Michel Ancel on Beyond Good & Evil 2: I'm waiting for it as much as you are

Is Beyond Good & Evil 2 still alive? Yes. Will you still be alive when it comes out? Well, that's a question we posed to project lead Michel Ancel, whose attention is currently focused on his vibrant 2D platformer, Rayman: Origins. "Before Rayman we were working on Beyond Good & Evil 2," he said during an E3 meeting. "And the project is still on the tracks. I'd love to come back to it."

Ancel describes the game as an ambitious, conceptually amorphous undertaking, still being prototyped and still looking for a home. "It's a question of making all those things able to fit the constraints of the consoles," he said. "But with this kind of game, we can do prototypes on very high-end PCs and we can really try to play in the kind of future-console style hardware. So, it's just a question of saying, 'Okay, do we cut everything and rebuild to these consoles, or do we try to move forward?'"

Does that mean the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 are out? "I can't say totally no," Ancel said, "but the questions are still open."

The small team crafting Beyond Good and Evil 2 is wary of downscaling its vision, making it essential "to have the game on the best platform, to make [the concepts] fit." And while that happens, for who-knows-how-long, fans can take advantage of the game industry's diversity."The good thing is we are not the only one making games, so they can play a lot of other games," Ancel joked.

"The main thing, I would say, is that I'm waiting for that game as much as they are waiting for it. So that's pushing me to finish it."