Beyond Good and Evil 2 was playable in 2008 but held back for "technical issues"

Beyond Good and Evil 2 has been a long time coming: Ubisoft only confirmed that it's (still) in the works a couple of weeks ago, but it was actually announced all the way back in 2008. And in a recent Instagram post, director Michel Ancel said it was playable "in many prototypes" then too. But hasn't seen the light of day so far because of "technical issues" that left the developers unable to achieve the vision they had for the game. 

"We wanted planet exploration, space travel, cities... All this was also supposed to be in BGE 1," Ancel wrote. "Instead of not doing the game of our dreams, we decided to return to 2D, have fun with Rayman and go back at work for Beyond Good and Evil 2." 

That sounds more like technical limitations than "issues," although I suppose that's a bit of a fine hair to split. The post also offers some insight into what Ancel and Ubisoft have in mind for the sequel, which, assuming they still want now what they wanted then, will go far beyond the scope of the original game. Waiting, in other words, may well prove to have been the right thing to do. Unfortunately it sounds like there's still a lot of waiting left to do: Ancel concluded by saying, "We still have loooooots of work but now the tech is ready and the team is fantastic!"

Thanks, GamesRadar.