Roderick

Beyond Good & Evil With Great Spoilers

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Alright, I just finished the wonderful Beyond Good & Evil, and a few things pop to mind.

[EXTRA SPOILER WARNING]

The final battle seemed disproportionally hard. Nothing I couldn't handle, but the increase in difficulty seemed inappropriate. The whole game is rather easy, focusing on progressing the story rather than posing the player with challenges to do over again and again. Then suddenly, the elaborate endboss appears and it's a whole different ballgame: Not only does it play distinctly different (reminiscent of Baal in Diablo II: spawning enemies instead of fighting himself at first), it's also very challenging. It took me a truckload of K-Bups, especially when I had to face the DomZ foe in a complex face-off where Jade musn't get hit or it's back to square one. When this challenging game repeats itself, this time with the controls reversed and visuals down, even I couldn't help but yelp.

The ending makes up a lot for it in terms of charm and poignant atmosphere. Although the whole end-sequence saddles the player with maybe a bit too forced revelatory plottwists and wouldn't-you-know-it style surprises which it then, at the end, refuses to clarify, I can't help to like the ending where Jade goes Messiah-like and just smiles.

But then why, OH WHY did they HAVE to do it? After a charming roll of the credits, showing off for the last time the insane artistical beauty of the games visuals, we see Pey'j, sighing depressedly. He flips open his hand, and up pops a little DomZ mutation. AAAAAAAARGGGH! Gone is the beauty of the closed book, hurray for the open door, make way for th sequel! Fudge, after all the things they did, you'd think they'd be able to resist the inanely tedious practice of leaving an opening for a spin-off or sequel or somesuch. It really boggles my mind. Beyond Good & Evil functioned so well as a one-shot story. Now it's just the first in a line of a series that may never exist or never live up to the first one. Where it could have been a classic game, it falls back into wanting to be a run-of-the-mill series. The game showed such audacity, but then turned chicken at the very last.

This could all be extremely overly dramatic, but I'm just annoyed, because I think it really affects the whole freaking game.

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Well, Michel Ancel wanted to do a sequel but Ubisoft isn't letting him so I guess you'll have your way.

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I kind of see where you're coming from, though I actually didn't like the ending as a whole. It was decent enough, but nothing memorable at all. I did like how the camera panned through the destructed lighthouse with the credits rolling by, though. In fact, I think I liked that more than the actual ending to the story with the whole cutscene and all.

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I didn't think the end guy was too hard, really. Maybe I'm just rubbish, but I didn't find the bosses earlier on to be all that easy, either. In the event, the final boss struck just the right balance between being frustratingly difficult and easily defeatable, with practice. Even if you couldn't make Jade dodge the boss's tentacle with ease, you could at least see fairly quickly that that was the aim.

As the for the reversed controls/blurred screen thing - evil, pure evil, but still easy to get through with a bit of practice.

Most importantly, the boss was varied enough to stay interesting - even when you had to do a couple of things twice. I hate "hit the monster until its arse opens then fire a rocket in.... three times, for that is the magic gaming number" bosses with a passion.

The final 'twist' did seem a bit gratuitous, but really, who doesn't want a BG&E sequel? Jade and the DomZ, what?! Explain please, sequel.

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Chris; it wouldn't really change it though. Even if there would be a sequel, things like these are such horrible plotdevices. It doesn't damage BG&E as a game though. Only its narrative.

omg Dogman, that quote of yours is going in my sig, RIGHT NOW.

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I thought it was quite an interesting way to end it. The entire game was filled with plot twists and such which are generally unexpected, so it was appropriate that the very ending would also be a twist.

When I was watching that brilliantly done pan through the lighthouse which Marek mentioned, along with the calm music, I thought that the story was totally over and wrapped up (I had no idea that it was an intended trilogy at this point). Then suddenly we move over to Pey'j and.. you know the rest.

It was an appropriately unexpected and twisty ending for a twisty game in my opinion. It's a tragedy that it wasn't allowed to continue as a series (or at least, it's highly unlikely) in my opinion. The game was so perfect on an artistic and gameplay level for me. The last game to hit me in the same way was Grim Fandango. It's quite coincidental that both masterpieces suffered terrible marketing. ¬¬

Anyways, the final boss was also pretty good in my opinion. It was far more difficult than the majority of the game, but I'd have been way more angry if the boss was piss easy. Games these days are becoming way too simple to complete as a whole, there's rarely a game which completely and utterly sticks me down - this was a refreshing change. It's just a shame that the whole game didn't have similarly hard bosses (although that Metal Gear Domz was pretty difficult).

* Thrik waves the Beyond Good and Evil fanboy flag

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Chris; it wouldn't really change it though. Even if there would be a sequel, things like these are such horrible plotdevices. It doesn't damage BG&E as a game though. Only its narrative.

I guess, although saying something like "it damages the narrative of the game" sort of implies a grander fault, whereas this was perhaps just an isolated instance of poor taste. But yeah, I agree that it was sort of a cheesy thing to tack on.

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I was not bothered by the cheesiness of the last sequence. Considering that...

Flux, you twat, you know how to use spoiler tags!!

Erm...

Yeah, Beyond Good and Evil: as I remember the same thing happened when you rescued that soldier fellow whatshisface from the Zerg or whatever they're called. He was cured rather quickly. I don't see it as a viable beginning of the next episode.

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But that doesn't really matter; that little scene was obviously intended to be ominous.

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But that doesn't really matter; that little scene was obviously intended to be ominous.

The intnetion of the scene is subjective.

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The intention of the scene is to fucking NOT end the game. It's an unfinished game now. We've been cheated out of our ending dammit. This is like the One Ring suddenly resurfacing from the lava of mount Doom; the Emperor climbing out of the shaft he was thrown in; Trinity all of a sudden getting back from the dead and giving us another 15-minute piece of stand-up comedy gold.

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Hum, but I don't want a sequel*, I want the game to have ended properly.

*of course I'd like a sequel, but my point is not the absence of it, but rather the cheap way they ended the game.

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Yes I can! With my awesome powers of divine intervention, I can do anything!!! *raises hands triumphantly and tightens his muscles*

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Either I got mad BG&E skillz or the game is easy... The second time I played was barely a challenge (But it's still the most beautifully marvelous game ever)...

What I love about this game is that you can fight or use stealth with the guards, depending on your style...

At the end of the game I had so many K-Bups the fight was already won (Although I only used a few, I had almost 30)... :mock:

I agree that the ending did scream sequel... It's almost like they assumed that there was going to be one... But without directly saying "See you in BG&E 2!"...

I certainly hope the make a sequel, we'll have to wait and see...

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