Ubisoft talks Beyond Good & Evil 2

Beyond Good & Evil director Michel Ancel has spoken out to discuss the long-in-development sequel, Beyond Good & Evil 2. In an interview with IGN, the designer said Ubisoft's ambition for the sequel was too grand for current-generation consoles.

"I think we were doing something too big for this period," Ancel said. "Honestly, it was too challenging to put that on [current] consoles. I don't say the consoles were not good enough, I don’t say the team was not good enough, but you have to scale what you want to do and the console itself."

Now that new consoles, namely the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, are on the horizon, Ancel explained that Ubisoft is willing to try again.

"I think now with those new consoles arriving, yes, we want to try again making that game," Ancel said. "I would say it's surprising, as we want it to be. Not just a sequel, but something that really makes all the ideas that we had for the first one possible now with these consoles."

Ancel's vision for Beyond Good & Evil 2 is beyond just "bigger," and more about giving the player freedom to explore that world as they see fit, he said.

"My feeling is that you want to investigate with your own way of investigating. I like the freedom of choosing your vehicles, flying away with the spaceship, and all those things. It was in Beyond Good & Evil 1 but it was not as much as we wanted."

The sequel to the fan-favorite 2003 action adventure game was first announced by Ancel in 2008, when he confirmed that the project had already been in preproduction for a year.

Last year, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot confirmed that the game was still active, but was coming along slowly because of Ancel's time commitments on other major franchises, such as Rayman Legends.