Notes on Beyond Good & Evil

A lot of guys at work had been talking about this game, but I didn't really know what it was until I tried it.
It's Zelda.
A science-fantasy Zelda. It's all here: the landscapes with animals, children, and heroic figures (see the Feb 12 post); the hero in green; the roleplaying lite; the puzzles; the different kinds of gameplay (combat, puzzles, stealth, and vehicle). It's like suddenly discovering that there was a secret stealth Zelda released that only a select few know about, already at bargain prices.
And that's a good thing. It takes balls to try to make a game like Zelda. Beyond Good & Evil is big, there's a variety of gameplay, and there's a lot of terrain.
So, how did it fare on the wife test?
"This is the best game I've ever played," she said after I brought it home and she played it for four hours. She's not a gamer, mind you. The only game she's devoted more than a couple of hours to was Animal Crossing. But after BG&E she may have crossed into the ranks of casual gamer. This is only partly because there were no big frustrations in the early game -- one of her biggest frustrations was not realizing that the consoles where you save your game are also the consoles that you read messages on -- an example of functional fixedness? Mainly, I think, it's because you play a girl -- a girl who doesn't have huge breasts -- with a camera.
I read somewhere that Wal*Mart did a study and discovered 50% of woman shoppers have a roll of undeveloped film in their purses.
Games have had cameras before: Metal Gear Solid 2, Zelda: The Wind Waker, and Dark Cloud 2, for example. But never has it been such a focus. One of the first things you learn how to do is take pictures. This pleased my wife to no end. She was beaming. Her first reaction on seeing a new enemy - even a menacing boss - was always to take its picture.
Later, when the game started getting harder, she'd hand the controller to me to get her through the hard part. Which says to me: this game must be alienating just about everybody. Most teenage boys would get alienated by the femininity, by shooting photos instead of shooting guns, and the girls will be alienated by the boss fights and stealth levels.
The stealth gameplay, by the way, reaches a new level in Stealth Lite. Zeldas have frequently had stealth sections that were usually the weakest part of the game. (Except for the sailing.) Beyond Good & Evil did these sections very well: they were room-by-room; when you fail they weren't too punishing -- you only go one room back; the patrol paths were short, so you didn't have to wait a long time for your opportunity to move; you aren't forced to sneak past but the guards are hard to kill, so sneaking is optimal; and the guards shoot very visible beams of light out of their eyes, so it's easy to tell which way they're facing even when they're far away; when there's just one or two guards you can exploit an achilles heel for a stealth kill, but when there's more than that it becomes infeasible.
Speaking of sailing, instead of a sailboat you have a hovercraft, which is much more fun. Instead of being in open seas, you're in lakes and rivers and chasms -- terrain matters -- and there's a high density of stuff to interact with. There are a few racing levels which at first seem like extraneous bonus gameplay but actually become tied to the story. A hovercraft is a great choice from a coding point of view, also: easy to simulate.
This is yet another game that successfully breaks my "Don't have computer controlled allies" rule. One of the main staples in combat is using your ally to set up an attack, bouncing enemies into the air so you can slam them into walls or each other.
One of the best moments I'd seen-- and you may want to stop reading now because this is a spoiler -- was hanging on the side of a crate as a crane picks it up and carries it, and you, to another area of the room, without the guards noticing. Some simple elements -- guards, crates, cranes, and wall-hanging -- combined to make a very cinematic moment, a moment that was contrived but not prerendered. Magicianship at its best.
Eventually Cathy gave up and I kept playing. I was hooked. But now we come to the sad part of our story. I get to a door I cannot get past. Thinking I'm not meant to get past that door yet, I move on, solving other challenges, and saving over what will turn out to be my last valid savegame. Eventually I return to the door, the only area in the level I have not yet been. It is the second time I have to consult Gamefaqs after about twelve hours of play. Gamefaqs says one of the enemies I had beaten should have dropped a key. I realize that I slammed that enemy into the very door I need to get past, and somehow the enemy dropped the key on the other side.
Bugs like this happen all the time. We had one in Spider-Man, caught not by Activision testers but by Capcom testers when they localized it for Japan. In Spider-Man, you could web-yank a thug holding a key through a waterfall that the key was supposed to open. Same sort of thing. Of course, you could always restart the level, and you wouldn't get to a save point until you had. With my BG&E situation, where I'd saved over that last happy save game, I am doomed. I can either quit playing or restart from the beginning. This is the worst kind of bug to ship. It is worse than a crash, because you only lose up to your last save game with a crash. The only thing you can hope is that only a small fraction of your users will get hit. (Even if it's a one in a thousand thing, and your game sells a million copies, that's still one thousand players who now hate you. A meaningless statistic but fun to say.)
So that's where my notes end.

