Beyond Good and Evil (Part 2)

Resuming from Part 1, which you can read here.

Slaughterhouse

Today, 2 people protesting with signs. Tomorrow, 4.
The next day, 8? Give it two weeks, and the Alphas are toast!

Good thing we even have that hovercraft, since Hillys
is mostly water all over the place.

Jade’s photojournalism is working. People are rising up. It’s getting clearer that the Alpha Sections are in cahoots with the DomZ. But it’s not enough. The IRIS Network gives Jade her next mission: The victims taken to the Nutripils Factory get shipped into the abandoned slaughterhouse. Once more, she’ll have to sneak in there and take pictures proving the “guards” claiming to fight the aliens are actually working for them. The place is closed off, but there’s a secret hatch the hovercraft can sneak into from within the third circuit of the underground racing league.

The hovercraft will need the ability to jump in order to enter the hatch, so it’s off to Mammago’s again for a jump kit. 15 pearls, pay up. Of the 88 Pearls in the game, you spend 71 at the Garage, all mandatory upgrades for plot progression. As a result, you’re better off not leaving any Pearls behind, just in case you need them later.

Racing to save the world - why not?

Then, Jade and Double H join the race and find the secret passage. Props to this game, it tries to feature all of its major gameplay elements somewhat evenly; be it combat, the occasional puzzle or piloting the hovercraft, though stealth takes over at some point. Really, if it weren’t that the camera often goes haywire when you turn around too roughly with the hovercraft, it would be great. (The camera is a regular issue in the game, because you don't have control; it automatically positions itself where it deems necessary, and it often clashes with what you’re trying to do. Not a great system, but it was a frequent issue in games at the time.)

And damn can he wield that hammer like a pro!

The slaughterhouse is a massive area, hands down the biggest dungeon in the entire game. It’s pretty dangerous out there; the place is heavily guarded. Its three sections are miniature dungeons themselves, as each section leads to a picture for the report. Double H comes in handy, not only because his ram attack can break through steel grids and destroy guardian robots, but he’s also a decent fighter against Alpha Section guards and his armor lets him walk through lasers.

You know, I actually could take on all those guards
and win. If it weren't for their death ray on standby...

Boarding a train past the Surveillance Room takes our protagonists to a room where they have full view of a tower where captives are being outright tortured. Geez! The East Wing leads to the Central Hall and is packed with guards. For a good reason, too; at the center is a collection of DomZ sarcophagi, the monsters that can entrap living creatures and use them like batteries. And in the North Hall, after another grueling road of guards to sneak past, we have our final picture: Bodies, in wooden boxes, being shipped into unmarked spaceships headed towards the Moon. For added points, the moon base also doubles as the Alpha Sections' transmitter to the screens of Hillys.

Is that really what I,m seeing back there? Civilians being
tortured with electricity? Damn...

Gearing up for the moon

The pig man decided his nickname would be "wild boar".
Wonder why he didn't want to step into the HQ.

With three pictures taken, Jade and Double H leave the Slaughterhouses. Think the other racers found it weird we went missing? Once another giant snake DomZ has been dealt with, we return to the IRIS Network HQ at the Akuda Bar in the Pedestrian District and meet the Governor, who thanks our heroine for her hard work and gives her a key that opens another door leading to other Alpha Section HQs. The network gets a transmission from their leader, who had gone missing… and Jade recognizes Pey’j's voice. Well, that explains a lot doesn’t it? The pig-man’s last instructions before radio silence is to tell Jade to find and repair the ship he secretly keeps in the basement. Great! With it, they can head over to Hillys’ moon and broadcast the Network’s reports on all of the Section’s screens! Just… gotta get there first.

More determined than ever to end this fight, Jade seeks the Beluga. A hint left by Pey’j involves his jet boots; inspecting them, finding two codes beneath them, and entering them in two computers on the lighthouse’s island opens the secret area containing the ship.

Whoops! Looks like it's not flight-ready yet!

There are so many of those guards, too! OK, this time
I have no chance of beating all of them. Stealth it is.

