davidcarlton
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| Posted 01/21/09 at 12:00 AM | Reply with quote #1 |
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| Please post your thoughts on the parts of the game that take place on the moon here. |
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sparky
Registered: 07/14/08
Posts: 167
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| Posted 02/14/09 at 04:31 PM | Reply with quote #2 |
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The moon is not a tough place to get through. The game switches from a stealth-combat motif to an almost exclusively puzzle-based one for the first half of the dungeon. The puzzles aren't really challenging, however, and this approach doesn't seem particularly well-suited to the big enemy base. I found myself wishing that some of the sneaking that I needed to do in the slaughterhouse had been transposed here somehow. The whole thing feels rather perfunctory, which isn't aided by the obvious H.R. Giger influence on display.
Segundo finally shows up again, to recite a meandering speech in broken English and provide extra fodder for those who think he's an insulting portrayal. The rest of that cutscene-heavy portion is all right. One thing I do like is that as you are running out of the control room the M-disk player explodes. It adds a nice little touch of danger.
I actually like the fight against the General's ship. It requires a little bit of thinking and reflexes, but not so much that it feels overly tough. There's just the right sense of challenge.
Then there's the real boss battle... ugh. I get what Ancel was going for, I think, but the control reversal just feels cheap.
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Kimari
Registered: 08/26/08
Posts: 43
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| Posted 02/14/09 at 06:52 PM | Reply with quote #3 |
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I feel like I'm the only one who is going to come out and say "I liked the final battle".
It was a little too long, there's not much emotion going on and the jaw droppingly cliched "I'm your father" moment made me cringe like never before, but I liked it... somehow. It was interesting battling the enemies with the controls reversed. What was infuriating was trying to defeat the last phase with reversed controls. Not that it wasn't a good idea, but it overstayed it's welcome (particularly because it's a disguised quick-time event where if you fail one of the sequences, you have to start all over again from the beginning. Ugh.).
I don't know, I felt disconnected. When I rescued Pey'j I was expecting him to wake up, say a phrase or two and then continue on with the game. I didn't expect him to stay "dead" for so long though, that was a surprise. However, the emotional potency of the whole thing was smashed to pieces by one thing:
In two places I visited before rescuing Pey'j there were special switches made for three people. What did those things tell me? That Pey'j was going to come back in one piece. That or I was going to have to drag his corpse all over the place (which given the tone of BGE, was as likely as seeing Double H strip naked while doing the macarena (your welcome, enjoy the mental image)).
I suppose that by this stage all common sense was thrown out the window, since there is NOBODY inside the big fortress and somehow these aliens thought that opening doors with beams of light and mirrors was a good idea. Purely in gameplay terms it was fun, but it made no sense whatsoever.
It was rushed, and it shows, but at least these new mechanics were polished.
The whole tractor beam thing was also nonsensical, but fun. I was fearing the game was going to devolve into some kind of crappy space sim but that part was thankfully kept short enough. I guess that there are some advantages for keeping the same control scheme for all these different types of gameplay, in this case at least: Since the player won't spend much time using this new vehicle, let's make it as intuitive as possible.
If Jade was such an object of desire for the aliens, wouldn't it be better to, you know, just kidnap her? They've been doing it with a lot other people for some time now....
[warning: humor approaching]
No, that would be too simple. Maybe a better way to take her to the moon would be causing rampage on earth, then let some secret organization develop, tell the alpha sections to use as much infrastructure as possible for the purposes of kidnapping people, then attack the lighthouse and hope that she gets curious enough to want to uncover the truth and go in an adventure. Then make her go through all our buildings, photographing everything. Just before she gets bored with our little scheme, we kidnap that pig thing of her's. Haha, that will piss her off. Once she discovers that we've taken the ham to the moon, she will willingly come here.
Now, to avoid any casualties we will hide all our army. Then when she gets here, we'll open the doors and let her rescue the pig (that will make her happy and softy). Right then we will lead here to our main chamber where I, the huge alien woman, am. Right then, I'll convince her that she's too cool for school, to leave everyone behind and become my food. Yes, she will see that resistance is futile, that food is what she was meant to be.
Man, I haven't had human souffle in decades, I can't wait till she gets here.
