Beyond Good & Evil anniversary edition announced — and, typically, screwed up

Ubisoft gave an official launch date for Beyond Good & Evil: 20th Anniversary Edition with a new trailer on Thursday. The re-release arrives June 25 to PlayStation 4 and PS5; Xbox One and Series X; Windows PC (via Epic Games Store) and Nintendo Switch.

But, consistent with Ubisoft’s corporate, butterfingered handling of a cult classic crowd-pleaser for the past 20 years, even that couldn’t go off without a big screwup, or a statement to be walked back later.

First things first, here’s the real, bona fide trailer, which of course leaked out ahead of time with an inadvertent post to X before it was due:

That trailer went out about 20 minutes ahead of time, when someone inadvertently pushed “send” on a prepared tweet to the Ubisoft X account. It echoes an earlier incident in November, when someone accidentally hit “send” and published a playable, in-development build of Beyond Good & Evil’s anniversary remaster to the Ubisoft+ subscription service.

The re-release had not been announced at the time, but the leak, and the scrambling failure to contain it, forced the publisher to announce that it was on the way — even if that meant months later than the literal 20th anniversary of Beyond Good & Evil, which launched Nov. 11, 2003 for PlayStation 2.

Beyond Good & Evil is widely praised for its eclectic gameplay systems, its engrossing characters and storylines, and its farsighted approach to video games storytelling.

And yet it seems to be one of those franchise unicorns for which no amount of demonstrated fan enthusiasm can actually summon a proper sequel in 20 years, as publicly-traded publishers defer to more traditional blockbuster IPs and mining them 13 times over for the attention of fickle investors who do not play them.

What’s the latest on Beyond Good & Evil 2?

During Ubisoft’s big revue at E3 2017, Beyond Good & Evil fans got a dramatic announcement of a sequel, and Ubisoft president Yves Guillemot got rapturous applause for it.

In the seven years since, fans have heard zip. Instead, they have gotten a half-assed handling of a remaster of the original game — which, by the way, was already remastered for high-definition consoles during the Obama administration.

Still, a new Beyond Good & Evil, updated for modern hardware, beats the alternative, which is no BG&E on any current platform. But Ubisoft really needs to know how short its leash is with its own fans, after jerking them around for seven years with amateur-hour antics such as today’s.

Featured image via Steam

 

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