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Beyond Good and Evil Demo Impressions
Dec. 11th, 2003 06:34 pmSo last night I started to ramble on about the Beyond Good and Evil demo, and ended up falling asleep instead. Aren't I a wonderful journal-writer? Okay, let's take this from the top. Why did I instantly fall in love with the demo to this game when most game demos just kind of make me go "Eh. Huh. Looks neat." or the like?
Well, I want to say first off that Ubisoft has someone making publishing choices that just plain kick ass. First Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time earlier this year, which just shone in every way I can imagine, and now Beyond Good and Evil, which picks up the Legend of Zelda style of gameplay, tweaks it some, adds in what looks like a solid gold plot and some really likable characters, and then runs away with it.
Let's see. A good place to start would be the art style. It took me about ten minutes to work out that yes, the creator of this game is the same person who worked on the first couple of Rayman games. It was the landscape and skyline that did it for me, full of low rolling hills and rock formations that resemble made-by-hand scupltures. Nothing in the demo felt static or pre-constructed by a programmer, it all felt as if it were built by hand to be interesting to look at, no matter what angle you saw it from. I know that "It has great graphics" is a cliche, and it well should be. There's no excuse for a professionally-made game to NOT have fantastic graphics in this day and age. What I am saying, though, is that the impression I got went past merely good graphics and right into lovingly hand crafted graphics.
That brings me to Jade, the main character of this game. She looks both believable and stylish, and I really dig her haircut. If I had one complaint about her it's that she seems a little TOO perfect, martial arts master, action news reporter, hovercraft pilot, saver of orphaned children... She's a bit much. But her voice acting is fantastic, her character design really works for me...
It's occured to me that what I'm trying to drive at here is presentation. It's not just graphics, or the music (which is astounding), or the voice acting or the character design. Even the writing, which is usually a flat point in games like this, works for me. The game doesn't feel like it's ABOUT beating up all the enemies or finding all the secrets or moving through the plot. It feels like it's about letting you look into a different world for a while, and about telling a story that's more about people than about the fantastic alien gizmos.
...Yeah, I got all that from a demo.
Anyway, that's why I'm excited about Beyond Good and Evil.
Well, I want to say first off that Ubisoft has someone making publishing choices that just plain kick ass. First Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time earlier this year, which just shone in every way I can imagine, and now Beyond Good and Evil, which picks up the Legend of Zelda style of gameplay, tweaks it some, adds in what looks like a solid gold plot and some really likable characters, and then runs away with it.
Let's see. A good place to start would be the art style. It took me about ten minutes to work out that yes, the creator of this game is the same person who worked on the first couple of Rayman games. It was the landscape and skyline that did it for me, full of low rolling hills and rock formations that resemble made-by-hand scupltures. Nothing in the demo felt static or pre-constructed by a programmer, it all felt as if it were built by hand to be interesting to look at, no matter what angle you saw it from. I know that "It has great graphics" is a cliche, and it well should be. There's no excuse for a professionally-made game to NOT have fantastic graphics in this day and age. What I am saying, though, is that the impression I got went past merely good graphics and right into lovingly hand crafted graphics.
That brings me to Jade, the main character of this game. She looks both believable and stylish, and I really dig her haircut. If I had one complaint about her it's that she seems a little TOO perfect, martial arts master, action news reporter, hovercraft pilot, saver of orphaned children... She's a bit much. But her voice acting is fantastic, her character design really works for me...
It's occured to me that what I'm trying to drive at here is presentation. It's not just graphics, or the music (which is astounding), or the voice acting or the character design. Even the writing, which is usually a flat point in games like this, works for me. The game doesn't feel like it's ABOUT beating up all the enemies or finding all the secrets or moving through the plot. It feels like it's about letting you look into a different world for a while, and about telling a story that's more about people than about the fantastic alien gizmos.
...Yeah, I got all that from a demo.
Anyway, that's why I'm excited about Beyond Good and Evil.