[/told ya so]
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baf
Registered: 02/01/09
Posts: 25
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| Posted 02/16/09 at 12:38 AM | Reply with quote #4 |
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Reversed controls usually annoy me no end, but this is the one game I can think of where it wasn't so bad. I think this is mainly because you're not actually using the controls to move. You're just using them to aim an attack, and that's an instantaneous event that doesn't involve any visual feedback. You just have think of it as aiming directly away from the baddie, and not let Jade's actual movement confuse you.
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sharc
Registered: 10/24/08
Posts: 81
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| Posted 02/16/09 at 12:14 PM | Reply with quote #5 |
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the moon may be the final dungeon of the game, but it feels like a bit of an afterthought. there's not much to slow you down here in the heart of the enemy stronghold; the main obstacle is another one of those mirror and light puzzles, which also made a much longer and more tedious appearance in sands of time.
the fight with the general's ship was well directed, but pretty simple in the end. never felt like i was in much danger during it on either playthrough. i'd be curious to know if anybody felt it was difficult. i enjoyed the huge dogfight a lot more, as while it wasn't any harder it presented a lot more to do and gave you some freedom to hunt down your targets without the rigid, drags-on-a-bit-too-long structure of the boss.
anyone else find it darkly comic, coming in to find that the three soldiers in the tractor beam ship were apparently just chilling out down there while their commanding officer was dying skewered on some piece of wreckage? i'm sure it was supposed to be presented as if there hadn't been much time, but i took a while knocking out the mines...
kimari, i didn't really like the resurrection scene either, although for different reasons. he was out for such a short amount of time that it felt like a backtracking "oh wait he's not really dead" to me, rather than leaving you to deal with the loss for a while. on top of that, when he does come back, you find out about it...in a text message from iris? he doesn't even contact jade directly when he knows she's there and she saved him? i was glad to see the ol' salt back on his feet again, though. 
the triple lock is something i didn't think of, although i came in having the "surprise" spoiled for me by my roommate's playthrough. i think it was crimsonclone who pointed out another occurrence of gameplay weakening the impact of the story in this manner, that being how after pey'j is taken you get a replacement partner almost right away, without going for much time on your lonesome to drive home what you've lost.
i didn't find the final battle too bad, but it does get very cheap towards the end. i can't count the number of times i'd be off by a second and get knocked down, then get up only to immediately get hit and knocked down again.
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MoriartyL
Registered: 01/20/09
Posts: 295
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| Posted 02/17/09 at 10:10 AM | Reply with quote #6 |
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I like this dungeon a lot. Very straightforward but dramatic. Not really much to say beside "Ooh, epic!". Which it is.
As for the plot twist. Wow. Who thought that was a good idea. It doesn't add anything at all to the story, and suddenly makes the entire story seem to be about something which they throw in in a cutscene in the last few minutes, which has nothing to do with anything else in the game. I mean, really?
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Amoveo
Registered: 01/26/09
Posts: 68
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| Posted 02/17/09 at 08:47 PM | Reply with quote #7 |
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Quote:
If Jade was such an object of desire for the aliens, wouldn't it be better to, you know, just kidnap her? They've been doing it with a lot other people for some time now....
[warning: humor approaching]
No, that would be too simple. Maybe a better way to take her to the moon would be causing rampage on earth, then let some secret organization develop, tell the alpha sections to use as much infrastructure as possible for the purposes of kidnapping people, then attack the lighthouse and hope that she gets curious enough to want to uncover the truth and go in an adventure. Then make her go through all our buildings, photographing everything. Just before she gets bored with our little scheme, we kidnap that pig thing of her's. Haha, that will piss her off. Once she discovers that we've taken the ham to the moon, she will willingly come here.
Now, to avoid any casualties we will hide all our army. Then when she gets here, we'll open the doors and let her rescue the pig (that will make her happy and softy). Right then we will lead here to our main chamber where I, the huge alien woman, am. Right then, I'll convince her that she's too cool for school, to leave everyone behind and become my food. Yes, she will see that resistance is futile, that food is what she was meant to be.
Man, I haven't had human souffle in decades, I can't wait till she gets here.
I hate to be "that guy who rationalizes plotholes" again but they didn't know that Jade was the magical person. The Alpha guy mentioned "he's been looking for you for centuries" which tells me that they didn't know Jade was on Earth let alone who she was. Thus I think the Domz plan was to capture as many people from as many planets as possible in hopes of finding her. It was a trial and error process "is this the mystical being that we've been searching for? Nope, move on to the next planet."
