There's no question that the reveal of Beyond Good and Evil 2 during Ubisoft's press conference at E3 2017 was one of the biggest surprises of this year's expo, as the game's Creative Director Michel Ancel took to the stage during the event to unveil the initial look at the title by way of a highly detailed cinematic trailer. Now, Ancel has sat down to record a nearly 15 minute long video to offer a behind the scenes look at the first in-engine demo for the title that was originally shown at E3 2017 behind closed doors.

As seen below in Beyond Good and Evil 2's first in-engine demo, Ancel begins by showing off the actual mother ship seen in the game's reveal trailer, which is about 400 meters long, with it and ships like it serving as players' home bases to hold their crew, their own quarters, and even additional space vessels. The Creative Director then has his protagonist of choice – for Ancel, he's chosen the monkey character from the first trailer – soar around in the skies with a jet pack.

Ancel goes on to state that the ships can be explored by players, with the Creative Director using the mother ship as an example, saying, "You can get inside, you can sell your pizza, and then instead of getting out of the ship you can decide to explore the ship. And you might discover that there is some slavery, some human trafficking and things like that." Thankfully, like the original Beyond Good and Evil, players will be equipped with a camera so that they can photograph such atrocities for evidence and expose them to the proper authorities.

Perhaps the most impressive aspect on display during the in-engine demo is Beyond Good and Evil 2's sense of scale, with Michel Ancel showing off how massive the worlds and its environments are by putting his monkey atop the city's giant golden statue of what appears to be the deity Ganesh. Using developer tools, the Creative Director pulls the camera out to show the character's size in relation to the planet he's inhabiting, which makes him a tiny speck. What's more, a time lapse in the video exhibits how the game takes into account astronomical physics, with planets turning in real-time, changes in the atmosphere affecting a ship's force as it flies into outer space, and "real-time giant meteorites, asteroids, falling and modifying the planet's ground."

Of course, with Beyond Good and Evil 2 being early in development, all of the aforementioned features and assets could be completely changed, altered, refined, or even nixed in the future so as to have the most polished product possible. After all, original concept art for BG&E 2 had been leaked well before the title's official reveal showing the likes of the first game's main characters Jade and Pey'j, with neither of them having been highlighted since the sequel's announcement last week. Hopefully, we will learn more about the fate of Jade and Pey'j and Beyond Good and Evil 2's gameplay in due time.

Beyond Good and Evil 2 is currently in production, but lacks an official release date for any platform.

Source: Ubisoft US – YouTube