Beyond Good & Evil 2 artwork teased by Michel Ancel
Not at all Jaded.
Rayman creator Michel Ancel has shown off a new look at Beyond Good & Evil's main character, Jade - presumably her appearance in the cult adventure's on-again, off-again sequel.
The Beyond Good & Evil 2 artwork was actually teased last month, during a Twitch livestream where Ancel and his Ubisoft Montpellier team played the recent PS4 version of Rayman Legends and answered fan questions.
And, of course, the current status of Beyond Good & Evil 2 came up.
"Working on Rayman Legends was a nice holiday," Ancel joked. "We're going to make serious games [now], man. And Beyond Good & Evil 2 would be a good candidate for a serious game..."
Later in the stream, Ancel ran and fetched the new artwork to show off to the camera. The design is reminiscent of Jade's look in the game's 2008 reveal trailer - the only time we've had a good look at the character.
A smattering of in-progress concept art and footage have appeared online since, but the game itself has been mothballed while Ancel and the team at Ubisoft Montpellier waited for the next generation of consoles to arrive - time well spent instead developing Rayman Origins and Rayman Legends.
"We need to build the team and retrieve the elements that we worked on," Ancel told Eurogamer last year after Rayman Legends was completed. "I don't want to say things in terms of time that will make people disappointed - it will really depend on the speed that we will make things for that game.
"We've made a lot of things already. Now we need to put them together and make that game. If there would be any communication it will be in the next year, just trying to talk about the fact we are on it. But so many people in Ubisoft want to make that game, honestly."
A sequel will likely see players free to explore the whole of Hillys, the original game's planet, and other worlds too.
"It was not the time when we worked on it before, it was too ambitious, honestly," Ancel concluded. "And this is the game that we want to do at the right time. So now that we have the right team and the right tools, this would be a good time to do it."
Watch a clip from the live-stream below to see Ancel show off the Jade artwork (at 2:08) and hear Ubisoft composer Christophe Héral sing the Beyond Good and Evil theme (1:30).
