Beyond Good and Evil 2 has shown off some stunning cinematic trailers, as well as gameplay footage at E3 that may have gotten a lot of fans' hopes up about an imminent release window. Unfortunately, the game's Senior Creative Director has taken to Instagram to reveal that Beyond Good and Evil 2 is still a long way off completion.

At E3 2018, Ubisoft gave a behind-closed-doors demo of the game, which made it clear that it would be an open-world RPG with galaxy exploration. This rather ambitious-sounding elevator pitch may go some way to explaining the lengthy development process of Beyond Good and Evil 2 - rumors for which began circulating way back in 2007.

On Instagram, Senior Creative Director Michel Ancel posted an image of Ganesha City, one of the Beyond Good and Evil 2's environments, and began responding to a few fans in the comment section. One such fan asked "when will there be a release date?", to which Ancel responded: "We aim for a playable beta for the end of next year".

The news will no doubt come as a disappointment to those closely following Beyond Good and Evil 2 and hoping to get their hands on it soon. Ubisoft, however, remains unconcerned with the 15 year (and counting) gap since the original Beyond Good and Evil, with CEO Yves Guillemot expressing his full confidence in Ancel to pull off the project.

Thankfully for Ancel, he won't be alone in creating Beyond Good and Evil 2's ambitious open world; the Space Monkey Program will allow fans from across the world to submit their own artwork, music, or even writing to the game. The system will also allow contributors to collaborate, working together to create content that may find its way into the final game.

So Beyond Good and Evil 2 does unfortunately belong to the camp of games we saw at E3 that are still a long way off releasing. Fans should at least be reassured that the game is in a playable state, and not still at the conceptual level of development like Bethesda's long-awaited The Elder Scrolls 6. With a beta planned for late-2019, we may even see a lot more of the game before the year is out.

Beyond Good and Evil 2 is currently in development, with a beta planned for the end of 2019.