Some footage of Beyond Good and Evil 2 has surfaced – from 2008.
Damien Barranco is an animator who worked for Ubisoft in the 2000s and has 5 credited games on Mobygames. Those games include the original Beyond Good and Evil, all the way back in 2003.
This week, Damien’s animation work on Beyond Good and Evil 2 as it was in 2008 had surfaced. While we don’t have that much more seconds of footage than the new footage of Theda Bara in Cleopatra from 1917, both stand as groundbreaking pieces of found footage. For those who are curious, you can see the new Cleopatra footage here.
Getting back to video games, the found animations mainly show new work on Jade’s mentor, Pey’j. It starts with a precious two frames of Jade shaking Pey’j’s shoulders, apparently getting him to wake up.
It then moves to footage of Pey’j gripping and holding onto his right arm. His right arm is heavily bandaged, and shows signs of serious injury. In fact, there are some splotches of blood around his arms and hands. Pey’j eventually lets go of his arm as he turns around to see someone or something.
A third animation shows Pey’j in a familiar scenario; punch drunk, and talking to someone else in the bar. He gets so worked up from his story that he eventually falls over from his stool. This scene also has voice acting from an unidentified actor. We don’t know if this is the same actor who voices him in the video games, and it may be possible it’s placeholder work from someone in Ubisoft.
In any case, the dialogue seems to have already been fully laid out, so this scene may have been important enough to the story that it was one of those scenes that were worked on first. Hardcore Beyond Good and Evil fans probably already recognize the person Pey’j is talking to as well – Double H, a side character who becomes a major ally to Jade, but may not be as well-known as Jade herself.
In light of Beyond Good and Evil 2 ‘s messy development history, these revelations are exciting, but have a bittersweet air around them. We never got this version of the game, ultimately, and we don’t know if we will ever get any version of Beyond Good and Evil 2 at all.
The logical course of action, of course, would have been if Ubisoft had finished this version of Beyond Good and Evil 2 to release on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and thereby keep the franchise viable as a regular series. Today, the franchise’s future is entirely uncertain.
