davidcarlton
Moderator
Registered: 07/15/08
Posts: 548
|
| Posted 01/21/09 at 12:01 AM | Reply with quote #1 |
|
| Please post your thoughts on the part of the game between the slaughterhouse and the moon here. |
| Loading... | |
Karkacabra
Registered: 10/24/08
Posts: 29
|
| Posted 02/11/09 at 09:50 PM | Reply with quote #2 |
|
I know I'm a little early here, but ah well. I finally got every animal's photograph, all the pearls, and all the m-disks, and saved my game. Then I realized that Double-H was missing. I looked online to find that the only solution is to revert to an earlier save, and my only other save slot is from the middle of the Slaughterhouse. So, unless there's a miracle and I decide to restart from there, and redo the end of the city, and mop up all the other areas again, I'm out 
|
| Loading... | |
MoriartyL
Registered: 01/20/09
Posts: 295
|
| Posted 02/12/09 at 03:25 PM | Reply with quote #3 |
|
What do you mean, he's missing? How did that happen?
__________________
My computer games (for Windows and Linux):
http://www.TheBuckmans.com/games.html |
| Loading... | |
sharc
Registered: 10/24/08
Posts: 81
|
| Posted 02/12/09 at 03:41 PM | Reply with quote #4 |
|
| oh hell, that's just wretched. sorry to hear it, karkacabra.:\ |
| Loading... | |
Freezair
Registered: 01/27/09
Posts: 40
|
| Posted 02/12/09 at 07:55 PM | Reply with quote #5 |
|
MorarityL, it's a glitch that can sometimes happen in the game. Occasionally, Pey'j or Double H will just... vanish. Poof. They're gone. They pop up on your "buddy radar" in your menu screen, but you "can't contact them" and they're not on the map. It's a vile bug, and one of the two in the game that can totally screw things up.
The other one involves part of the Slaughterhouse where you get the second triangle key; occasionally the key spawns in a place you can't get it. Luckily, you CAN save and reload and try again.
Still, that's rotten luck there...
__________________
I heard there was free food here!
...Just sayin'. |
| Loading... | |
Greg
Registered: 02/02/09
Posts: 8
|
| Posted 02/13/09 at 12:17 AM | Reply with quote #6 |
|
Okay - comments about the city. Tonight, I just ran through a couple of my favorite areas inside the city.
First, the barred door near the city entrance that I had triple H break through. That one had some minor stealth scenarios, and ended with a chase scene I'd totally forgotten about. Very nice.
Secondly, my favorite part of the entire game: the star door. Behind it is a long and difficult stealth sequence, then you get pearls, and it ends with that beautiful cinematic rooftop chase. I love that part so much. :-)
|
| Loading... | |
Freezair
Registered: 01/27/09
Posts: 40
|
| Posted 02/13/09 at 12:51 AM | Reply with quote #7 |
|
I love the whole star key sequence. It's a marvelous setpiece, it's a very well-done stealth section, and the chase scene is epic. It's cinematic, it's heart-pounding, and the end sequence never fails to bring a smile to my face. It's sweet without being cloyingly so.
I expected it to be much longer the first time I did it. Full-on dungeon length, I thought. Then again, it's probably better as a short section.
__________________
I heard there was free food here!
...Just sayin'. |
| Loading... | |
MoriartyL
Registered: 01/20/09
Posts: 295
|
| Posted 02/13/09 at 06:09 AM | Reply with quote #8 |
|
I'm going to wait until next week to play this section. But I'd like to point out that once we pass the hovercraft boss battle, we're getting into Act 3 of the story. (The boss is there to give some sort of dramatic finish to Act 2.)
__________________
My computer games (for Windows and Linux):
http://www.TheBuckmans.com/games.html |
| Loading... | |
Kimari
Registered: 08/26/08
Posts: 43
|
| Posted 02/13/09 at 10:17 PM | Reply with quote #9 |
|
This part was rather short, but unexpectedly sweet. It's a real pitty that there are only two chasing sequences in the whole game, though I suspect that they were a whole lot of trouble to code.
