Posted one week ago by Stormbringer as a thread bump no one cared about, and since not caring about Beyond Good & Evil is sooo 2003 I thought it needed its own thread.
There's this recent video interview with Michel Ancel, where he first says nothing about a new Rabbids game (seemingly the one that has now been announced), and then goes on to discuss the first BG&E's inspirations and some BG&E2 tidbits.
Here
It's from a french event, so obviously it's all in french.
Basically about BGE2:
* A lot of returning characters, they really want to keep the spirit of the first game and the same atmosphere/topics (medias, army, etc). However, the general presentation will differ (nothing more than what we saw in the teaser).
He explains the reason for that is, the first BGE was supposed to be much more cinematographic to begin with. He remembers when they were making a document for Sony about BGE1 to get a developpement kit, they had to say why their game was original and different from the others, and the first words of the document were things like "immersive" or "finally we get to feel like in a movie while playing a game", and then then when they received the kit, playing around with the hardware they realized Emotion Engine wasn't as technically awesome as it was promised or at least not awesome enough for what they had prepared, so they had to tone down their vision of the game to make it possible on the 128bits.
Now with the next gen consoles they have the necessary horsepower to do what they originally wanted to do.
He says that even though to the public it may seem like a different game, it's really what they wanted to do at first, and it totally keeps the spirit of the first game.
The universe will be a lot more dense for example.
* Interviewer asks if that means they're automatically ruling out the Wii. He says there's always a possibility of ports or even specific versions for "those consoles", but right now their focus is on next-gen (note : next-gen obviously refers to this gen. Yeah, I know.).
Asked if the title is scheduled to be a 360/PS3/PC mutliplat, he doesn't say anything relevant either.
* Also :
Interviewer : "Is it a direct sequel or more like 10 years after or something" ?
Ancel : "Well that's a nice thing to discover when you'll play it"
Ancel : [laughs]
Though he does say it is a continuation of the first one's story, with lots of references to its key events.
* The game is still in pre-production.
Gameplay-wise, the game will be different from the first one. If they were to make the same game with just a new story, the game would already be out as they've been working on it for more than a year and a half.
They want to do what they weren't able to do last gen. The game was supposed to be bigger, more immersive, it was supposed to have more investigations, etc. and that's still their exact focus. They really want the player to be in another universe, and make the limits of said universe seemingly invisible (note : if you played the first one, you know it had a much more clever approach to exploration limitations than invisible walls, that's what they're going to push forward).
All of this means they have to invent new processes, new tools (all from a technical standpoint). They're not going "we need that game out in 2010 so let's do as much as we can in that time frame".
They know what they want, and the actual developpement of the game won't begin as long as they're aren't satisfied with the tools they have. (note : So apparently Ubi as an editor isn't rushing anything, which is always nice to know.) It takes a lot of planning, a lot of thinking, a lot of engineering, a lot of testing so it takes a lot of time.
He compares it to the creation of a new camera system, or Nintendo's new interfaces. Sometimes you have a promising prototype, but it doesn't really work well, so you don't know if it will be able to do what you want, and if it doesn't you'll have to create something else, so you can't tell people "okay it's coming !" because you're not even sure you're on the good track. Basically, they don't know when they will be done with the technical stuff, so they don't know when they'll begin the actual production, let alone when it will be finished.
That's why they don't have a set release date.
He also explains the commercial failure of the first one. I can translate that too if you ask politely.
Sorry for any typo/grammar crap or shitty edit I may have left in there.
Edit : It's here now :
There's this recent video interview with Michel Ancel, where he first says nothing about a new Rabbids game (seemingly the one that has now been announced), and then goes on to discuss the first BG&E's inspirations and some BG&E2 tidbits.
Here
It's from a french event, so obviously it's all in french.
Basically about BGE2:
* A lot of returning characters, they really want to keep the spirit of the first game and the same atmosphere/topics (medias, army, etc). However, the general presentation will differ (nothing more than what we saw in the teaser).
He explains the reason for that is, the first BGE was supposed to be much more cinematographic to begin with. He remembers when they were making a document for Sony about BGE1 to get a developpement kit, they had to say why their game was original and different from the others, and the first words of the document were things like "immersive" or "finally we get to feel like in a movie while playing a game", and then then when they received the kit, playing around with the hardware they realized Emotion Engine wasn't as technically awesome as it was promised or at least not awesome enough for what they had prepared, so they had to tone down their vision of the game to make it possible on the 128bits.
Now with the next gen consoles they have the necessary horsepower to do what they originally wanted to do.
He says that even though to the public it may seem like a different game, it's really what they wanted to do at first, and it totally keeps the spirit of the first game.
The universe will be a lot more dense for example.
* Interviewer asks if that means they're automatically ruling out the Wii. He says there's always a possibility of ports or even specific versions for "those consoles", but right now their focus is on next-gen (note : next-gen obviously refers to this gen. Yeah, I know.).
Asked if the title is scheduled to be a 360/PS3/PC mutliplat, he doesn't say anything relevant either.
* Also :
Interviewer : "Is it a direct sequel or more like 10 years after or something" ?
Ancel : "Well that's a nice thing to discover when you'll play it"
Ancel : [laughs]
Though he does say it is a continuation of the first one's story, with lots of references to its key events.
* The game is still in pre-production.
Gameplay-wise, the game will be different from the first one. If they were to make the same game with just a new story, the game would already be out as they've been working on it for more than a year and a half.
They want to do what they weren't able to do last gen. The game was supposed to be bigger, more immersive, it was supposed to have more investigations, etc. and that's still their exact focus. They really want the player to be in another universe, and make the limits of said universe seemingly invisible (note : if you played the first one, you know it had a much more clever approach to exploration limitations than invisible walls, that's what they're going to push forward).
All of this means they have to invent new processes, new tools (all from a technical standpoint). They're not going "we need that game out in 2010 so let's do as much as we can in that time frame".
They know what they want, and the actual developpement of the game won't begin as long as they're aren't satisfied with the tools they have. (note : So apparently Ubi as an editor isn't rushing anything, which is always nice to know.) It takes a lot of planning, a lot of thinking, a lot of engineering, a lot of testing so it takes a lot of time.
He compares it to the creation of a new camera system, or Nintendo's new interfaces. Sometimes you have a promising prototype, but it doesn't really work well, so you don't know if it will be able to do what you want, and if it doesn't you'll have to create something else, so you can't tell people "okay it's coming !" because you're not even sure you're on the good track. Basically, they don't know when they will be done with the technical stuff, so they don't know when they'll begin the actual production, let alone when it will be finished.
That's why they don't have a set release date.
He also explains the commercial failure of the first one. I can translate that too if you ask politely.
Sorry for any typo/grammar crap or shitty edit I may have left in there.
Edit : It's here now :
