It’s no surprise to see Beyond Good & Evil make a return at E3. The game was first revealed at last year’s E3 in an absolutely stunning trailer, and this year was no different. Besides the gorgeous trailer, they provided new information on the game as well as the process behind it.
In the trailer, we see the space pirate crew that we were partly introduced to last year. This year they introduced some new characters and some old ones as Pey’j is back, this time as the chief cook for the pirates. After the pirate crew’s ship gets boarded by an evil spaceship of some sorts we see another character returning, Jade.
For those that don’t know, Jade was the protagonist of the first Beyond Good & Evil, but will now be the villain in the prequel. Although this might seem a little strange, it’s not necessarily inconsistent with the lore. By the end of the game, it’s revealed that Jade is actually Shauni, so it makes sense that in this game, Jade is the evil Shauni and would have to suppress that part of her in order to lead to the events of the first game.
We were also shown a very short gameplay clip of The Sacred City of Genisha, which will serve as the main city in the game. The city is heavily inspired by ancient Indian architecture with lots of temples and ancient ruins throughout the city. According to the developers, you will be able to go on foot, fly with a jetpack or use your spaceship to traverse the city. Switching from one form of transportation to another is seamless.
They also showed a trailer in which they announced that they will be working together with HitRecord. HitRecord is a company that was founded by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and is a platform that provides creative souls the opportunity to work together on projects. Anybody who can write, draw, animate or just has an interest in Beyond Good & Evil 2 is welcome to join them in the creative journey. There are even possibilities of pay is your contribution is included in the final product.
The reason they are working together with this company is that they want their iteration of space to be absolutely massive. While this is always awesome to hear, in practice it doesn’t always work out, as we have seen with games like No Man’s Sky. Having extra people working on populating space will help tremendously with the atmosphere of the game. It also allows the developers to come across ideas that they might not have thought off. Everything is heavily curated though so don’t expect any weird fan fantasies to show up in game.