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Kimari
Registered: 08/26/08
Posts: 43
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| Posted 02/17/09 at 10:18 PM | Reply with quote #8 |
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Quote: Originally Posted by Amoveo
I hate to be "that guy who rationalizes plot-holes" again but they didn't know that Jade was the magical person. The Alpha guy mentioned "he's been looking for you for centuries" which tells me that they didn't know Jade was on Earth let alone who she was. Thus I think the Domz plan was to capture as many people from as many planets as possible in hopes of finding her. It was a trial and error process "is this the mystical being that we've been searching for? Nope, move on to the next planet."
Mmhhh, I see. I fail to notice exactly when the evil aliens found out that this mystical being was Jade. They gave Pey'j special treatment precisely because he was someone significant to her. Besides, how the hell did they notice that Jade was "the one"? Did they really need to abduct all those people just to find her?
Anyways, in an attempt to sound dramatic the game trips over itself. Centuries? They've been looking for her for centuries? Man do these guys have time on their hands, and sawdust in their heads. Their best plan was to actually invite this really powerful being to the main chamber with no resistance whatsoever and try to convince her? They had centuries to prepare! Then when that plan inevitably fails they give her a chance at a fair fight. Why doesn't the big mother alien just stay away and shoot lasers at her instead of hovering creepily close to her, staring blankly, waiting for Jade to make her next move? Apparently this alien can teleport, so .... why doesn't she just teleport behind Jade, shoot some lasers and then be done with the whole century long thing?
I know, I know, the game wouldn't be playable otherwise, but that's the problem. You need to find a balance between "story" and gameplay (sorry Corvus, I can't find a better way to express this). This whole chapter was heavily balanced towards gameplay, leaving by the wayside the unimportant things like coherence and sanity. The story by itself doesn't make much sense but when you analyze the "gameplay parts" it all comes crumbling even further, bursting though the floor because hell, we aren't finished insulting the player's intelligence yet.
What I'm trying to say here is: It was all incredibly unnecessary. It was uncalled for. It was cringe worthy. It was a cliched "I'm your father" moment. And it's not excusable by any means, being rushed to finish the game does not cut it.
I can excuse plot-holes, I can excuse the use of cutscenes as exposition tools, I can even forgive the use of insta-kill lasers. They are all mistakes that are not necessarily the game designer's fault. But the laughably bad final plot twist is something I can't even come to terms with. It's almost as if Ancel was the one who designed the first half of the game and then a rookie game designer finished the job as better as he could.
Anybody shares some of these sentiments? Please tell me I'm not going crazy xD
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MoriartyL
Registered: 01/20/09
Posts: 295
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| Posted 02/18/09 at 06:41 AM | Reply with quote #9 |
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I'm sure the twist is meant to set up the sequel's plot. But that's bad form. The sequel should be a natural continuation of what we've played, not the continuation of some random cutscene tacked on to the end of the first game. If Ancel didn't want Jade's nature to have an important part of the first game, then he should have thrown out that idea and come up with something else.
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sharc
Registered: 10/24/08
Posts: 81
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| Posted 02/18/09 at 11:55 AM | Reply with quote #10 |
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i agree that the plot twist feels tremendously unnecessary and seems to be blatant sequel-bait, although i put all my thoughts on the subject in the post-game thread. maybe i should have put them here.
anyway, with beyond good and evil i don't think you can treat it as something ancel and his team had all the time in the world to work on and perfect. ubisoft seemed to want things wrapped up fairly quickly, but somebody clearly wanted to continue working with the world and characters. resorting to sequel-bait may be a forgivable offense in the eyes of developers that just want their fledgling series to live. of course, the problem from our side is that this tactic rarely seems to work in guaranteeing a sequel, and it leaves us with an unfinished story as part of the bet.
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MoriartyL
Registered: 01/20/09
Posts: 295
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| Posted 02/18/09 at 05:40 PM | Reply with quote #11 |
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I'm sorry, but there's only so far you can go with the "They didn't have enough time!" argument. These cutscenes took time to make. It would have been quicker and cheaper to cut the twist out entirely. So I doubt this has anything at all to do with bureaucratic meddling- this is just a bad call on Ancel's part. If he didn't think this twist was important he would have cut it out. But this is the worst kind of twist-for-the-sake-of-having-a-twist: it cheapens the entire story that came before it by undermining its themes and conflicts.