Comments

[Walter]

Spot on comments. BG&E is a very tightly produced game, except for the bugs, but...question: are you playing the PS2 version? Because I've heard that it's simply riddled with bugs. I have the XBox version, however, and didn't have a single problem the whole way through.

[Steve]

Excellent piece. I'm only a few hours into the game, but am enjoying it immensely.

[John Prevost]

I got totally sucked into this game, as well--the mix of gameplay styles and the story were both pretty compelling. I had just a few problems with it. The first was, well, in a way, the first real boss battle and the last. I didn't have much trouble with most of the bosses, but the water bosses were fairly un-fun, and you get hit with one almost right away after you get the hovercraft. And the final boss fight felt very unfulfilling--I'm just not a big fan of huge difficult boss fights.

The other hangup I had was somewhat minor, and also kind of my own fault. I got so drawn into the stealth gameplay that I went right past one of the points I needed to photograph, and had to sneak *backwards* to get to it. It turns out that sneaking backwards was significantly more painful than sneaking through in the expected direction of travel.

But still, I consider this one of the best games I've played in quite a while. I want to learn what happens next. I want to have a new game show me that the constellations that your camera will identify for you actually mean something. But sadly, I suspect that this may not happen, since the game doesn't seem to have done that well.

[David Fristrom]

Hello from your cousin!

Agree completely about BG&E. It's a wonderful game (and my wife loved it as well, though it sounds like she is more of a gamer than your wife -- currently she's deep into Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic) with a few really annoying bugs.

My wife encountered a different bug than you did. In one of the "dungeons" your companion leaves you for some of the action, but then rejoins you before you leave the dungeon. At least, he's supposed to, but for my wife he didn't. She went to the place he was supposed to be, but he didn't rejoin her -- and without him, there was no way to get out of the dungeon. And of course, she had already saved, so there was no way to recover. Reading the forums,I found that we weren't the only ones to run across the problem, but (last I looked) there had been no official response.

Fortunately, I was at about the same point in the game (and didn't encounter the bug), so I just let her copy my saved game so she was able to complete the game; otherwise she would have given up. But that means that the game shipped with at least two game ending bugs.

[Jamie Fristrom]

I was playing it on Gamecube, by the way. I read somewhere -- I forget where...Penny Arcade, maybe? -- that that was the designer's favorite version.

[Zachary Slater]

Spider-Man: The License to Print Money (which I recently picked up just to see Mike, Martin, and John's credits) also has another annoying bug I told Mike about, now I'm blaming you too!
On The Stealth Level where you have to get the door code from several different computers, you cannot exit the door code input menu.

Sitting there, with my colour blind eyes trying to guess for half an hour until I came upon the correct sequence. I had entered the input menu thinking you could back out to see the correct code, or that spidey would enter it automatically, since I had gone to the trouble of finding the sequence from the computers.
It is indeed an OK game otherwise.

[Jamie Fristrom]

So you must be one of their linux buddies. You guys are a cult!

Anyway, ouch. That's bad, but this is probably worse: http://www.deafgamers.com/spiderman.htm
I wish I could say we learned our lesson but Spidey 2 isn't going to have subtitles either. I was there in the meeting when we decided to cut the feature. We had our reasons, but I do feel like an evil corporate drone now. (And I saw a focus test where the guy's audio went out and we didn't realize; he had a miserable experience, and it's our fault.)

