Next-gen means greater freedom for Beyond Good & Evil 2

Beyond Good & Evil 2 skipped a console generation because the compromises just weren't worth it. But what kind of unbelievable goodness meant we just had to wait for next-gen consoles to deliver?

Series creator Michel Ancel told IGN that it's freedom: freedom to roam around the world, and freedom to pursue scoops as a freelance investigative reporter (and seasoned dai-jo staff fighter) however players see fit.

“In this kind of game, while you’re investigating, you don’t want to investigate in a story that has been written by the developers," Ancel said. "My feeling is that you want to investigate with your own way of investigating. I like the freedom of choosing your vehicles, flying away with the spaceship and all those things. It was in Beyond Good & Evil 1 but it was not as much as we wanted. I like the fact that if you want to fly from one city to another, one planet to another, it’s something that you should be able to do. That freedom and the world of Beyond Good & Evil is very challenging to do.”

He said he wants Beyond Good & Evil 2 to surprise players and capitalize on all the ideas he had for the first game. He was still evasive about when it will finally see the light of day, of course.

“I think we were doing something too big for this period,” Ancel said. “Honestly, it was too challenging to put that on [current] consoles. I don’t say the consoles were not good enough, I don’t say the team was not good enough, but you have to scale what you want to do and the console itself. I think now with those new consoles arriving, yes, we want to try again making that game.

It's been more than four years since that first teaser trailer set rumors swirling and hopes climbing--check out the truth about Beyond Good & Evil 2 for more on the sequel's perplexing development.

Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.