Beyond Good & Evil 2 inventive director Fawzi Mesmar has responded to Ubisoft’s sweeping firm reshuffle that resulted within the cancellation or delay of a swathe of sport tasks, in addition to studio closures and layoffs — together with an extra 200 job losses proposed on the firm’s Paris headquarters this week.
Writing on LinkedIn, former DICE veteran Mesmar assured followers of Ubisoft’s long-in-development Beyond Good & Evil 2 that the mission had not been impacted within the restructure, as had beforehand been anticipated. Nonetheless, the developer stated he was “saddened” by the reorganization’s results on his colleagues throughout the broader firm.
With an on-again, off-again improvement stretching again virtually 20 years, Beyond Good & Evil 2 stays an ongoing mission inside Ubisoft, led by its French workforce primarily based in Montpellier.
“Thanks for everybody who has reached out to me over the previous few days with reference to latest information at Ubisoft,” Mesmar wrote. “Myself, my workforce and our mission Beyond Good and Evil 2 are unaffected by the latest modifications. I might direct you to the official press launch for extra info across the newest organisational construction.”
This press launch was the one which laid out Ubisoft management’s imaginative and prescient for the corporate to be cut up into 5 “Creative Homes” that lump the writer’s many franchises into teams loosely primarily based round their style and viewers.
Final week, Beyond Good & Evil was introduced as being a part of Creative Home 4, a gaggle devoted to narrative pushed and fantasy-orientated sequence that additionally consists of Anno, Would possibly & Magic, Rayman and Prince of Persia (although not the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time Remake, which was canned).
“Evidently, I’m saddened by the cancellations that has affected my colleagues in different elements of Ubisoft and the business,” Mesmar continued. “I urge everybody — myself included — to supply help every time and nevertheless they’ll throughout these occasions.
“We stay dedicated and targeted on delivering a exceptional sport for our gamers to take pleasure in,” he concluded.
Beyond Good & Evil 2 initially begun early improvement in 2007, with sequence creator and Rayman mastermind Michel Ancel on board alongside the vast majority of the Montpellier workforce behind the primary Beyond Good & Evil sport. Growth was placed on the again burner whereas Ancel’s workforce labored on different tasks, however Ubisoft re-announced the sport with fanfare in 2017 and confirmed off an in-engine idea that includes area flight and designs to characteristic a number of photo voltaic methods and planets.
Once more, nevertheless, improvement struggled — and the mission was additional impacted by Ancel’s departure from Ubisoft and the unhappy dying of its subsequent inventive lead Emil Morel. However the final couple of years have seen work coalesce as soon as extra, with the sequel’s characters given intriguing cameos within the new Beyond Good & Evil twentieth Anniversary Version, and the hiring of Mesmar as inventive director to regular the ship. That stated, 20 years on from the unique, there stays no phrase on when its follow-up will launch.
Earlier this week, an actress believed to have been engaged on the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time Remake stated that she had misplaced three years’ value of labor and found her mission had been canceled after her brother examine Ubisoft’s shock determination on-line.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s Information Editor. You’ll be able to attain Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or discover him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social