O tempora is a series of retrospective posts where I play games from ages before to see if they stood the test of time.
Beyond Good & Evil has always been a pretty odd game. Inventive and unforgettable in many ways, but also clearly unfinished and frustrating in many others. Born out of incredible ambition of the team inside Ubisoft, back when their games were fresh and exciting and not the same game with different coats of paint released several times a year with 15 minutes of end credits they’re known for nowadays. Though even this game’s release was a bizarre choice on the company’s side – released the same day as Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, another beloved classic, the two games competed for attention, leaving both of them with very high critical scores but less than exciting sales figures. Nonetheless, a sequel Beyond Good and Evil 2 have been in development for… who knows how long, as the game was originally announced back in 2008 (just 5 years after the original), and the development of it has been far more troubled than that of the first game, since no one knows what it’s going to be anymore… That is, no one knew at all until 20th Anniversary Edition remaster of the first game has been released that, among other things, has additional elements that seem to exist specifically to tie the game better with the prequel concept last shown in 2018.
But, that’s all great and all, yet BG&E is now a 21 year old game and not games age well. Is it still worth playing, with the fresh coat of paint or not?
Beyond Good & Evil is an action adventure game with light stealth mechanics and heavy emphasis on storytelling that was born during the time, when a lot of developers dreamt of giving players access to big living worlds. BG&E itself, as one can learn from the development gallery in the 20th Anniversary Edition, started finding its own footing out of the idea of visiting different planets, having exciting adventures on foot and in vehicles, being able to stealth, platform and trade all within different living societies. Something that the finished game has only a glimpse of – you do get to travel by boat and later by a space ship, but there’s only one city and a handful of locations in and around it available for exploration, while the space exploration element in the game is just a tiny transition before you finish the game.
That doesn’t really matter, though, as this game is all about telling an exciting adventurous story. That’s what grabbed people back in the day, and it still feels really fun today. It’s simple, don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing surprising or revolutionary about the world or the story that the game tells, but it doesn’t need to be. It’s well told and engaging, full of likeable characters and loathsome villains. With the weakest element of this tale being the fact that it does feel unfinished. You get hints and glimpses of what the Big Story is all about right before the game ends, leaving you unfulfilled. And even more bizarrely, the added 20th Anniversary Edition elements that I’ve mentioned only add confusion, rather than explaining anything. And on top of that, since they are just inserted in a completed game, they feel out of place and Jade (the main character of the game) has no reaction to the things she’s learning. Which has a logistical reason, of course, since the voice actress for the character sadly passed away.
Gameplay is where the game was somewhat revolutionary at the time of release, but never great. On one hand, Ubisoft at the time pushed hard for cinematic simplification of controls and interface elements, trying to creating things that look and feel cool and intuitive, while having enough complexity for what the game required. As such, combat in the game is tied to just one attack button and one dodge button, with the direction and amount of button presses dictating what visually cool move Jade will pull. Platforming is mostly automated with no button presses required at all. Stealth usually requires you to just crouch and time movement correctly to no be in the line of sight. And a lot of things are contextual. In modern titles this over-reliance on contextual actions often leads to frustration because of the amounts of interactions possible, but for when Ubisoft pushed this idea, it felt right.
All that said, there were really frustrating moments in the game even for 2003, and by 2024 they feel especially annoying. Stealth is really inconsistent and often stupid, as enemies may not see you in almost plain sight straight ahead, but then in a different spot see you crouching behind a cover, and failing stealth usually leads to a death. Combat is never difficult, but often cheap as both camera and controls constantly get in your way. In one particular fight closer to the game end you have to fight extremely fast enemies that are constantly off camera when you try to hit them and their hitbox is really small. And the final boss fight has several sections that are basically QTEs that don’t tell you what button they expect you to press, and if you fail to understand it you’re stuck in an infinite loop. Some of the levels are just poorly thought out, with enemies catching you before you even get to see there are any or camera fighting you and screwing your controls. And the approach to healing is just stupid, with the rest of the inventory management being quite counter-intuitive and inconvenient.
So… While I did enjoy revisiting the game that I remembered loving, the revisit revealed to me just how deeply flawed the game really is. And it’s bizarre that 20th Anniversary Edition doesn’t seem to attempt to address any of the well known imbalance issues of the original, or lack of clear explanation of some of its aspects. It looks pretty, I liked the gallery, it controls better with modern controllers and runs better on modern systems. But it also feels like it was done with tape and bubblegum and may break apart in the future, while the newly added requirement for the Ubisoft Connect client is an outright spit on the classic that should, for preservation, be DRM-free. Yet, even if it was handled better… I can’t help but think that Beyond Good & Evil can only be truly made as good as it could be with a remake, not a remaster. That’s not what we got and the game, whenever you get it in the 20th Anniversary Edition version or the original, is still worth playing. Just, do be ready that the farther the game will go, the more frustrating its weaker elements will become.