Ancel dividing time 50-50 between Wild and Ubisoft
But what does this mean for Beyond Good & Evil 2?
Michel Ancel, the French game designer famed for his work on Rayman and Beyond Good & Evil, is still splitting his work between Ubisoft and his own newly formed indie studio Wild Sheep, where he's working on the ambitious open world survival game Wild.
Speaking at an event following last night's Sony conference at Paris Games Week, where we got our first extended look at Wild, Ancel clarified the situation to Eurogamer.
"It's very simple," he said. "I'm working half and half - I'm still working at Ubisoft. Here, because it's my studio, it's a very special game and I'm trying to do very crazy things on this game. It's two different things."
Previously we only knew that Ancel was now only at Ubisoft "part-time", which lead to speculation that the creator had, for all intents and purposes, checked out.
What, then, is Ancel working on at Ubisoft? Back when he announced that he would be forming a new studio, Ubisoft teased that Ancel would be creating "an extremely ambitious new title that is very close to his and the team's heart".
His last game for Ubisoft was the well-received Rayman Legends in 2013, but this description was widely assumed to refer to Ancel's Beyond Good & Evil sequel - a project that's made several low-key appearances since 2008, but which has been largely silent in recent years. Is Ancel still actively working on Beyond Good & Evil 2?
"Haha! Who said I was working on Beyond Good & Evil 2? I can't talk too much, because this is not Ubisoft!"
Wild, meanwhile, is shaping up into an interesting, typically unique game from Ancel. We'll have more on it in the near future.
