toblix

Beyond Better & Evil!

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If this means anything to anyone, it's 9:30 pm in Montpellier and Ancel's computer is still on and logged in though he is away.

Meaning if he quit, he isn't gone yet as most people would turn off their computer, i'd reckon.

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Wait, what? You have a direct line to Ancel at Ubisoft?

Did you always work at Ubisoft since joining Idleforums, Murdoc? I guess I didn't realize this until now after rereading your posts. Upon rereading your posts in the Prince of Persia Forgotten Sands thread, it appears you used to work at Ubisoft (guess that went over my head before), but right now your posts seem to be hinting you still work there...

So then, are you really allowed to comment on any of these things or even what you were talking about in the Prince of Persia thread? Just curious.

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Yeah I've been here since joining the forums. I like commenting on stuff and offering my opinion, it's just a fine line between my opinion based on what I've seen vs NDA contractual stuff.

I stay out of any real sensitive areas and really have only been offering personal opinions on old/common knowledge stuff. I've also stayed, mostly, out of anything I worked out just out of not being a total nob.

I'm leaving here in a week so I don't want to this to be interpreted as me being a dick and trying to burn the company... if anyone follows my comments(no reason to, lol) you'll notice I offer a lot of opinions about a lot of things either based off what I read on the net, hear from friends in other companies, or my experience in other companies.

It's really all mundane stuff and totally subjective to my personal opinion.

Really, if I were to break any kind of contract I'd go all out and talk about this interesting shit like,

yeah, I'm not going to, but you'll get an ear full when stuff gets officially announced. I don't consider my opinions on what I've seen on the internet and previous iterations on those things any contractual obligation.

So yeah, there's that. :)

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Maybe you're Michel Ancel then, eh?

or the other guy

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Well that's real a shame if they've cancelled it and he is leaving or will leave soon...

Michel Ancel is one of my most favourite game designers in the world.

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just because he's leaving doesn't mean he's retiring from game development.

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Yes, but starting from scratch at a new developer is never an easy task.

If he is truly leaving, I have no idea what the hell Ubisoft is doing. This guy was one of the main reasons why Ubis games like Rayman sold a ton during the past 15 years.

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He must be loaded. Maybe an independent project or two will not be a bad thing.

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Yes, but starting from scratch at a new developer is never an easy task.

If he is truly leaving, I have no idea what the hell Ubisoft is doing. This guy was one of the main reasons why Ubis games like Rayman sold a ton during the past 15 years.

Maybe this isn't true, but I figure without Pick n Pile, Rayman 1 and 2, and Tonic Trouble in the 90s, Ubisoft would be no where today. They all are sort of distinctly his stylings and are the games I knew Ubisoft for growing up. I don't know if it was the same for everyone else.

I remember in 2004 everyone was worried about EA aggressively taking Ubisoft over, as if they were the little guys that needed saving. I'm probably wrong because I don't have any inside information or real knowledge of the company, but it seems they decided to become a different company at the turn of the century either way.

Anyway, is the rumor of him quitting pretty much false then, Murdoc? If you can confirm or not?

Edited by syntheticgerbil

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Yeah I dunno, we don't get much news from France, but they usually send out notices when the important people leave (Clint Hocking and several others since I've been here)

All I know is that he has a computer here and it's still logged in, so my guess is as good as yours.

Edited by Murdoc

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Here's a few updates for anyone who is interested:

http://scrawlfx.com/2010/05/rumor-beyond-good-sequel-possibly-cancelled

Ubisoft has given us the old “we do not comment on rumors” response. Looks like the validity of this remains a mystery until some sort of confirmation is issued.

So that's pretty unhelpful, but it would seem he's not gone because of Murdoc's statements and this other bit of information that was posted on Facebook as a response to the rumor on the Ancel fanpage by Nicolas Choukroun:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Michel-Ancel/45707703446?ref=ts

Wrong, I met him 2 weeks ago. He is very busy on a sequel of Rayman. He just setup a smaller team because the team in Montpellier was too large. His team is in a different place but he works 100% with Ubi.

So Nicolas Choukroun goes way back with Michel Ancel, both teaming up to create some of their very early games. I would guess he's a source of information. It's just strange that now it is being claimed that he is working on a new proper Rayman sequel instead of continuing work on Beyond Good and Evil 2... perhaps he is mistaken? I find it odd with the leaked footage so far as well as the teaser trailer that Ancel would switch gears back to Rayman, especially after the rumor that Ubisoft heavy handedly changed the direction on Rayman 4 (now Raving Rabbids) and made him furious.

Nicolas' reply to the "WAT?!" questions afterwards were that he simply has no further comments.

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I find it odd with the leaked footage so far as well as the teaser trailer that Ancel would switch gears back to Rayman, especially after the rumor that Ubisoft heavy handedly changed the direction on Rayman 4 (now Raving Rabbids) and made him furious.

Wait...are you saying that this video is basically real????

ETc1JAVuZxU

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Projects often hit dead ends and need retooling to really start working. I have no doubt that Beyond Good and Evil 2 will be made at some point.

But if a project isn't working they may have sent it off somewhere else(there was rumor it was coming to Montreal... it did not) or Ancel might have enough clout to put it on hold while he does something else(rayman) for awhile.

Both possibilities seem possible and likely from the looks of it.

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Last time they made a statement about Beyond Good and Evil they told us not to get our hopes up too high for the sequel. Now they tell us not to worry. What a weird company. :erm:

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Wait...are you saying that this video is basically real????

