Beyond Good and Evil 2: New Gameplay Update
Mecha Meister
This is heartbreaking to me. I hope other people enjoy it though.
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ResetEra
Note, this is the game Michael Ancel wanted to make. He's said that a lot of the ideas presented here were things he wanted to do but couldn't due ot budget and tech reasons when they made the first game.

I don't think this kind of game existed 12 years ago. He supposedly started working on BGE2 in 2008. Then when UbiArt was released he was saying he was using similar tools for BGE2, now we're supposed to believe he wanted BGE2 to be an open world Ubi loot game all along? Also what was up with all of this then if this target render his own team made wasn't even the game he wanted to make?

If Ancel says this is the game he wanted to make all along, I'm reading that in the same way as Ipswich Town's new sign on saying he dreamt of playing a decisive role in the bottom of the second league ever since he was a little kid.

I don't think this kind of game existed 12 years ago. He supposedly started working on BGE2 in 2008. Then when UbiArt was released he was saying he was using similar tools for BGE2, now we're supposed to believe he wanted BGE2 to be an open world Ubi loot game all along? Also what was up with all of this then if this target render his own team made wasn't even the game he wanted to make?

If Ancel says this is the game he wanted to make all along, I'm reading that in the same way as Ipswich Town's new sign on saying he dreamt of playing a decisive role in the bottom of the second league ever since he was a little kid.

Remember how Cameron said he wanted to make Avatar since early 90s?

A game example is, how Digital Extremes have been meaning to make Warframe all the way back since late 90s only to make other games until they finally made Warframe? The PS360 era Dark Sector was originally Warframe, but the game over time had to change so much to meet publisher demands that you couldn't see any hints of Warframe in it unless you tried real hard. But if you go back to their very very first demo from ca. 2004, you'll see that the character in that demo....is actually the poster character from Warframe ! And their idea for the game went back to late 90s/early 2000s. And you obviously know that games like Destiny and Warframe didn't exist back then, but after looking at this can you honestly say that they didn't have some concept/idea of Warframe in their mind 2 decades ago?

This is the same kind of thing. They don't mean they were thinking about the product exactly the way it came out at launch (or will come out), but that they had ideas back in the day that just seemed implausible to do but they can implement them and build upon them now. Like I'm pretty sure, Chris Roberts had been thinking about building a game like Star Citizen (pre feature creep) since his Wing Commander days in 90s but never had the tech or resources to start doing so.

Remember how Cameron said he wanted to make Avatar since early 90s?

A game example is, how Digital Extremes have been meaning to make Warframe all the way back since 2001-2003 only to make other games until they finally made Warframe?

This is the same kind of thing. They don't mean they were thinking about the product exactly the way it came out at launch (or will come out), but that they had ideas back in the day that just seemed implausible to do but they can implement them and build upon them now. Like I'm pretty sure, Chris Roberts had been thinking about building a game like Star Citizen (pre feature creep) since his Wing Commander days in 90s but never had the tech or resources to start doing so.

Yeah fair enough, I can definitely see Michel Ancel initially wanting it to be a planet hopping epic. After all it was scifi with aliens, but confined to a single area. All the augments and skill trees, drop in and out coop and things that are monetizable though, nah. I don't buy it. The ostensible gameplay loop is too much a product of today's time.

I don't think this kind of game existed 12 years ago. He supposedly started working on BGE2 in 2008. Then when UbiArt was released he was saying he was using similar tools for BGE2, now we're supposed to believe he wanted BGE2 to be an open world Ubi loot game all along? Also what was up with all of this then if this target render his own team made wasn't even the game he wanted to make?

You literally see Jade traversing an open world city in that target render with a darker vibe than the original cartoony aesthetic of the game. And that says nothing about the design decisions in this game being things Ancel wanted to work on for a long part of his career.

If Ancel says this is the game he wanted to make all along, I'm reading that in the same way as Ipswich Town's new sign on saying he dreamt of playing a decisive role in the bottom of the second league ever since he was a little kid.

Nooblet put it best.

Remember how Cameron said he wanted to make Avatar since early 90s?

A game example is, how Digital Extremes have been meaning to make Warframe all the way back since 2001-2003 only to make other games until they finally made Warframe?

This is the same kind of thing. They don't mean they were thinking about the product exactly the way it came out at launch (or will come out), but that they had ideas back in the day that just seemed implausible to do but they can implement them and build upon them now.

Yeah fair enough, I can definitely see Michel Ancel initially wanting it to be a planet hopping epic. After all it was scifi with aliens, but confined to a single area. All the augments and skill trees, drop in and out coop and things that are monetizable though, nah. I don't buy it. The ostensible gameplay loop is too much a product of today's time.

