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Beyond Good & Evil developer has an incredible story to tell

Meanwhile, Michel Ancel still working on BG&E2.

Beyond Good & Evil creator Michel Ancel has revealed an incredible story about a developer who worked on the game's PC build.

Ubisoft pls.

Ancel, speaking during an hour-long chat with Double Fine's Tim Schafer, recounted the story while playing through a section of his cult classic adventure game.

The French development legend also briefly mentioned the long, long in development Beyond Good & Evil sequel, which still seems to be in some sort of production.

But first, the story.


The tale concerns an Italian developer who was brought over to help with Beyond Good & Evil's PC version.

The unnamed man was working out of Ancel's Villa studio in the small city of Montpellier, far from home. He wasn't alone - a small team of Italians were brought over to do the job - but he was in a foreign country where he did not speak the language.

Then, one morning, he failed to turn up to work. Shortly after, Ancel and his team heard the man had been found - wandering the countryside without any clothes.

The poor guy had been kidnapped - forced into the boot of his own car and driven out into the middle of nowhere.

Fearing he was about to be murdered, the man was relieved when his captors suddenly pulled over and told him they were letting him go - but not before asking him to remove all of his clothes and hand over his phone.

It turned out he'd been abducted so his car could be used in a robbery. His captors stripped him of all his clothes and belongings to make sure they had a good few hours before he could get help and call the police.

So they left him, naked, wandering the countryside under a full moon. The man finally found help at a nearby house - after simply dancing for joy at still being alive.


"After all these years," Schafer replied, "you know the guy just made that up as he was late in to work?"

You can hear Ancel tell the story in the video below from around the 49 minute mark.

Finally, to Beyond Good &Evil 2, a game Ancel has been working on to a greater or lesser degree for over a decade.

"Yeah," Ancel replied when asked if he was actually making it. "But it's difficult because it's hard for me to redo the same kind of game two times, so I always want to do something different.

"It has to be great. When we started [the first] game there was not that much pressure."

Beyond Good & Evil 2 has never been officially announced by Ubisoft, but Ancel is still known to be working on something at the publisher despite also developing PlayStation 4 survival game Wild at his own independent studio, Wild Sheep.

Cover image for YouTube videoDevs Play S2E10 · "Beyond Good & Evil" with Michel Ancel, Tim Schafer, and Greg Rice