Frankly, these scenes strike a perfect balance between real challenge and perceived challenge. The player won't probably die in her first try, but she will be smiling from ear to ear when the whole thing ends.
__________________
Indigo Static |
| Loading... | |
MoriartyL
Registered: 01/20/09
Posts: 295
|
| Posted 02/15/09 at 10:27 AM | Reply with quote #10 |
|
The twist (that Pey'j is the head of IRIS) is nonsense. We have never heard of this "chief" before, so it's not like it's paying off anything from earlier. And we never had any hint that Pey'j was up to anything mysterious either. So Ancel is pulling this "reveal" out of nowhere, seemingly just so that there will be some shocking twist at the end. In so doing, he is trying too hard to conform to his ideas of what a movie does, and not hard enough to think about what is right for this story.
And for this story, at this moment, that's just not a dramatic way for the plot to go. We'd want to save Pey'j more if we thought he was totally helpless. This way, we're thinking there's more to him than meets the eye, and his message makes it seem that he's practically on the verge of escaping his captors. That decreases his value as a "damsel in distress"-type character, which is what he needs to be here to encourage us to free him.
Really, the whole point of that bit is as a plot device, to get us to notice the ship. Surely there are less clunky ways of doing that.
Now, I'm sure you're all sick of me saying that I don't like cutscenes, but I'm annoyed that the most intensely emotional moment in the game, Jade's sense of hopelessness, is covered entirely in a cutscene and not reflected one bit in gameplay. Would it really have been so hard to disable running and change the walking animation for this bit, so that each step becomes laborious? Would it have been so terrible if they let us see the doll ourselves, rather than shoving it in our faces? Would it have been impossible to let us interact with the dog somehow? (For instance, getting him out of rubble or a "stroke" action or anything like that.) Couldn't they have given us some tease that there was someone in the lighthouse, so that we can get depressed ourselves when we see that there isn't? Any of these things would continue our personal involvement in the story, and bring it to a dramatically interesting place. That's not what's happening here. We're running in, seeing a cutscene, running out, and fighting some robots. This is not how this sort of storytelling ought to work.
__________________
My computer games (for Windows and Linux):
http://www.TheBuckmans.com/games.html |
| Loading... | |
baf
Registered: 02/01/09
Posts: 25
|
| Posted 02/15/09 at 09:07 PM | Reply with quote #11 |
|
Incedentally, once you're past a certain point on the moon, there's no turning back. So if you're thinking of going for all the pearls or anything like that, be sure to keep a save at this point in the game, when everything's accessible.
|
| Loading... | |
davidcarlton
Moderator
Registered: 07/15/08
Posts: 548
|
| Posted 02/16/09 at 08:04 PM | Reply with quote #12 |
|
We've spent a lot of time talking about the cut scene where Pey'j gets taken away, but the one with the lighthouse had a bigger impact on me. Pey'j is an adult wandering around a place where he shouldn't be; the kids are kids whose only mistake is that they're living with some people who have been sticking their noses in the wrong places.
Having said that, I won't argue with MoriartyL: they could have handled it better. In fact, even within the game's internal logic, there are things they could have done differently. As is, it ultimately only gave Jade more reason to go to the moon, whereas the Alpha sections could have used the threat of destroying the lighthouse as blackmail to prevent Jade from going to the moon at all. Though I'm not sure how that would have worked, in practice: it would be hard to present that in a way where it was really effective but where players kept on playing instead of saying "yup, I'll protect the kids and not go to the moon!" Hmm.