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sharc
Registered: 10/24/08
Posts: 81
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| Posted 02/18/09 at 05:58 PM | Reply with quote #12 |
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oh, i absolutely despise the twist. i think it's clumsy and unnecessary, and it cheapens everything that came beforehand by virtue of wrapping up the plotline through jumping tracks altogether in the closing minutes. even with the sparse foreshadowing, it still feels like a two-hour movie about a single swordfight that gets resolved when one of the fighters produces a gun and shoots the other guy.
i'm not defending it, only saying i can imagine at least one reason why a developer would be tempted into using it. and really, idle speculation is the only venue for discussion here, since i don't think we have any commentary from the team on what the game's development cycle is like (though it's possible to extrapolate).
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crimsonclone
Registered: 09/02/08
Posts: 156
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| Posted 02/19/09 at 12:21 AM | Reply with quote #13 |
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I'd already figured Jade was part Domz, so I wondered 'Ok what does this mean' and on the Moon the plot answered back 'Wouldn't YOU like to know'. I can't help but think Beyond Good and Evil was intended as a trilogy with a 'Who is Jade' plot written across 3 games. Unfortunately, outside of Jade being part of a Domz...ruler...thing that wants her back, maybe, and Jade suddenly receiving the power of Deus Ex Resurrection the game didn't feel like providing any additional information. On top of that the whole 'you are part of me' stuff doesn't really make that much sense in context as Kimari and others have pointed out.
On the up side, as contrived as I felt the whole 'Broadcast our message and the Alpha Sections will lose' plot was, it redemed itself when the Hillian Army showed up to give Jade and company support. I've been trying to figure out why the Alpha Sections, who have been protrayed as the entire Hillian military, would simply pack up if the population was against them instead of torching the capital or something. I've been waiting for some verification that the Alpha Sections were a small conspiracy on Hillys that required secrecy to operate and the cavalry riding in confirmed it.
All in all, the Moon pulls off its setpieces well. I disagree that it was rushed, it is too complicated at times for rushed level and doesn't feel like a level designer was told 'make it not crash so we can ship'. Really the flaw is it tries a big reveal but doesn't quite understand that the reveal basicly changes the entire plot of the game in the last 10 minutes. Then the game ends. Oh and Pey'j has a Domz flower spore thing which might be more significant if we knew the slightest thing about the Domz.
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Kimari
Registered: 08/26/08
Posts: 43
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| Posted 02/19/09 at 03:04 AM | Reply with quote #14 |
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Quote: Originally Posted by crimsonclone
Oh and Pey'j has a Domz flower spore thing which might be more significant if we knew the slightest thing about the Domz.
I somehow managed to avoid that little nugget of joy.... until now! Thanks for reminding me =)
It was a cliffhanger that was supposed to make us all intrigued with this new problem but I have two very important issues with that:
1) I'm tired of this trope. It's the beloved character that somehow always manages to get himself in trouble every single time. He is always in another castle, he is always in distress, and it's our job to rescue him. Basically, he is a fat, farting, charming and aging Zelda.
2) Two words: Double H. Remember when Jade brought him back to the IRIS central? Remember the mutation? Yes, that exact same thing that Pey'j now apparently has. Remember that it was all cured in less than a minute? Remember that he didn't even need to rest after-wards? ....... Yep.
Let me summarize the plot of Beyond Good & Evil 2 for you all:
P - Hey Jade, I've got this thing here....
J - Ah, yes, that's what Double H had. Say, let's go to the IRIS network's central, they'll path you up.
*15 minutes later*
J - There ya go, all done, feeling much better?
P - Thanks Jade! Want to go in another adventure?
J - Nah, maybe in the next game.
*the camera does a close up of a suspicious looking fly*
*cue dramatic music*
*roll credits*
I somehow suspect that the plot won't actually be like this. At all.
Anyways, I've said some of this before, but it bears repeating: I wanted to spend more time with Pey'j but the game just denied it to me after the middle of the second freaking dungeon. When you get him back you don't get much to say to him, there's not that much that you can do either, going back to Hillys is impossible now due to some deus ex machina engine malfunction.
I wanted to talk to him more, I wanted to play with him, I wanted to spend time with him, I wanted to get to know him. His relationship with Jade is fantastic, and something rarely seen in other games, why does it have to end so quickly? Why does BGE have to devolve into a (charming, yes, but) generic stealth game?
I think that the only parts I truly enjoyed of BGE are the first ones, where's this all encompassing good vibe going. Light-hearted might describe it best, and we gamers don't get enough of it in our diet.