But it should be completeable by the color blind. Sometimes a lot of colored dots show up on the screen, and it might be hard to tell which one's the important one, but there are other cues which should make it doable. And it'll still have Michael and Martin's names in the credits, so you have to buy it.

[Zachary Slater]

I am indeed eagerly awaiting Spider-Man: The License to Print Even More Money, since they are telling me it is better.

[Martin Donlon]

I checked the credits file, I ain't in there. Why must you toy with my feelings James?

Anyway, I hate not having subtitles, it seems like such an easy thing to do but I guess its just another point of failure everyone is greatful not to have to deal with. Wouldn't subtitles be a great thing to have early in a project? That way even without programmer voice acting (cringe) you could express all the story elements clearly in game. Oh well.

[Zachary Slater]

By CA Law, Irish may not get credit in video games.

[ian]

THERE IS A SOLUTION FOR YOU!!!!!
If you COMPLETELY leave the slaughterhouse and then return, you can kill the

THERE IS A SOLUTION FOR YOU!!!!!
If you COMPLETELY leave the slaughterhouse and then return, you can kill the robot to get the key again. Look here: http://boards.ign.com/message.asp?topic=63366940&replies=3&ui=gg_cb_post_08

I unfortuntely had the same problem.. but mine is worse. I saved the game in the room with the lost key... whenever I try to leave that room, my game always crashes :( I think my save game got corrupted to somehow...

I would really appreciate it if, before you try the solution, that you can email me a copy of your save game. We are at the same point in the game so I would realy appreciate it thanks ^^

[ian]

oh, and i'm assuming you are using the PC version because that is what i am using ;)

[Jamie Fristrom]

Sorry Ian. Gamecube.

[JasonR]

Wow, I have these exact same situations like 8 months later. I found your website while googling for a bug fix for this, which is funny because I read your blog anyway. My girlfriend seems to be your wife :) . She hasn't played the game yet, but I expected her reactions will be the same as your wife's: she will love it at first, then get frustrated half way through the game and quit. She too only played Animal Crossing so far (but she gave that up a long time ago once it got too repetitive). Some guys have recommended that my girlfriend may like Harvest Moon. Did your wife ever try that? I am trying to figure out a way to get passed this door still. I found one website that said there was a fix if your read some forum but the link was bad. I have saved games 15 minutes before the incident anyway, so maybe I will be able to find the key on the first pass? Otherwise I will try leaving the goddamn level and coming back. What a hassle; and the game was so good until this bug cropped up. For me, it shows the key after I kill the robots in some air vent which I believe is through the floor. And then after saving, the key is against a blank screen, and you can't leave the room or the game crashes. Lovely.

[JasonR]

PC Fix: http://www.terrygoodkind.net/~rahly/bgae.php

[JasonR]

BTW, it first seems like it isn't fixed. The save game fix just gives you the other key. So don't be surprised if you still see the key in the ceiling vent after you kill the robots. You have an extra in your inventory to give to Double H.

[paul haine]

I loved Beyond Good & Evil, I played it on the Gamecube and had a bug-free experience. Such a cinematic game.

Speaking of bugs, though, I found the Gamecube version of Prince of Persia to have so many bugs in it was unplayable - I never actually completed it, as there came a point where each of my three saved games were unusable due to bugs; one save game started me at a fight where, after I'd won, killed me, and started again. Another save game forgot that I'd gained the stronger sword, so couldn't get through a wall later on. Ho hum.

[Maya]

Darn! I've played BGE the whole day and I got stuck in the factory entrance... The code just DOESN'T open the door. I probably have to start the game from the beginning... Oh, and I'm playing it on the Gamecube. Anyone else experienced this?

[stefan]

where is thefucking save game folder?
full path please

[brendan]

does anyone know the code to the box in the akuda bar its really getin on my nerves.......

[John]

I must say I've found Beyond Good and Evil to be rather overrated, the camera gets in the way, I'd like to kill Agent H and the story gets in the way sometimes. Fucking unskippable cutscenes. We were beyond savepoints when it came out. Finally, combat was so easy it render any stealth moot.