I agree with others that the chase sequences worked well here. And I did end up sticking it out and getting all the pearls; I don't think I did that the last time I played, because I don't recall the minigame that results? Or maybe I wiped that minigame from my memory, I didn't spend too much time playing it this time.
|
| Loading... | |
crimsonclone
Registered: 09/02/08
Posts: 156
|
| Posted 02/18/09 at 05:41 PM | Reply with quote #13 |
|
Exit the Slaughterhouse and the Domz launch Operation: Kill Jade with a Sea Serpent 2. Once the spaceship was operational the Domz launch Operation: Kill Jade with a Sea Serpent 3. I don't fault the designers for this, but it leads to thoughts of at what point did the Domz think the Sea Serpent was actually going to accomplish anything.
Pey'j is the section chief of Iris on Hillys. Um, sure? I'm in agreement with MoriartyL not quite sure what this was supposed to accomplish. Also Jade has temporary amnesia and forgets we found the spaceship before we went to the slaughterhouse.
Along those lines, if the Alpha Sections are going to blow up the lighthouse it might have been useful to blow up the spaceship. Or take the spaceship. I mean I left the secret door open to the thing.
|
| Loading... | |
TheGameCritique
Registered: 01/06/09
Posts: 45
|
| Posted 02/21/09 at 03:21 AM | Reply with quote #14 |
|
Ok I think this is my favorite part of the game. Two chase sequences, which I remember very differently. I remember there only being one and it much longer than it turned out to be. Must be my memory combining them. The Alpha Section's HQ wasn't much for story purposes, but probably should have been. Actually it could have been for all I know. They wont destroy the lighthouse until you go there... I know stealth is a big problem for so many poeple in this game, but this section just epitimizes a great stelath section. You're in the bad guy's territory, its close quarters and you have to make it through alive. But it all culminates in that chase sequence. There are no words, no "Get her" its immediately understood by everyone what has to happen. It's quick and then the running gets more difficult as you start going over the varrying topography of the rooftops and the Alpha Sections are catching up to you. Plus the change in camer a angles add such a sense of suspence to it. The fact the entire first half of it, the camera is facing Jade. You see what's comming after her and can't see what your running to, but you have to run. Leap of faith ending and then the save by Double H. My favorite chase sequence in all of gaming.
I didn't really remember the space ship much from my first playthrough, but it does change your persepctive of Hillis. There is a ton of unexplored territory and in most cases unseen territory. You can travel anywhere by sea, but there is so mcuh land that it just exaplains so much. You fly over and see these expansive farmlands, not so lovingly rendered and some houses, towers, other buildings you'll never go into. It is nice to see there is a world beyond where you can go. Ancel though seems to be skitso on that. He provides a wonderfully diverse ecology, most of which you never fight. Side dungeons that have been infultrated by creatures, but not always monsters. There's even a skeleton of a prehistoric animal if you know where to look. But the city seems strange in its construction and its limited locals. There seems to be almost no housing for the residents to actually live. No indsutry or jobs for that matter.
A note on the Alpha Sections. It wasn't clear to many of the people here nor any player of Beyond Good and Evil what they were. Most people thought they were the military, but if you talk to the soldiers in the city, they are not the Alpha Sections. They are the Hillian army with no association with the Alpha Sections what so ever. The Alpha Sections are a foreign military presence who supposidly are fighting the Domz in many places and when the war came to Hilliys they followed. They were welcomed as protectors because they fought the Domz before and Hillys could use all the help they could get. The Alpha Sections do not have unlimited authority in Hillys. In fact, they have very little at all. Most of their power comes from the cooperation of the Govoner. The blance is tricky because the key is the support of the people. The Govoner is elected by the people and enacts their will, and the people are duped by the Alpha Sections. The Hilliyan military is all about protecting the people, they say so themselves. The Iris network, I don't really know outside of the events of the game, but they are underground, because the Alpha Scetions can remove them off the books, but to the rest of the people they are just a bunch of bloggers, unless they buy into the propoganda. It's not so much about what each group is able to do, but what they are able to do within the constraits of the other groups.
__________________
http://www.thegamecritique.com
A Critical Assessment of Video Games |
| Loading... | |
