Retired game design Michel Ancel, best known for his work on numerous Ubisoft properties including Rayman and Beyond Good & Evil, has addressed the fate of Wild, the cancelled PS4 exclusive title that was in development at his team Wild Sheep Studio.
Speaking with Souperpouvior, during which he also talked about the troubles that have faced Beyond Good & Evil 2, Ancel said that Wild was “literally crushed” by Ubisoft Paris’ handling of the project after they took it over. He also revealed that the team were gong to upgrade the game to PS5.
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Wild had an unfortunate fate. In 2018, we had a very nice playable version, but we took a long time to upgrade the game to PS5, which slowed down production. On Sony’s side, there were major management changes and the game was stopped. Ubisoft offered to take it over, and shortly afterwards Sony decided to get it back, even offering to double our budgets. Unfortunately, contracts with Ubisoft were well advanced and we turned down Sony’s offer. What a shame.
I was no longer there to defend the game, which was literally crushed by people in this department who were asking for all sorts of changes without actually playing the game. A real scandal. After two years of wandering, the game was abandoned on the pretext that it no longer corresponded to the initial game. It’s important to understand that, at the time, the editorial department was in the midst of an explosion following the internal affairs surrounding Tommy François, who, incidentally, was in charge of Wild.
Back in August 2020, Francois was revealed to have left the company after being accused of sexual misconduct. At the time, he was among the most senior creatives at the company, having served as vice president of editorial and creative services.
Will was announced back in 2014 and was set during the Neolithic period and featured a procedurally generated world, where players controlled a human character who was able to use small animals to spy on larger creatures.
[Source – Superpouvior]