Ubisoft has been slowly drip-feeding gamers information about the upcoming space epic, Beyond Good and Evil 2. If you were looking forward to the game as a single-player epic adventure, however, you might have to adjust your expectations, because the game will be always-on and will require a constant internet connection to play it.
Over on the official Beyond Good and Evil 2 website, there's a new developer update from a livestream that recently took place. The update accompanies a new Q&A where one of the questions is about whether gamers will need a constant internet connection to play it. According to the team working on the game, since Beyond Good and Evil 2 is an online multiplayer game, a constant internet connection is required to experience "seamless navigation" within the game world. You will be able to play solo but you won't be able to play offline.
There will also be a constant option to play the game in the co-op mode with other players at a moment's notice. But if you were hoping that the game could be played within the confines of your own offline space, you won't be able to.
One of the follow-up questions for the team was based around what was originally featured in the first Beyond Good and Evil, and it centered around the game's lore-heavy story mode. It's usually pretty difficult to craft a compelling narrative around a multiplayer game. According to the team working on it, though, there will be a constant narration that stitches together the world and creatures that populate it, whether you're playing single-player or in the co-op with friends or strangers.
This also ties into another question, with gamers asking how the game will be affected by the co-op in terms of distance. For those of you who don't know, Beyond Good and Evil 2 is very similar to games like No Man's Sky and Star Citizen insofar that it has a procedurally generated galaxy that's occupied with a lot of hand-crafted cities, locations, and points of interest. Gamers are curious how far apart players in co-op could separate before the game puts up a wall or a barrier - but apparently there will be no barrier.
That's right: you'll be able to venture across the opposite ends of the galaxy thanks to the Voyager Engine that powers the game. So essentially it will be like the multiplayer in other galactic space-faring games.
A lot of people didn't react all that well to the always-on requirement, especially the people who were interested in the game for the single-player narrative.
The thing to keep in mind is that this game is targeting two widely disparate demographics. The online multiplayer crowd who might come over from Star Citizen or No Man's Sky will most likely be interested in the game's space travel and exploration. However, the long-time fans of Beyond Good and Evil who want to find out more about the actual story and what happened after the original will probably be disappointed with all of the open-world meta-game elements that distract from the more linear storytelling of the original. Also, being forced to play online will also likely turn them off the way it did with various other games out there that traditionally have been single-player titles that decided to include always-on, like SimCity.
Beyond Good and Evil 2 is still a long ways off from release, so we'll see if gamers warm more to the idea of having to stay online as more details emerge about the gameplay and story.
