Industry veteran Fawzi Mesmar is joining the Beyond Good and Evil 2 team as creative director. Taking to Linkedin, Mesmar announced his new role at Ubisoft Montpellier, having worked with the team previously during his last three years as Ubisoft’s VP of Editorial.
“I have been working with those peeps for years now on this ambitious game and witnessed their talent firsthand.” The post reads, “I am standing on the shoulders of creative giants that have supported the team before me, and I look forward to continuing to craft a game that is truly unique for players to enjoy.”
Mesmar is filling the role left by previous creative director Emile Morel, after he passed away suddenly last year. Prior to working at Ubisoft, Fawzi Mesmar worked at DICE as head of design, as well as design jobs at King and Gameloft. Earlier this year, he received an Ambassador Award at the 2024 Game Developer’s Choice Awards. (Game Developer and GDC, which hosts the GDCA, are sibling organizations at Informa Tech)
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The news comes after a reportedly troubled development cycle for Beyond Good and Evil 2 , which was first announced in 2008. The game then reappeared in trailer form during Ubisoft’s 2017 E3 conference, with little seen since. The game’s original director, Michel Ancel, left Ubisoft in 2020 to work in a wildlife sanctuary.
A 4K remake of the original released earlier this year, celebrating Beyond Good And Evil’s 20th anniversary. Beyond Good and Evil 2 now holds the record for the longest development time for a AAA game, surpassing Duke Nukem Forever’s previous record of fifteen years.