Famed French game designer Michel Ancel (accredited with creating Rayman and Beyond Good & Evil) is branching out — and by branching out I mean going indie. Wild Sheep Studios is a new, independent game development initiative, and it consists of Ancel and twelve others, if the above image is any indication.
You’re probably wondering what this means for Rayman and Ancel’s position at Ubisoft (or you’re just continuously weeping over Beyond Good & Evil 2, because there are few other emotions left at this point), but lucky for fans of Ubisoft’s longstanding limbless mascot, Ancel isn’t going anywhere. He’ll retain his supervisory role at Ubisoft, continuing working directly on a select few projects, and somehow do this while developing games with Wild Sheep Studios. Busy guy, but I’m sure he can handle it.
Related: Rayman Legends Review
Perhaps more interesting is a statement Polygon was able to extract from an Ubisoft spokesperson regarding the current status of Beyond Good & Evil 2. If you’re one of the perpetual mourners I mentioned earlier, this may ease your pain enough to wipe away the tears.
In many ways, [Beyond Good & Evil] is an inimitable game — it appeals to all generations of gamers and is an inspiration behind many of Ubisoft Montpellier’s past and future games. It’s still far too early to give many details about this new title, but what we can say is that while Michel and the team at Ubisoft Montpellier are working with the core tenets of BG&E, they’re developing something that aspires to push past the boundaries of a proverbial sequel and leverages next-gen technologies to deliver a truly surprising, innovative and exceptional game. The entire team is excited about the direction this extremely ambitious project is taking, and we’ll have more to share later, as it progresses.
Quite the mouthful for a spokesperson, no? Still, the statement further hypes the game’s inevitable (but likely far-off) release, at the very least implying it will arrive during the current console cycle. In other words, we now have official confirmation that Beyond Good & Evil 2 will arrive within a seven-year-ish time frame. Break open the champagne!
