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Beyond Good & Evil 2 is now the most delayed AAA game ever, having overtaken Duke Nukem Forever

SF Kosmo

Al Jazeera Special Reporter
DNF was a totally different game back around 2000. Then it shut down. It wasn't until much later when Gearbox rebooted that game. Don't think it was in development for 16 years or so
You're wrong about that. DNF changed a lot over the course of its many engine changes and reboots but it was more or less in continuous development, save for I think maybe a few months between when 3D Realms sold it and Gearbox took over. The product that Gearbox shipped was indeed the finished version of the mostly complete game that 3D Realms gave them.
 

Thabass

Member
I have a friend that was doing voice work back when the project was being used with the Hit Record service. I think the game was being community developed. Which...doesn't make much sense to me, but whatever.

This game is getting near vaporware status to me (edit: if it's not already).
 
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IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman

It seems like a joke at this point, but several sources have reported that Beyond Good and Evil 2 is still in the “blocking phase” for the most part, with a few small areas with low-resolution textures.

The news comes as I reported this past summer via eXputer that external playtesting was starting for the game.

Insider Gaming understands that both external and internal playtesting has continued throughout the summer, with some sources stating that Ubisoft has been expressing that the game is in “early development” to those fortunate enough to get their hands on the game, as well as internally amongst colleagues and new people coming into the project.

Images and video provided to Insider Gaming under anonymity and under the condition the images don’t go public suggests that the game has probably been rebooted since the Pre-Alpha Demo Walkthrough shown in 2018; as nothing seen shows the same level of detail.

The majority of the images and footage provided to Insider Gaming show bare planets with blocked structures for buildings. Any structures that had some form of detail were very low quality; almost like the game was being played on an ultra-low setting.

All of the footage provided to Insider Gaming unfortunately looks nothing like the quality of gameplay shown in the video. The spaceships, however, do resemble the official footage shown in 2018.

As for Ubisoft, it’s unclear how fast the game can go from its current state into a fully-fledged title, but I’d estimate we won’t be seeing this game for another couple of years.

When asked for comment before the publication of this report, Ubisoft said “Beyond Good and Evil 2’s development is underway and the team is hard at work to deliver on its ambitious promise.”
 

It seems like a joke at this point, but several sources have reported that Beyond Good and Evil 2 is still in the “blocking phase” for the most part, with a few small areas with low-resolution textures.

The news comes as I reported this past summer via eXputer that external playtesting was starting for the game.

Insider Gaming understands that both external and internal playtesting has continued throughout the summer, with some sources stating that Ubisoft has been expressing that the game is in “early development” to those fortunate enough to get their hands on the game, as well as internally amongst colleagues and new people coming into the project.

Images and video provided to Insider Gaming under anonymity and under the condition the images don’t go public suggests that the game has probably been rebooted since the Pre-Alpha Demo Walkthrough shown in 2018; as nothing seen shows the same level of detail.

The majority of the images and footage provided to Insider Gaming show bare planets with blocked structures for buildings. Any structures that had some form of detail were very low quality; almost like the game was being played on an ultra-low setting.

All of the footage provided to Insider Gaming unfortunately looks nothing like the quality of gameplay shown in the video. The spaceships, however, do resemble the official footage shown in 2018.

As for Ubisoft, it’s unclear how fast the game can go from its current state into a fully-fledged title, but I’d estimate we won’t be seeing this game for another couple of years.

When asked for comment before the publication of this report, Ubisoft said “Beyond Good and Evil 2’s development is underway and the team is hard at work to deliver on its ambitious promise.”
Everything we've been shown about this game was a scam. I wonder what the final product will be like.
 

april6e

Member
Does anyone actually care about this game anymore?

Anyone eagerly awaiting this game after all these years?

Just can it already.

Yes, because the early footage looked amazing and the first game was one of the better cult classics of its generation. Problem is, I don't see Beyond Good and Evil 2 ever coming out. We haven't seen a single piece of gameplay in over 5 years.
 
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GeekyDad

Member
... Beyond Good and Evil 2 is still in the “blocking phase” for the most part, with a few small areas with low-resolution textures.

...
Youre Good Robert Deniro GIF
 
I never considered the first to be a AAA game.
it really didn't seem like it.

"good graphics" for multiplat 128-bit consoles, but mostly due to the engine and tech being mature and proprietary along with good artistic decisions in places. (I never thought the city looked good though)

Then it ends abruptly which for the genre it is, usually means no more money and time to get on with it.

Certainly not AAA. Even the studio wasn't AAA at that point.
 

Thaedolus

Gold Member
All they had to do was make a sequel that kept the charm and atmosphere of the original, incorporated modern game design and built on the same mechanics. Small, focused design.

Instead they tried to turn it into Star Citizen or some shit.
 

WoJ

Member
I have given up hope on this. It's going to be a total tire fire if it ever actually gets released.
 

Dodo123

Member
When they showed this trailer at E3 in 2017 (5.5 years ago....) EVERYONE was laughing that it will be released in 10 years from now or never. 2022 and nothing changed, guess we were right. Will the industry learn? Naaah! They are still going to cry on the stage in front of the cameras (Ubi seriously did) because of a game that never actually materializes. And BTW where is WiLD mr. Ancel? This one was announced in 2014 :D
The practice of "announcing games" by showing just a draft of a logo (years before the release) should be illegal haha
And heck, even Nintendo started doing that after the release of the Switch. Hope they will learn at least, after their fiasco with Metroid Prime.
 