Now, to put this thing back into shape. We have one stabilizer, but we need another one from Mammago’s for 20 Pearls. Thankfully, there’s still a ton of side-quests to partake in to collect that amount. Stealing them from various Alpha Section HQs in the Pedestrian District? The four races to win? Taking more pictures of animals? Finally beating that damn sharkman at the mini-game at Akuda Bar? The challenges are many and interesting.

Love this progression. First you can go anywhere on land
and sea with the hovercraft, then the skies become yours.

Finally got that stabilizer? Good! You can now use the Beluga to fly, by attaching the hovercraft to it. You can detach the hovercraft whenever you’d like, to go into smaller alcoves. Some areas previously inaccessible can now be reached, such as the volcano atop the Black Isle (containing 14 Pearls all to itself!). The caveat is that the Beluga is still missing an engine that would let it fly to space. That’s 30 more Pearls at Mammago’s!

It's personal n- Wait, right, it already was. Well! It's
personal-er now!

Soon enough, the engine is purchased and installed. After completing the final Alpha Section HQ quest, Jade and Double H see the lighthouse being attacked by spaceships. When they get there, the building is destroyed and the children have been kidnapped. Shit got real, in case it wasn’t already. Jade is severely downed by this, but regains hope to rescue them thanks to Double H. Off to the moon we go!

The moon base… the DomZ base

The giant-ass goddamn moon transmitter.

Looks like they couldn't save his bacon in time. Hey, they
made jokes like that with each other. "Smells like smoked
ham in there!" and the like. Why couldn't I?

Sneaking into the moon base is surprisingly easy. The dungeon itself, last of the game, is however underwhelming compared to previous ones; very short and simple, with only one major light-and-reflectors puzzle throughout, opening the way to the lower areas. Gameplay simple, emotions heavy; we find Pey’j’s seemingly-dead body down there. Jade cries over him, holding his hand, but Double H tells her that they need to finish the report. Which she does, by finding General Kehck, leader of the Alpha Section, taking direct orders from DomZ priests, and snapping a pic real quick. She can then return with Double H to the transmitter, to take over the Alpha Section’s broadcast with their own findings.

"Weren't you dead?"
"Yeah, but I got bored. ...Nah, joking aside, you are the
Chosen One or something."

However, a miracle awaits: Pey’j has come back to life. He explains this inexplicable recovery, and get ready, this goes weird: Turns out that Jade has a portion of DomZ within her, or more specifically, an entity named Shauni that originally served as a battery for the invasive alien race. How it was stolen from them has yet to be known, but it was given human form and raised by parents and, later, by Pey’j. Through her recent contacts with DomZ, Jade has begun unlocking some of Shauni’s abilities – including bringing back the dead, apparently! But it also means that the aliens are trying to capture her again, she who was raised mostly in secret so that she wouldn’t be found.

Jade gets a boss, the spaceship gets a boss!
A boss for everyone!

Jade’s AI helper Secundo "flirts" the base’s AI into obedience and has it broadcast the IRIS Network’s photos all over Hillys. The DomZ have noticed the infiltration and attempt to have the base self-destruct. Jade, Double H and Pey’j get into the Beluga just in time as the station explodes, but general Kehck, aboard a spider-like mecha called the Arachnoblast, holds them back with a tractor beam. The last stretch of the game has that “final exam” feeling where we revisit many previous gameplay elements across a few battles and scenes. After shooting down the spider mech, Jade goes into it to turn the tractor beam off, at the same time meeting a dying Kehck who curses her in his final breaths.

This thing is freaky. That it's also trying to mess with
Jade/Shauni's head, on top of everything else, only
makes it freakier.

An armada of DomZ ships attacks, but the people of Hillys arrive with ships of their own, fighting to help the heroes now that the truth has come out. This gives the protagonists time to set down the ship in an attempt to free the aliens’ captives, but down an elevator, what they come across is the grand leader of the enemy race: The DomZ priest. The monster tries to pretend that this was all a ruse to bring most of Hillys to the DomZ, but she doesn’t buy it. Shauni is not going back to their side! In the following final boss battle, we have to use every tactic learned so far, across many sequences. Including two where the Priest kidnaps Pey’j and Double H and makes clones of their likenesses to fight against her. All topped by a final bit where, as Jade (Shauni?)’s resistance seems to fade, the controls get reversed (up for down, left for right, vice-versa), implying Jade is losing herself, but a few more strikes are needed to beat the boss.