I don't know for sure. That rumor came from the Surfer Girl blog years ago.

It sort of makes sense because a lot of the early screens show a different Rayman game was supposed to have come about. There also a lot of business hinted at Rayman needing to save his girlfriend (?) from the Rabbids. In the end,Ancel is only credited on character design for the first Rabbids game, for the Rabbids, and has not worked on any Rayman game since then.

Almost all of the early screens are here:

http://rayman4.wantedrayman.com/screenshots.html

It was widely reported it was changed with the Wii Dev kit, but I guess no one really spoke about Ancel disappearing as director.

Another testament to the game drastically changing directions from a platformer to a party game is the released Game Boy Advance version of RRR. It's a game that comes feeling strangely half done but seems to have a lot of the early elements that were shown in the original Rabbids screens in tact. My guess is that the team working on the Gameboy port got an early start since they were the same people who created the awesome Rayman 3 Gameboy port and maybe had a lot of things already ready to go. I'm not sure if any direction change with the major console had anything to do with the portable version's shoddy release, but there's a lot of parts in the in game map that never open up or are used.

Projects often hit dead ends and need retooling to really start working. I have no doubt that Beyond Good and Evil 2 will be made at some point.

I hope so, but I really hope Michel Ancel is involved as well. I don't know if any of this news or what you are saying means the project is in other hands now or in hold, but again it's not sounding good. On the up side, a more adventure type Rayman might be in store.

Last time they made a statement about Beyond Good and Evil they told us not to get our hopes up too high for the sequel. Now they tell us not to worry. What a weird company. :erm:

The whole gameplay leak was really bizarre as well, and I'm still not sure what the point of that was. It seemed like a gamplay test, but I also think Ubisoft denied both the responsibility for the leak and that it was Beyond Good and Evil related at all at the same time, right? I've forgotten, it's been too long.

Edited by syntheticgerbil

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The whole gameplay leak was really bizarre as well, and I'm still not sure what the point of that was. It seemed like a gamplay test, but I also think Ubisoft denied responsibility for the leak and that it was Beyond Good and Evil related at all at the same time, right? I've forgotten, it's been too long.

Yeah, something like that. I think that someone at Ubisoft even forgot they had released the teaser trailer way earlier at that point.

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I hope so, but I really hope Michel Ancel is involved as well. I don't know if any of this news or what you are saying means the project is in other hands now or in hold, but again it's not sounding good. On the up side, a more adventure type Rayman might be in store.

The whole gameplay leak was really bizarre as well, and I'm still not sure what the point of that was. It seemed like a gamplay test, but I also think Ubisoft denied responsibility for the leak and that it was Beyond Good and Evil related at all at the same time, right? I've forgotten, it's been too long.

I can clear some of this up without leaking anything. I mentioned before the rumor that BGnE2 was off the rails at the moment(January) and decisions on what to do with it were being made. Haven't heard anything since, so I'd say got moved or is on hold most likely what happened.

The video that was leaked was a target render video. A lot of companies, Ubisoft in particular create a that target video early on to get the feel of what the end product will be. That's all that video was, it happens before any real work has been put into the game, sometimes it's done in engine with post fx added later(like if it's a sequel to another game and there are assets readily available to make something like that) other times its done internally or through a third party company(I believe Bioshock used Blur at some point? oh and Killzone 2 used another company for their initial e3 showing)

I thought that video leaked was discovered to come from whatever company was working on it? Anyway, that's what I imagine that video was, how it ended up on the internet is a bit weird, but if it was being made outside Ubisoft not really out of the realm of possibility.

If you can track down whatever company did the Assassins Creed 2 cinematic video for E3 last year, you may find more as I know they are using them more then once, so it may have come from there, but thats just a guess.

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Ah, that's good to know Murdoc, because the video wasn't really shaping up to appear as if were even in the same universe, so it puts to rest some of our concerns earlier in the thread, which now seems really silly that you mention it's a target render that may have even been done by another company. Looking back, SignorSuperDouche appears to have hit the nail on the head though.

I'm not sure if there was any bit of news that said what company may have leaked it or who it may have came from, but I suppose it's not important anymore.

Thanks for the help on this stuff, by the way, Murdoc. I hold the Ancel design games kind of close since I feel very in tune with the feel and art direction of of most of them. The first two Rayman games were very responsible for me taking the time to branch out of boring old adventure games, perhaps Beyond Good and Evil has also done so to an extent as well.

Beyond Good and Evil is one of the few games where I really care what happens next, knowing it was set up more to be a series of games. I definitely would like to explore more places in that universe.

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http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/beyond-good-and-evil-2-still-in-dev

Ubisoft has dismissed suggestions that Michel Ancel has left the company, confirming that Beyond Good & Evil 2 is still in development.

Word of the Rayman creator's supposed departure appeared on the internet last week. It was said that Ancel had left to set up his own studio, and that the BG&E2 project had been cancelled as a result.

But a Ubisoft representative told Eurogamer, "There are no changes on the horizon."

When asked if that means Ancel is still at Ubi and that BG&E2 is still in development, the representative replied, "Yes."

It's been two years since the sequel was first announced, and since then there's been nothing more to see than the original teaser trailer. Here's hoping more is revealed soon.

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Well, that's good to hear.

I just hope that Michel Ancel doesn't get pushed around and he can make his game in peace. Be it a new real Rayman game or BG&E2.

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Man, this shit is like a rollercoaster.

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Man, this shit is like a rollercoaster.

Only when you're as big a dork as we are. :gaming:

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