Beyond Good & Evil 2 is now officially the longest-delayed AAA game

There are some world records that none of us fought for; they just happened, and Beyond Good and Evil 2 being the most delayed AAA game of all time is one of them.

Beyond Good & Evil 2 was first released in 2008 and is still in development. This 14-year development period has successfully surpassed the previous record holder, Duke Nukem Forever, which was finally released in 2011 after its announcement in 1997.

The original game Beyond Good & Evil was released in 2003 as a third-person action game. From Michel Ancel, the mastermind behind the Rayman series, the game follows journalist and martial artist Jade as he tries to unravel a sinister and ongoing alien conspiracy.

The game was highly rated for both storytelling and design, although it wasn’t a commercial hit initially. Having said that, there’s a reason for that, as Michel Ancel herself points out that consumers at the time had their interests elsewhere, with more established series and technically impressive games .

Brendan Sinclair of GamesIndustry.biz noted this particular world record, saying that “Duke Nukem Forever took 5,156 days from its announcement in 1997 to its release in 2011.” It’s been 5,234 days since a trailer was released.”

The first trailer for Beyond Good & Evil 2 came out in 2008, and Ubisoft has repeatedly stated that the game is still in development. That said, Michelle Ansel left Ubisoft in 2020, and while Ubisoft says it’s still working on the game, there’s been very little news about it.

What we know so far is that just a few months ago, despite the odds, the title had to continue. Narrative designer Sarah Arellano announced back in August that she had joined the Ubisoft team as the new lead writer for Beyond Good and Evil 2.

So, something is in the works, but only time will tell if Beyond Good and Evil will receive the sequel it and its fans deserve.