Game director Michel Ancel may have his hands full on the upcoming Ubisoft title Beyond Good and Evil 2, but that certainly isn’t stopping him from continuing other ventures.
It’s been more than three and a half years now since the last official appearance of WiLD, an ambitious open-world title currently being developed by Ancel and his studio Wild Sheep. The game was first debuted in the summer of 2014, and showed a lot of promise. The first gameplay footage was revealed during Paris Games Week back in 2015, featuring more of the gameplay mechanics that the game will offer, as well as some thoughts by Ancel and the developers of Wild Sheep.
Since it has been quite some time now, and it’s not entirely uncommon for some games to just halt development entirely, many have speculated that WiLD has turned into vaporware, or a gaming term for a project that saw development, but was never finished. This news was debunked by Ancel himself on numerous occasions, stating that WiLD is still in development.
These attempts to assuage some of the doubters were met with skepticism, ever since the official announcement of Beyond Good and Evil 2 back at Ubisoft’s E3 2017 conference. The title is helmed by none other than Ancel, so it’s not surprising that there are some who still think that WiLD may be slated to be in development hell for quite some time, or maybe even forever.
New information seems to state that not only is WiLD still in development, but as a cross-generational platform release between the PlayStation 4 and the upcoming PlayStation 5 as well. This comes from an interview between the Wild Sheep Studios’ current CEO and co-founder Céline Tellier and the French media outlet La Tribune. While no particular gameplay or story details emerged, Tellier states that second-party partnership between the studio and Sony still stands. (coming from a translation by OnlySP)
“With Sony, we have an agreement called ‘second party’. The multinational has no share in the company, but bears the costs of development of the game through contracts renewed regularly, related to the stages of progress of the project.”
WiLD takes place in an open world and is set in prehistoric times. The players can control animals of different species in order to tackle the vast world. It is currently in development.
Meanwhile, Beyond Good and Evil 2’s release date is still unknown, as well as the platforms it will be released on. Ubisoft has started applications for a closed beta on UPlay for PC, however.