Obviously. No one's saying he thought of this game 15 years ago in this exact form, but the concept of it i.e. planet hopping space pirate thing, being able to fly in and out of planets and travel a solar system etc. When you actually start working on a concept, no matter how old, it'll naturally take current trends into consideration and affect it accordingly which is where your drop in drop out coop etc comes in.

As with my previous example of Warframe, online coop didn't exist back then, but obviously coop is what Warframe is built around. That's not to say they weren't thinking of same concept. Maybe in the form of a diablo esque looter/dungeon crawler? I donno. You get the gist!

I'm really digging the city's design. Considering the ridiculous size of the game, I expect there'll be a lot more cities that draw inspiration from a hopefully diverse range of cultures. I like being wowed by unique vistas. I can't say I'm not concerned by the size of it all, I really hope that, despite the coop focus, the game's world will be fully realized. I don't just want to look at the world, I want to interact with it, and not just through shooty-looty mechanics. I'm a massive fan of the original and, while I'm not all up in arms about the gameplay change, I really want them to nail the feel of the world, which is one of my favorite aspects of the original.

Surprised to see so many people disappointed in this, I mean for a game that's trying for so much what they have shown seems like it's coming along well and things already look decent for the development time they've been working on it.

Of course it isn't going to be just like the first game in terms of gameplay beats, it's a much vastly larger scale but it's still going to have that world and character types, and the E3 cinematic we already know we are getting some direct links with characters from the first game.

This looks like a game trying very much for a kind of Fifth Element/Space style game and world building, which was just not possible to do with the first game and the tech they had then.

Btw I'm calling it now. This game will generate stupid "controversy" at launch in India because you have Indian Gods/deities in graffities, the name of the city is Ganesha city and there's a big statue of Ganesha in the city that you can stand on. I mean they banned Fallout 3 in India because it had a 3 headed cow and Dragon Age Inquisition got banned due to gay relationships (legal now in India and the game's been available there for a while even before it was legal). It's just some idiot will go "You can step on Lord ganesha's statue..BAN!" and it'll take off from there until Ubi caves in because it doesn't want to deal with stupid people.

Surprised to see so many people disappointed in this, I mean for a game that's trying for so much what they have shown seems like it's coming along well and things already look decent for the development time they've been working on it.

Of course it isn't going to be just like the first game in terms of gameplay beats, it's a much vastly larger scale but it's still going to have that world and character types, and the E3 cinematic we already know we are getting some direct links with characters from the first game.

This looks like a game trying very much for a kind of Fifth Element/Space style game and world building, which was just not possible to do with the first game and the tech they had then.

Yea I really believe Ancel was inspired a lot by Fifth Element.

I will be certainly picking this up day one. It's absolutely not what I wanted out of a sequel but it's an Ancel project and he hasn't let me down. I can totally see this being a solid game. People complain about the combat and it doesn't look the best but the combat in the original game was passable.

Not at all difficult just something to break up the puzzles and exploration. Very much like the combat in pre-BOTW Zelda actually.

Why is this even called Beyond Good and Evil?

Taking place in the same universe. Though I've gotta admit Beyond Good and Evil is kind of a terrible brand name.

It sort of made sense in the original game even though the villains were straight up evil aliens so it wasn't really beyond anything actually.

Incredibly ambitious game this one and I hope they pull it off. Combat looks fun, flying around looks great too. But it's a online game. So how does that work in terms of story? Let's take ESO or even Fallout 76 for example. You're playing it with a group of buddies in CO Op and I assume you talk to NPCs for quests, right? Can I just take my sweet time and read and listen to what the characters are saying without being rushed because my buddies want to continue on playing?

Are there cutscenes? How will it all work I wonder. I kinda wish it was a SP only game like their AC games but I can see the potential for it and of course the profits it could mean for them. I probably should do some research and find out what I can really expect from this game.

Like a lot of people I don't like the main characters and the character creation aspect of this at all, but I know that a lot of aspects to this game will be great nonetheless (music, world and story especially). That's more than enough to be excited about this. Technologically this looks pretty amazing too, and I still have hope that they'll build more interesting gameplay aspects to go along with the tech and creative aspects.

Taking place in the same universe. Though I've gotta admit Beyond Good and Evil is kind of a terrible brand name.

It sort of made sense in the original game even though the villains were straight up evil aliens so it wasn't really beyond anything actually.

I guess they meant the whole "the Alpha Sections are good, but they're actually evil" thing. With Jade being evil in this one and the pirates being good, the roles are kind of inversed from the first game (remember those hovercraft sections where you had to catch pirates to get their stolen pearls back?). Maybe the point is that who is good and who is evil depends on the context and the side you're on, and you have to look beyond that... finally giving the title a bit more meaning.