Beyond Good & Evil 2 was first announced in 2008, and has been in development ever since. This 14-year-long period of development has managed to overtake the previous record holder, Duke Nukem Forever, which finally released in 2011 after having been announced in 1997. The original game, Beyond Good & Evil, launched in 2003 as a third-person action game. Coming from Michel Ancel, the mind behind the Rayman series, the game follows reporter and martial artist Jade as she attempts to uncover a sinister, ongoing alien plot. The game was highly praised for both storytelling and design, although it wasn’t initially a commercial hit. That said, there were reasons for this, with Michel Ancel himself noting that consumers at the time had their interests elsewhere, with more established series’ and technically impressive games. This particular world record was noted by Brendan Sinclair of GamesIndustry.biz, who said that “Duke Nukem Forever went 5,156 days from its announcement in 1997 to its release in 2011.” Sinclair continues, “It has been 5,234 days since the first Beyond Good & Evil 2 trailer was released.” The first trailer for Beyond Good & Evil 2 saw the light of day in 2008, and Ubisoft has — at various intervals — stated that the game is still in development. That said, Michel Ancel left Ubisoft in 2020, and while Ubisoft has said it was still continuing to work on the game, little regarding the it is yet to be seen. All we currently know is that just a few months ago, despite all odds, work must be continuing on the title. Narrative designer Sarah Arellano announced back in August that she’d joined the team at Ubisoft as the new lead writer of Beyond Good & Evil 2. So, something is in the works, but only time will tell if Beyond Good & Evil will be in receipt of the sequel that it, and its fans, deserve.
