Games I Should Have Played: Beyond Good and Evil

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to be looking at games I've had sitting on my shelf, silently mocking me for having not played them yet. Some are undoubtedly classics; some are probably just steaming shitpiles. But I'm going to find that out for myself, and hopefully have some fun in the process.

Beyond and Good and Evil does so many things right, so many things better than pretty much any other game, it makes it sting that much more that it's not a bonafide classic. The game announces itself as the harbinger of a new kind of meaningful, interactive experience that highlights areas of game design far too often ignored. It's unfortunate when it eventually relies on cliche, and disheartening when the whole experience lasts less than ten hours.

First, though, the Good (and not the Evil, I suppose). Beyond Good and Evil is essentially an extremely European take on the alien conspiracy/Empire resistance genre seen in Western and Japanese development, respectfully. You play as Jade, a twenty-something freelance photographer trying to make a decent living on Hillys. The game doesn't quite open in medias res, but the player really is given the sensation that they're being dropped into a living, breathing world that exists outside of your immediate perception of it.

Allow me to take some time to say that it's just so refreshing to play as a non-hyper-sexualized, strong, well-written female character. Allow me to also say that it makes me so fucking angry that this decision was, apparently, part of the reason why Ubisoft didn't market the game as heavily as its closely-released Prince of Persia reboot, as well as part of the reason that the game didn't catch on with gamers to the degree that it should have.

Jade is the standout character, but there are some other fun characters to be found here. Chief amongst them are Pey'j, a no-nonsense sentient pig, and Double H, an undercover operative used as a satirical examination of action movie stereotypes. Unfortunately, the game has a bit of an identity crisis – it wants to have flamboyant, quirky characters (who unfortunately fall into racial caricature from time to time) and a whimsical, Rayman-esque aesthetic (no surprise, considering that Michel Ancel created both games) while maintaining a dark and at times ominous tone. Generally, I wasn't too bothered by this – it maintains a certain distance from the self-seriousness that too many games of this nature possess, but it does make the experience a little uneven.

What I absolutely was not expecting from this game is its unwavering commitment to good gameplay design. Most of the discussion of this game I had heard before playing it was that it set some sort of high watermark in interactive fiction. It doesn't quite do that (and I'll get to why in a bit), but it does successfully combine genres in a way that few games are able to accomplish. For a multi-platform game, it most certainly feels like something a Euro-Nintendo would make. It is, essentially, a successful fusion of the gameplay mechanics of 3D Zelda games and Pokemon Snap and the same kind of approach to storytelling that seems to be the hallmark of French development. I can't really point to any specifics; my point of reference I suppose would be the works of Adeline Software, and in particular, Twinsen's Odyssey. In any case, it's those Nintendo-esque gameplay that are interesting to me, because they seem to suggest an approach to game design that's intelligent and thoughtful, and which the gaming community seems to be ignoring at the moment.

That bit about Jade being a photographer isn't just a set-up for her to find some bitchin' guns and start shooting up the place – to actually survive in Hillys, she needs funds, and she gets these funds by taking pictures. This comes into play in two ways: first, a scientific research company is looking to catalog every species of animal in the area, and will pay you for snapping pictures of them in your travels; and second, through the IRIS network, a secret organization dedicated to uncovering the government conspiracy. SPOILER ALERT: the aliens who have been invading Hillys are actually under the control of the government, so this means spelunking in a lot of government run facilities and trying to uncover evidence that will indict the government. These sections really, really work, because sneaking around in government facilities and trying to surreptitiously take pictures of things is an inherently exhilarating experience. 

On the other side of the coin is the Zelda-esque approach to the rest of the gameplay. Ancel himself has said that he was partially inspired by The Wind Waker and wanted to take some of the design on display there and manipulate it to his own ends. For the most part, he was successful. The exploration of the world by hovercraft is fun and responsive; the puzzle-solving in the "dungeons" is mostly very logical and organic – they're not there just for puzzling's sake, but because it makes sense as part of the world; and the combat, if a little bit unnecessary, is handled well and is generally, and thankfully, brief. Besides some quibbles with the camera, which seems to never quite do what you want it to in heated situations, the combination of sneaking, puzzling, picture taking and combat is done about as good as it could be. Yes, BG&E is a game that wears its influences on its sleeves, but at least it does something interesting with it.

So far so good. The game is generally a blast to play, and making your way through the various levels is really engaging and, as an added bonus, actually makes some level of sense based on your character's attributes and motivations. But BG&E isn't my favourite game of all time, and it actually hurts more because of that. For one, it's way, way too short, and I don't mean in that "it's so good that it feels short." I mean in that it feels like it ends too soon. The conspiracy gets unraveled too quickly, the culprits get found too easily, the veil of secrecy gets lifted far too soon. Sure, there are ways that you could pad out your experience. You could take part in hovercraft races, or you could try to collect all of the pearls in the game (a kind of black-market currency that can only be found in the most dangerous situations). But there's not quite enough of this kind of thing, and it doesn't feel nearly as rewarding as the main gameplay.

To some degree, this is again the fault of Ubisoft. You should read about the whole saga on Wikipedia, but basically, Michel Ancel and his team had far-reaching, ambitious goals for the game that frankly sounded amazing, and instead, Ubisoft treated the game like it was the sequel to an already-established franchise, gutting a lot of the development time and the more revolutionary ideas. Sure, this must have been an outrageously risky and expensive prospect – a new IP from a developer known for quote-unquote children's games that demanded an organically changing world and beautiful visuals and extensive dialog and on and on – but in the wake of the BG&E2 situation, putting that game on hold for fucking forever, one can't help but wish that Ancel didn't work for Ubisoft at all. Like LMNO, I'm afraid that BG&E is going to remain a series where the best elements are left on the cutting room floor.

How much any of this behind the scenes drama contributed to the uneven script is impossible to know. What we're left with here, though, is an interesting premise, some good characters, and an amazing world, coupled with squandered potential, some absolutely dogshit characters, and a world that needed to be expanded greatly. Despite the fact that BG&E does borrow so liberally from Zelda in a new and interesting way, it just simply isn't as tight, well-designed, or awe-inspiring as The Wind Waker, and that's a damned shame. Given the time and the resources, I'm convinced that Ancel and Co. could have delivered a modern classic. Instead, we're left with a very good game, one whose potential isn't hard to see. Here's hoping that enough people buy the HD remake and Ubisoft gets off their asses and greenlights Beyond Good and Evil 2.