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Freezair
Registered: 01/27/09
Posts: 40
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| Posted 02/19/09 at 04:35 PM | Reply with quote #15 |
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If I may make a proposition regarding the spore: The drama is not necessarily that Pey'j is infected (though on the surface, it is, because dammit, we like the pig, and we don't want to see him hurt), but (and I'm not sure if this has been brought up yet): The hand that's infected is the hand that Jade resurrected him through, and so the implication is that, while her intentions were good, she has accidentally done something to him and put something inside him, and her powers, while she would choose not to abuse them, have an element of evil themselves.
While simple, I generally like the moon. It's the most scripted of all the dungeons, but I enjoy the puzzles, and I enjoy all the combat it throws at you. This is the one place where you really have to fight the Alpha guards, but it helps the feel of this being a final confontation. The supernatural aspect of the plot does feel rushed in, though to be fair, they did forshadow it--what with the visions and all--so it's not quite as deus ex machina-happy as it seems on the surface. It's still rather awkward, though. I don't object to the inclusion of any supernatural elements, just suddenly dumping them all on us near the end.
Nasty final boss fight. The first few parts are OK, but once you hit the checkpoint (which begins with the five Double H clones), things get ugly fast. Without the super attack (or just plain forgetting how to use it), that part is bad enough in itself--you are essentially taking on five Alpha guards at once, though these only take one hit before reverting to easier enemies. But the "inverted controls" thing is just cruel, both because you suddenly have to adapt to the flipped controls in the middle of the boss, and because it also slows your speed. Due to this, it's possible to become trapped on the edge of the platform by the boss and become unable to recover. Yeesshk. I hate that thing.
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baf
Registered: 02/01/09
Posts: 25
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| Posted 02/20/09 at 03:35 PM | Reply with quote #16 |
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Quote: Originally Posted by Freezair
The hand that's infected is the hand that Jade resurrected him through, and so the implication is that, while her intentions were good, she has accidentally done something to him and put something inside him, and her powers, while she would choose not to abuse them, have an element of evil themselves.
Ooh, good catch. I hadn't even considered that. I had assumed that his infection was simply a result of his captivity, but the hand thing does suggest otherwise, and it fits with the whole you-are-a-part-of-us thing.
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davidcarlton
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Registered: 07/15/08
Posts: 548
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| Posted 02/21/09 at 12:29 AM | Reply with quote #17 |
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I really didn't like this dungeon. Part was that I got stuck for a ridiculous amount of time trying to get beyond the room where Pey'j was: for whatever reason, it took me ages and ages to notice that I could slide past the door, and I tried no end of other things (over and over) in the meantime. (I guess I shouldn't have tried to finish the game when I was as tired as I was last night?) And then the whole big plot twist at the end left a really bad taste in my mouth - planned sequel or no, the game absolutely did not need Jade to turn into a mystical messiah figure. Saving the world on her own should be enough!
Can you actually get the M-Disk for issue 515? Or does something else fit in that slot? I got all the pearls and all the pictures, but I was missing one of the disks. |
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Freezair
Registered: 01/27/09
Posts: 40
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| Posted 02/21/09 at 02:32 AM | Reply with quote #18 |
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Getting that disc requires using the "Internet Code" found at the bottom of your save file info, taking it to... some arcane part of Ubi's website that I forget, and inputting said code. It gives you another code to unlock the chest in the Akuda Bar (which at this point you can never go back to; sorry) which contains the final disc--a portable version of the disc minigame from the bar, which I think can use a second controller/the mouse to incorporate a second player.
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davidcarlton
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Registered: 07/15/08
Posts: 548
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| Posted 02/21/09 at 02:53 AM | Reply with quote #19 |
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Ah, thanks for the info. I won't be worrying about that, then...
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baf
Registered: 02/01/09
Posts: 25
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| Posted 02/22/09 at 11:44 AM | Reply with quote #20 |
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Suddenly it occurs to me that the technique separating Jade from her companions by means of narrow cracks that only Jade can fit through is pretty much identical to a gimmick used in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, except that there it was the companion rather than the player character who could fit through the cracks.
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Bobbicus
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Registered: 06/09/10
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| Posted 07/05/10 at 04:18 PM | Reply with quote #21 |
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One of my favorite moments in the game is right after you enter orbit. Jade gets all giddy and points out some constellations, while a giant space whale floats nearby. It's this great drop of serenity right before the climax.
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