Beyond Good & Evil 2: Game still in “early development phase”

We recently reported that Beyond Good & Evil 2 has been in the works for so long that it has even surpassed long-time undisputed leader Duke Nukem Forever as the longest-running game. It was in development hell from 1997 to 2011 and still disappointed the fans. Will that also be the case with Beyond Good & Evil 2? In any case, we won’t find out in the near future, because the game should still be years away from a release. As industry insider Tom Henderson has learned, the game is currently in an “early development phase” where both internal and external playtesting is ongoing, but a real game may still be in the distant future.

Development was completely restarted

According to Henderson, who reported earlier this summer that “external playtesting” for Beyond Good & Evil 2 had begun, the game is still in the distant future. Playtesting, i.e. testing the many ideas that the developers have, was continued both internally and externally over the summer. However, the game has probably been heavily revised since it was presented at E3 2017, where we also saw an impressive trailer.

Development has arguably been almost completely restarted since the pre-alpha demo trailer. This is evident, among other things, from images submitted anonymously to Insider Gaming. According to these pictures, the game doesn’t look the same as it did back then at E3, but there were probably even setbacks graphically.

But that should hardly be surprising if the game development has really been completely restarted. The images show empty planets with blocked structures, where later buildings or entire cities could be built. According to Henderson, the structures that showed a bit of detail had very coarse textures and it almost felt like playing on “very low graphics settings”.

Beyond Good & Evil 2 is still years away from a release

Only the spaceships have probably remained relatively the same compared to the gameplay material from 2017 and 2018. So it all looks like there hasn’t been any real progress in development over the past five years and we’re much more likely to start over. It should then take a few more years before it appears in its finished form.