Beyond Good and Evil 2 has been gaining traction thanks to their Space Monkey program, first launched at E3 last year. The interactions with the community have revealed several bits of information regarding the latest project by developer Michel Ancel. The latest round of questions came from a recent callout from their fourth video on demand, which showed off some rough stages of the gameplay.
While questions on the lore of the game, such as the number of animal hybrids to what clones are were asked, the one question receiving the most attention had to deal with the revelation of the game requiring an internet connection to play.
"Beyond Good and Evil 2 is an online, multiplayer game with a rich co-op and seamless experience." said the dev team. "As such, the game will only be playable with an internet connection in order to have seamless navigation, receive dynamic updates, and play with friends (which is certainly better when you're playing as a Space Pirate!). The choice to play co-op, however, remains yours to make, so playing BGE2 solo is absolutely possible if you're into that lone Space Pirate kinda thing..."
Reaction online has been fairly negative towards Ubisoft and Ancel for this, with many fans believing that Beyond Good and Evil 2 should not require an always online component. Adding fuel to the fire were several prominent game developers coming to the aid of the developer team, In particular was God of War creator David Jaffe, who went to Twitter to criticize those criticizing the game, calling out fans as 'super entitled babies' and expanding upon his thoughts on his own live stream over the Holiday Break.
Jaffe would later apologize on Twitter for what he said: "To be fair/clear, I'm just taking the piss - I respect folks may be upset it's not the game they thought it would be. In fact, the one thing I think Ubisoft SHOULD do is change the name cause it AIN'T BGE2. That's misleading." Jaffe goes on to note that he finds gamers who are shocked that the game will always be online to be either gullible or naive to the current trends of AAA developers and publishers and that more blame should be put on other players who "vote with their wallets" and purchase online only games.
While Jaffe blew up the story, what is lost ultimately is the developments found in Beyond Good and Evil 2. Since it was announced at E3 in 2017, Ubisoft and Michel Ancel has been steadily showing off content from art to gameplay footage for fans willing to sign up for their Space Monkey program. Beyond Good and Evil 2 has also opened itself up to the community for feedback, despite some animosity towards the community partnerships with groups such as Hitrecord, which has promised community collaboration with Beyond Good and Evil 2 by allowing fan-made content, from music to visual assets, to be purchased and added to the game by Ubisoft.
Despite all of this, Beyond Good and Evil 2 is still on track for a future release, though Ancel and his team have been tight-lipped as to when the game will come out, and for what consoles.
What are your thoughts on all of this? Looking forward to Beyond Good and Evil 2? Leave your comments below.
