Beyond Good & Evil 2 has overtaken Duke Nukem Forever in the category of longest high-budget game in development. To make matters worse, we are still years away from BG&E2's release.
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As noted by an editor of GamesIndustry.biz, Beyond Good & Evil 2 may claim an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records in the category of the longest game development cycle.
Of course, these dozen years are not a period of continuous work without any breaks. Both in the case of Duke Nukem Forever, as well as Beyond Good & Evil 2, the work was repeatedly interrupted, and after some time resumed. Both titles also experienced several reboots.
As you may recall, recently Ubisoft assured, that BG&E2 is still in development. However, sources connected with the developers suggest that we are at least two years away from the release. One can only hope that when the project finally debuts on the market, it will not turn out to be as big a disappointment as Duke Nukem Forever (which was fixed by fans only eleven years after release).
We don't know exactly what criteria the Guinness Book of World Records body used, but we suspect that only professional games created by large teams were eligible. If we were to take into account lone independent developers, nothing compares with Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar. Cleve Blakenmore spent twenty years developing this RPG. Importantly, he is no amateur - he previously worked at Sir-Tech on the Wizardry series.
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Author: Adrian Werner
A true veteran of the Gamepressure newsroom, writing continuously since 2009 and still not having enough. He caught the gaming bug thanks to playing on his friend's ZX Spectrum. Then he switched to his own Commodore 64, and after a short adventure with 16-bit consoles, he forever entrusted his heart to PC games. A fan of niche productions, especially adventure games, RPGs and games of the immersive sim genre, as well as a mod enthusiast. Apart from games, he devourers stories in every form - books, series, movies, and comics.