Yep, it's psychologically torturing Jade by using fake
Double Hs to attack and discourage her. This thing is
shopping for a whack to the face.

Sequel hook! ...Yeah... about that...

With the DomZ priest's death, the life energy of the captives, who are now freed, is like restored to them. It’s implied that everyone came back to Hillys safe and sound. Or so it seems, as when Pey’j inspects his hand by the ruins of the lighthouse, a DomZ eye grows out of it…

(Honestly, it would be amazing to have a new story that nicely patches up all of the elements of this story, as there’s a fair few elements left unanswered, not to mention this cliffhanger the game leaves us on, but since Beyond Good and Evil 2 was officially canned this year… dammit, that sucks… Apparently, a movie is in the works at Netflix... can we have a continuation in some way?)

Final words

You get a lot of scenes to make you feel for these
characters. All decently-developed, all interesting.
A well-crafted story, all in all.

Beyond Good and Evil hasn’t stolen its reputation as a great game. Combining evolving gameplay and cinematic storytelling in a way few other games released early in the millennium could (this game originally came out in 2003!), featuring a lot of endearing characters and a lot of quests around an intriguing plot, this one has everything to please. Or at least, it’s deserving of most of the praise thrown its way. And indeed, if we take out the sort of issue any game can have (read: the occasional glitch) and elements that were customary of games back then (such as a camera that’s often working against you), there’s not much negative to say!

Yeah, it's annoying old game design that you can only save
at stationary save points, but at least these machines can also
read disks you carry around, so they have an extra use.

Though the game’s age occasionally shows through dated concepts such as stationary save points, it does seem to have included a lot of features that would eventually become common in games in the genre. Being able to explore a full world, with more areas available as you progress (by upgrading the hovercraft or repairing the Beluga), is not a novel idea, but BG&E applies it perfectly to a 3D world. Hillys is like a mini open world, with a fair number of areas to visit and a bonus for exploration, like the animal photos. In order to finish the game, you’ll still need most of the collectible Pearls anyway (though you’ll frequently get entire bunches of them at once, usually after an IRIS Network mission or in some special areas).

As early as the first (tutorial) boss battle, Shauni is
mentioned. So there's definitely foreshadowing.

I like the story, and though most twists are subtly foreshadowed, I think some details could have been explored in more detail. The game is somewhat short; if you don’t get too sidetracked, it can be finished in 6 to 10 hours, which is fine but still noticeable, with the somewhat small number of main “dungeons” (only 4), though side-quests like Pearls and animal pictures fill in quite nicely. The AI for Jade’s allies is great, not perfect but they follow her accurately and respond to commands well, barring the occasional glitch. The AI of the enemies, primarily the Alpha Sections, is a mixed bag, though it’s extremely funny to abuse the limits of their intelligence to fight them or sneak past them, which is the crux of the stealth segments. The Alphas don’t exactly hire geniuses, let’s put it that way.

Don't turn around too harshly, or the camera will be
struggling. That's especially true for the hovercraft.

You don’t really have control of the camera, it repositions itself based on what you do; which is fine on paper, but often a pain in practice. The cohabitation of genres is excellent, though some are given more focus than others, with stealth stealing the show later on. For a 2003 game, it looks fine (the version I obtained for free on UPlay is not the HD rerelease from 2011). The music, much like the game, explores multiple genres, offering a pretty sweet soundtrack to these adventures. As for the loading times, they’re usually pretty bearable. I did run once into an issue with loading bad enough that the game's window crashed big time and I had to log out and back into my computer to get it working again, but situations like this could also be my computer’s problem only, who knows. I also had to reload my save after losing all visuals the first time I got to space.

A little rough around the edges, but overall a good experience – if you want to see a game that could be considered the precursor to Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed, taking cues from the Zelda series as well… One of the best games ever? I don’t know if I would go that far, but it ranks high for me. Took me a while to get into it and feel enthralled, but once it had me, I was more than eager to see it to the end.

Pey'j says goodbye!

See you soon for more – and hopefully next time the hiatus won’t be as long!