MONKEY MAGIC
Beyond Good & Evil 2 looks like a beast of a prequel
Ubisoft reveals its BG&E prequel.
Knox stole our hearts – and Ubisoft’s E3 conference. The streetwise ape is just one of many stellar characters who burst onto the screen when Ubisoft gave us a peek at the world it’s building for Beyond Good & Evil 2’s return.
It’s taken 15 years to get to this point, to have confirmation of a new Beyond Good & Evil game. This isn’t a sequel to the adventures of Jade and Pey’j, though, it’s a prequel. There’s a completely different cast of heroes and villains for us to fall in love with, including cheeky monkey Knox and his coconspirator Shani, the sassy hover- bike-riding getaway driver we see in the cinematic trailer.
Oh yes, that teaser movie. It hints at so much. A fully formed sci-fi world that looks like it’s been torn straight out of the pages of a Moebius comic strip. Bustling streets mix Asian and Western influences, and Knox has been caught redhanded trying to con local villain Zhou Yuzhu and his assistant Daiyu Li. The animation is supreme, the snappy one-liners delivered with aplomb. We’re back at home in Beyond Good & Evil.
HOG HAPPY
This distant galaxy is System 3, home to a multi-ethnic, multicultural society. Corporations run planets, creating animal hybrids to enslave and colonise the stars. In the game you’ll play a part in the Knox/Shani crew (you can create your own character) and dabble in space piracy, when not leading a rebellion against the corporations.
New details from Ancel confirm there will be many planets with multiple cities on each world, created with a mix of procedural generation and hand-crafted assets. Each of these cities will be bustling with activity; shops, bars and deals gone bad will be common.
There’s a traffic system already in place with a police AI routine to govern it, and NPC characters go about their daily business. And we do mean daily business, too. In a demo that echoes the trailer, Ancel showed how you can emerge from a bar, steal a ship, zip off down a crowded street, launch away from
LOOKS TORN FROM THE PAGES OF A MOEBIUS COMIC STRIP.
the city, and out into the universe – with no loading times.
Even more amazing, Ancel has explained how the game doesn’t feature traditional day/night cycles but instead uses a simulation of the universe. Planets rotate and in turn orbit a sun, so when sunlight is cast onto a world it’s phsically accurate. If you see a sunset in BG&E2 it will be because there’s a real horizon, an actual setting sun.
So how will we play in this epic universe? Ancel has revealed the game isn’t an MMO like Destiny, but it is an action-roleplayer with an AI team, XP upgrades, and character levelling; the game is being designed around single-player adventuring but online co-op is also on the cards. Excited? Us? Whoop, whoop, you bet.
Join the Space Monkey Progam… er, sign up for the beta at bgegame.com.