Ubisoft reportedly wasted 3 years turning Beyond Good & Evil 2 into a live-service Fortnite killer
By (Image credit: Ubisoft)
Ubisoft persists in asserting that Beyond Good & Evil 2 is a genuine game that exists, even though it was revealed over 18 years ago, and we haven’t glimpsed any sign of it this decade. A recent article indicates that the reason for the prolonged wait is that the developers keep returning to the concept, most recently shifting from a live-service Fortnite rival to a single-player-focused experience.
That is according to the French source Origami, which reports (through machine translation) that Beyond Good & Evil 2 was in the works as a “highly multiplayer and interconnected game” from 2019 to 2022, taking direct cues from Fortnite and Destiny. Participants would design their characters and engage in activities generated spontaneously, with large group engagements organically matchmade.
As time progressed, the strategy altered to something more “open-ended,” shifting to four-player cooperative action, and then to two-player co-op, the article continues. In its present state, Beyond Good & Evil 2 is reportedly intended to be a “solo-first” title boasting combat reminiscent of Marvel’s Spider-Man and lacking compulsory internet connectivity, but it still offers optional co-op features.
However, perhaps the most astonishing aspect of the report is that the game is reportedly still in the pre-production phase. The report asserts this is indicative of a long-standing trend in the project’s development. Beyond Good & Evil 2 has missed all of its internal creative benchmarks not due to the developers failing to meet deadlines, but because the benchmarks themselves continuously evolve as the project morphs. Forget the finish line – the developers aren’t even certain what the starting line is supposed to resemble.
I can’t help but think of what is now BioWare‘s final project amidst all this. According to various articles, Dragon Age: The Veilguard fluctuated between being a live-service multiplayer game and a single-player RPG, and following years of developmental ambiguity, it’s unsurprising the final product felt as uncertain and unfocused as it did.
