisoft Bordeaux, confirms that “for the past few months I’ve been working on Beyond Good & Evil 2 in a support/consultant role.” The game has been missing in action for some time, but this is the latest confirmation that it’s apparently still happening.
Beyond Good and Evil 2 was announced back in 2008 in the form of a teaser trailer showing Pey’j and Jade, which was to be Ubisoft Montpellier’s next release. Then nine years of pretty much nothing passed and we got a proper trailer for the game at E3 2017 alongside the controversial collaboration with HitRecord. The following year, the game received a gameplay presentation, but since then there really hasn’t been much. In 2022, the game broke Duke Nukem Forever’s record for being the game with the longest development time.
Original Beyond Good and Evil director Michel Ancel departed Ubisoft in 2020, and then in 2023, the sequel’s creative director Emile Morel sadly passed away at the age of 40, with Fawzi Mesmar taking on the role. This, mixed with extended periods of silence about the game, and Ubisoft’s recent shakeup that saw the cancellation of six projects has led to speculation that the game has been quietly canceled over the years. However, Ubisoft previously confirmed that the game was not one of its six recently canceled titles, and that it was still in development.