Actual gameplay is here for Beyond Good and Evil 2, played by the game’s Creative Director, Michel Ancel himself. The demo was shown at E3 2017, as a part of the Space Monkey program, designed to foster suggestions from the fans about development.
Obviously, the most up-voted youtube comments were the most cynnical.
Although Beyond Good and Evil 2 was the most feel-good moment of E3 this year, it was disappointing to only see a pre-rendered movie during Ubisoft’s original reveal. The first game has many fans that haven’t given up hope for the long-rumored sequel. The shocking announcement made by creator Ancel was the best kind of classic E3 drama, complete with Ancel choking up over the many years it took to get this game made.
The video is a mix of tech demo and actual gameplay moments.
Ancell showed the mothership which will function as the player’s home-base. He called it a work in progress asset but it still looked quite nice. This ship is 400m long, will hold crew, main characters and even other spaceships. There will be bigger motherships that can hold the smaller motherships inside. Ancell likened this to Russian Dolls.
The video shows the main character flying around with his rocket pack. Ancell used the monkey from the trailer, but players will be able to create and select their own character.
An example of the side-missions is delivering pizza to larger ships. Ancell wants the player to decide between leaving the ship immediately after delivery or exploring it further to possibly trigger more story events, such as discovering slavery within the ship.
Taking pictures was a popular feature from the first game and will return for the sequel. The photos can be shared with human players and NPCs, triggering more story events. This is all hypothetical at this point of course.
Ancell zoomed out to show how big the statue was, compared to the city, continent, world, solar system, galaxy, etc.
The sunset shown was not just an art asset, but actually the product of real elements of the sun and planet interacting. He performed a timelapse to show the planet covered by the shadow of night.
Ancell claims there will be no loading, meaning the player can go anywhere seamlessly. The game engine handles the big universe in consistent way.
He showed smaller ship movement, pulling off loop-de-loops and a BARREL ROLL.
He flew the ship from the city to space with no loading time. The quantity of atmosphere and speed affected the visible friction around the ship. The ship will move faster as it goes further away from the atmosphere and reduces friction.
Ancell stressed that interactivity is the heart of the game. Not just with characters, but meteors and other elements interacting to shape the in-game world.
Ancell asked fans to join the Space Monkey program for feedback and promised many more videos like this.
What do you think? No Man’s Sky part 2 or something better?
