After two showings at Ubisoft’s E3 Press Conferences, Beyond Good and Evil 2 is slowly starting to take shape. But even when Ubisoft shows off the game, either in a tech demo or a livestream, there are still a lot of questions about how the game will work. Luckily, Ubisoft offered a behind closed doors demo for Beyond Good and Evil 2 at E3 2018 that helps explain the game’s framework.

This simplest explanation is that Beyond Good and Evil 2 is an open world RPG where the player takes control of a customizable pirate. They will complete missions on various planets and upgrade the enhancements to their character along the way.

Combat in Beyond Good and Evil 2 is a mix between third person shooter and a third person melee action. With those enhancements, players can stun, paralyze, or even slow their opponents, either by firing their gun at the enemy or hitting them with their sword.

Modifying weapons is part of Beyond Good and Evil 2’s upgrade path, which complements its RPG mechanics. Playing coop also adds a new dynamic to encounters, as one player can flank while the other takes a more direct approach. Players can also scan enemies to see what abilities they have and determine which individuals are higher priority than others.

The indoor section of the demo was fairly straightforward; the player character and a teammate took out some baddies in a lab. They completed a quest and then exited the lab and entered Ganesha City. Here is where things got exciting.

Ganesha City is the open world environment seen briefly during Ubisoft’s E3 2018 press conference. It’s a sprawling city in the New India area and is filled with points of interest. The design of Ganesha City will also feature elements created by collaborators through the Hit RECord program.

Players explore Ganesha City through various types of flying vehicles, like jet bikes or their personal space ship. They can also use a jet pack at any time for more exact aerial travel.

Ganesha City on its own seems vast and filled with opportunities to explore, buy items, and complete quests. But it is only one piece of the puzzle. As our demo continued, the developers took to the skies in the player character’s space ship to show how large Ganesha City is. But they didn’t stop there.

The ship continued to climb into the atmosphere until it was in space and Ganesha City was merely a mass on the planet below. However, the city still has the same basic shape and it is possible to pick out some of the landmarks, like a giant statue of Ganesh, from this great height.

Once in space, players are free to explore the galaxy, traveling to different planets, which presumably have their own thriving cities. Our demo only highlighted Ganesha City but we counted a handful of planets to explore.

And that is the real ambition of Beyond Good and Evil 2 that has, up until now, only been talked about. Being able to start on a very micro level, inside a lab environment in a temple, and then travel up to space with no loads and no hindrances. With players’ customizable ships, they can truly live out the idea of being a space pirate and all that means.

Beyond Good and Evil 2 has no release date.