Michel Ancel, the acclaimed developer behind both Rayman and Beyond Good and Evil, could be leaving Ubisoft to concentrate on his own projects. The move would allow Ancel to detach from a large company and find more freedom in creation and organisation. Ancel and six other developers within his team are apparently looking to leave the company. Ubisoft denies the report.
Michael Ancel, and a number of his development team, have appeared in a number of photos protesting against the delay of Rayman Legends. Ubisoft delayed the game last week and stated that it’s coming to both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. A former developer described the news as “hell” after revealing that the team has suffered from long development hours to get the game ready for its initial late February release in Europe. The poster that’s being displayed in the image above reads ”Release Rayman. Support Ubisoft Montpelier.”
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Reinvent Rayman?! This was the challenge Michel Ancel and his team at Ubisoft Montpellier set for themselves fifteen years after the limbless platforming hero first bounded into video game history. Anais Dusautois and Eric Verwaerde, two of the exceptional animators on Rayman Origins and Rayman Legends, will bring this developer’s adventure to life from behind the scenes. This talk will cover the creation of innovative tools which were designed specifically to put artists at the heart of the development process, the team’s unusual organization and methodology, plus the eventual “French touch” that helped bring back one of video game’s legends in high style!
Rayman Legends Creative Director Michel Ancel is a firm believer in near field communication and thinks that eventually the technology could be put to innovative uses. Ancel demonstrated the possibilities of the feature during an early Rayman Legends trailer, but he claims that it was just an experiment.
“We didn’t announce this officially and it was more the kind of experiment we do when working on new hardware like the Wii U. We had prototypes of this and we believe that having real objects manipulating gameplay could be quite innovative. But again, this was a prototype and we won’t discuss it until it’s ready to demonstrate its full potential.”
Michel Ancel, the creator behind Rayman and Beyond Good & Evil, says he believes that the Wii U would be a good fit for the long-awaited Beyond Good & Evil 2. Ancel went on to praise the Wii U and said that the system with the unique controller would be perfect for the next Zelda game.
“You’re right when you say that both the Wii U and Beyond Good And Evil fit very well, but for now I am only focused on Rayman Legends.”
“That’s [also] why I believe in an incredible Zelda game, the GamePad and classic control fit very well with such action-adventure games.”
Ubisoft designer and Rayman creator Michel Ancel claims the technology inside the Wii U GamePad is more advanced than what some may deem. Ancel says the new controller is very responsive, and he is intrigued by its capability of running pictures at 60 frames per second. Ancel thinks Nintendo’s competitors will need time to get their solutions to Wii U as responsive as the Wii U GamePad.
“And I think this is where Nintendo is really out in front of things. The technology inside the controller is quite a bit more advanced than what people might think. It’s really responsive. The response time is crazy, in fact, and I think the competitors will need some time to [get their solutions] this responsive.”
“It’s crazy because the game is running in full HD [on the television], we are streaming another picture on the GamePad screen, and it’s still 60 frames per second. And the latency on the controller is just 1/60 of a second, so it’s one frame late. It’s crazy, it’s so fast. It’s almost instant. That’s why it responds so well. So it can be used as a real game-design thing.”
Thanks, nintedward3dswiiu.
Rayman creator Michel Ancel has said in the latest edition of Nintendo Power that the team fully expected that Nintendo would release the Wii U much earlier. Ancel stated that Ubisoft originally planned to bring Rayman Origins to Wii U, but instead they opted to create Rayman Legends exclusively for the platform. It was announced earlier this week that Rayman Legends will miss out on the Wii U launch, and will instead launch early next year.
“To be honest, we were on Wii U very early – even for Origins.”
“We did not know exactly when Nintendo would release the system, but we started making Origins for Wii U. [At that point], we thought Wii U would come out a lot earlier. We worked very closely with Nintendo [on Wii U] early on, giving them feedback on the various prototypes.”
“When we finished Origins, it was time to start thinking about Wii U again, because [the hardware] was nearly complete,”
Ubisoft has confirmed that the promising Rayman Legends will no longer be a Wii U launch title, and will instead be released sometime in the New Year. Ubisoft wouldn’t really specify why the game is missing the Wii U launch, but they did provide the following statement.
“Rayman Legends will launch worldwide in the first quarter of 2013.”
“We’re happy that fans are excited about the game, and we are taking the time to make sure we deliver a game that lives up to and hopefully exceeds their expectations. We’ll have more details to share soon.”
Emile Morel, Rayman Legends Lead Game Designer has revealed that you’ll control Murphy the frog, rather than Rayman, for a good portion of the single player mode in Rayman Legends. Morel explained that you’ll control Murphy for roughly half of the game, and then you’ll take control of Rayman for the rest of the game.
“Not the whole game is like this – you have specific levels for Murphy and the GamePad and more classic levels when you are playing as Rayman from beginning to the end. Half of the game, maybe not half but a good portion of the game, you’ll have to play as Murphy.”
Michael Ancel took part in a short interview with Nintendo Europe to promote his forthcoming game, Rayman Legends. Not only is it an interesting interview, but the game looks glorious. It was confirmed earlier today that Rayman Legends will launch alongside Wii U on November 18th in North America, and November 30th in Europe.
