Beyond Good and Evil's 20-year legacy doesn't justify its sequel's troubled development

A recent replay of Beyond Good and Evil's 20th anniversary edition has raised uncomfortable questions about the game's outsized influence on its long-delayed sequel.

One writer completed the entire experience over a weekend, collecting all pearls and photographing all animals. While the game remains colorful and memorable, the experience felt sparse. Beyond the novelty of wildlife photography through a camera lens, the game offers shonky combat, paper-thin characters, and tedious stealth mechanics that are simultaneously too easy and too boring.

The core issue isn't that Beyond Good and Evil is a bad game. It delivers exactly what it sets out to do: a brief, enjoyable adventure that works best as an ephemeral experience. That was its strength when it launched. But that also raises an obvious question: why has a game with so little substance become the foundation for one of gaming's most legendary development struggles?

According to the analysis, a sequel of similar scope and quality would reasonably take two to three years to develop. Beyond Good and Evil 2 has been in development for far longer, and what players will eventually see remains unclear. Whether the extended development time will justify itself when the game finally releases remains to be seen.