What's Going Wrong with Beyond Good & Evil 2? Michel Ancel Explains

BGE2, for example, there were too many problems between managers. The artistic director wanted to redo everything over and over again, the game director wanted to make a generated dungeon game and I dreamed of a space adventure. We simply couldn't agree and the game director took the project in other directions.

In this type of situation, the teams find themselves tossed around and don't even know who is in charge and making decisions. The producer is supposed to put things in order but that didn't happen. Yves Guillemot even had to go down to Montpellier to get things going again, but that wasn't enough and the game director continued in his stubbornness. When I read in Libé that I was the one directing the game and asking for changes, I thought I was going to choke. BGE2 is the game on which I don't think I've ever questioned a decision. I'd be happy to discuss this subject with potential detractors.

There was not a single big bad guy but a sum of key concerns, unresolved at the level of the managers, of which I was one. I have my share of responsibility and I should have defended the project better, been more present and more conciliatory with the collaborators.