I did not like BGE that much, so I am more sad about the never materialised XIII successor, which was announced basically at the ame time as BGE, iirc it was hinted in the game's credits/outro and all we got was a (maybe even decent) mobile game as a successor and a remake no one asked for.
 

yurinka

Member
If BG&E2 looks like this and it's still in early stages, can you believe how good it will look when it actually comes out?

BG&E2 isn't in early stages of development: during many years they weren't working on it, but since it was re-announced they started to work on it with a super ambitious concept, are still working on it since then and they still have work to do.

The video you posted is 3 years old, so very likely the game evolved since then and will continue evolving.
 
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CamHostage

Member
DNF changed a lot over the course of its many engine changes and reboots but it was more or less in continuous development, save for I think maybe a few months between when 3D Realms sold it and Gearbox took over. The product that Gearbox shipped was indeed the finished version of the mostly complete game that 3D Realms gave them.

...Which leads to yet another shitty strike against Gearbox, where they take the game and say, "Oh yeah, WE made this game!" after a decade of development and take credit for it, yet the more leaks we get of the different versions 3D Realms worked on over the years and the more the store becomes clear of what transpired, the more you wonder if Gearbox created anything aside from the packaging?
 
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CamHostage

Member
Everything we've been shown about this game was a scam. I wonder what the final product will be like.

Eh, I don't feel like "scam" is appropriate. Development goes through these processes, and whatever has been secreted over to Insider Gamer doesn't really say the state of the game or of its heritage from previous versions. Developing projects go through many stages, and unless a test build is meant for milestone evaluation or something like that, the production-quality assets or tech feature set would not necessarily be included in a build. People tend to think of games as a sculpture or painting that's a little bit done and then a some more done and then almost-done and finally done-done, but production is much more fluid and compartmental than that.

...It's not the best of situations though, of course, that all these years later there's no public evidence (even with constant leaks) that that BG&E2 is getting anywhere.
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Even if this game does release, it'll sell hardly any copies. Aside from a small dedicated group of gamers for the first game that brig up this game on forums, nobody else is asking for this game. Sales data is hard to come by, but wiki has a whole section about it saying the game sold terribly. VG Chartz has sales of maybe 1M copies tops across all platforms combined.
 

SF Kosmo

Al Jazeera Special Reporter
Even if this game does release, it'll sell hardly any copies. Aside from a small dedicated group of gamers for the first game that brig up this game on forums, nobody else is asking for this game. Sales data is hard to come by, but wiki has a whole section about it saying the game sold terribly. VG Chartz has sales of maybe 1M copies tops across all platforms combined.
They've already strayed so far from being a real sequel to the original that I think they have lost that audience.

The game in its current form is crazy ambitious, in an almost Star Citizen sort of way. If they pull it off it could be successful, but that's a real big "if." It seems to be collapsing under the weight of its scope, with no leadership to reign it in and make sense of it all.
 
Eh, I don't feel like "scam" is appropriate. Development goes through these processes, and whatever has been secreted over to Insider Gamer doesn't really say the state of the game or of its heritage from previous versions. Developing projects go through many stages, and unless a test build is meant for milestone evaluation or something like that, the production-quality assets or tech feature set would not necessarily be included in a build. People tend to think of games as a sculpture or painting that's a little bit done and then a some more done and then almost-done and finally done-done, but production is much more fluid and compartmental than that.
I'm talking about the version Michel Ancel was working on, the "gameplay" demo from 2018 which turned out to be a total magic show. Ancel denies it but given the level of polish we were shown 4-5 years ago, the impossibility of the scale, the news of rebooting, and absolutely no more footage since (if they were that far along it should look great by now), I'm inclined to believe the French gaming site Liberation's expose on how it was just smoke and mirrors to make us think the game was much further along than it actually was.

The site is dead now but here was the expose on what the hell was going on after the impressive "showing". Other sites have quoted and translated bits of it though.
https://next.liberation.fr/images/2...ses-effarantes-d-un-blockbuster-geant_1800522

As many expected, the impressive Beyond Good and Evil 2 trailers shown in 2017 and 2018 were simply concepts, “made by hand, in a rush” with little relation to what the game might eventually be. According to one former BG&E2 dev, the “stupid level of detail” featured in them would never be able to be replicated in the actual game given its ambitious multi-planet, open-world concept.
Those videos were handmade, under Michel's directions. Everything has been thrown away since. Ancel wanted a Ganesha City with a completely absurd amount of details. We just finished it, three years later and we had to start from scratch like four or five times. Knowing we will be making several planets, you can understand how stupid this process is.

See this is what I'm talking about, people still think that is the actual game when it is anything but:
If BG&E2 looks like this and it's still in early stages, can you believe how good it will look when it actually comes out?

This is not the game in "early stages", in fact it might not have been the game at all.
 
This game should have been one of the greatest games ever made.

Now, if it ever does release, given the state of modern Ubisoft, it will be a GaaS tripe-fest and will very likely be largely total shite.
 
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