The pre-E3 2019 Beyond Good & Evil 2 developer stream didn't show any new gameplay, but it did have something you didn't know you'd been waiting your whole life to experience: pot-smoking rhinos. After about a half hour of distressing concept art of enslaved human-animal hybrids being worked to death on inhospitable worlds, the developers at Ubisoft lightened the mood by revealing the return of the first game's Mammago Garage rhinoceri.
Instead of just implying that the musical Mammago mechanics indulge every now and then, the first piece of concept art confirms it. Granted, it's some kind of future space weed that has colorized-Reefer-Madness-style green smoke, but that is definitely what's happening here.
To be 100% real, the Mammago rhinos felt culturally questionable back in 2003 and the years since then have only made the uncomfortable questions surrounding their identity feel all the more pressing. Why are they the only characters in the game with Jamaican accents? Did something happen in this vision of the far future to turn all people from Jamaica into rhinoceros hybrids, or do they coexist with human Jamaicans? Are they actually Rastas or do they just wear the hats, like any given college student? Perhaps Beyond Good & Evil 2 will finally give us some answers.
Despite its proximity to E3, the rest of the stream was light on big announcements. The only gameplay footage was snippets of the December 2018 stream with some community-created art highlighted. We're still waiting to hear when Beyond Good & Evil 2 will come out, or even if it will arrive in time for the current console generation. As PS5 and Xbox Project Scarlett get closer and BG&E2's release plans remain scarce, that's looking less and less likely.
Check our E3 2019 schedule to make sure you don't miss out any more announcements from the show, even if they'll never be as good as weed-smoking rhinos. Or see if there are any cannabis-consuming chordates in our latest Release Radar video.
