Past Good & Evil 2 artistic director Fawzi Mesmar has responded to Ubisoft’s main company restructuring that has led to quite a few sport venture cancellations and delays, studio closures and layoffs, together with one other 200 job cuts proposed this week on the firm’s Paris headquarters.
In a submit on LinkedIn, Mesmar, a former DICE veteran, assured followers of Past Good & Evil 2, which has been in improvement for years by Ubisoft, that the venture was not affected by the restructuring, as beforehand anticipated. Nonetheless, the developer stated he’s “saddened” by the affect the reorganization could have on colleagues throughout the corporate.
In improvement for nearly 20 years, Past Good & Evil 2 is an ongoing venture inside Ubisoft led by a French workforce primarily based in Montpellier.
“Thanks to everybody who has contacted me over the previous few days relating to current Ubisoft information,” Mesmar wrote. “Myself, my workforce, and our venture ‘Past Good and Evil 2’ are unaffected by the current adjustments. Please discuss with the official press launch for extra info relating to our up to date organizational construction.”
The press launch laid out Ubisoft’s administration’s imaginative and prescient to separate the corporate into 5 “artistic homes,” roughly grouping the writer’s many franchises primarily based on style and viewers.
Final week, Past Good & Evil was introduced as a part of Artistic Home 4, a gaggle that makes a speciality of story-driven, fantasy-oriented collection that additionally contains Anno, May & Magic, Rayman, and Prince of Persia (minus the canned Sands of Time remake).
“For sure, we’re saddened by the cancellation, which has affected different elements of Ubisoft and our colleagues within the trade,” Mesmar continued. βI urge everybody, myself included, to supply help each time and nevertheless you may throughout this time.
βWe stay dedicated to delivering nice video games for our gamers to take pleasure in,β he concluded.
Past Good & Evil 2 initially started early improvement in 2007, with collection creator and Rayman mastermind Michel Ancel on board, together with a lot of the Montpellier workforce behind the primary Past Good & Evil sport. Growth was placed on the again burner whereas Ansell’s workforce labored on different initiatives, however Ubisoft relaunched the sport to a lot fanfare in 2017, exhibiting off an in-engine idea that includes spaceflight and a design that includes a number of photo voltaic techniques and planets.
Nonetheless, as soon as once more improvement struggled, and the venture was additional affected by Ansel’s departure from Ubisoft and the following unhappy dying of artistic chief Emile Morel. However lately, the movies have come collectively once more, with the brand new Past Good & Evil twentieth Anniversary Version making fascinating cameos from characters from the sequels and hiring Mesmar as artistic director to regular the ship. Nonetheless, 20 years after the unique, there’s nonetheless no phrase on when the sequel can be launched.
Earlier this week, an actress who was stated to be engaged on the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time remake stated that after her brother examine Ubisoft’s surprising choice on-line, she misplaced three years’ price of labor and discovered the venture had been canceled.
Tom Phillips is videogameaddicted’s information editor. You’ll be able to contact Tom at tom_phillips@videogameaddicted.com or discover him on Bluesky. @tomphillipseg.bsky.social