Beyond Good and Evil 2 was playable in 2008 but held back for "technical issues"

Beyond Good and Evil 2 has been a long time coming: Ubisoft only confirmed that it's (still) in the works a couple of weeks ago, but it was actually announced all the way back in 2008. And in a recent Instagram post, director Michel Ancel said it was playable "in many prototypes" then too. But hasn't seen the light of day so far because of "technical issues" that left the developers unable to achieve the vision they had for the game.

"We wanted planet exploration, space travel, cities... All this was also supposed to be in BGE 1," Ancel wrote. "Instead of not doing the game of our dreams, we decided to return to 2D, have fun with Rayman and go back at work for Beyond Good and Evil 2."

2008 Characters . The game was playable with many prototypes . All videos where realtime but we had too much technical issues . We wanted planet exploration , space travel , cities ... All this was also supposed to be in BGE 1 ... Instead of not doing the game of our dreams , we decided to return to 2d , have fun with Rayman and go back at work for Beyond good and Evil 2 . We still have loooooots of work but now the tech is ready and the team is fantastic !
A photo posted by @michelancel on Oct 19, 2016 at 12:18am PDT

That sounds more like technical limitations than "issues," although I suppose that's a bit of a fine hair to split. The post also offers some insight into what Ancel and Ubisoft have in mind for the sequel, which, assuming they still want now what they wanted then, will go far beyond the scope of the original game. Waiting, in other words, may well prove to have been the right thing to do. Unfortunately it sounds like there's still a lot of waiting left to do: Ancel concluded by saying, "We still have loooooots of work but now the tech is ready and the team is fantastic!"

Thanks, GamesRadar.

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Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.