Beyond Good & Evil

aka: Between Good & Evil, Beyond Good & Evil HD, Project BG&E
Moby ID: 11290
PlayStation 2 Specs
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Description official descriptions

In the future, on the planet Hillys, the population suffers from constant attacks from the alien DomZ. The situation is gradually getting worse, as the rate of DomZ kidnapings increases. The Alpha Section forces, who are in charge of protecting citizens, seem to be completely ineffective, not even fighting the DomZ. In the midst of this situation, the secretive organization IRIS alleges that the Alpha Section is involved in a massive government conspiracy, and seeks to expose the truth through journalism.

The player controls a young reporter and photographer named Jade with her companions Pey'j and Double H. After experiencing first-hand a DomZ attack, she is contacted by IRIS, who recruits her as an action reporter. Jade is now tasked with infiltrating the Alpha Section, exposing the government conspiracy, and ultimately finding the truth for herself.

Beyond Good & Evil is an action game with diverse gameplay. Much of the game is based on stealth and puzzles, but there are sequences of racing, shooting, combat, and platform action. Jade fights with her staff and also uses various abilities to execute long-ranged attacks and solve puzzles. Many of the puzzles require switching between the characters and using their special abilities; often it is necessary to coordinate the actions of two characters to achieve precise co-operation that leads to a puzzle's solution. Besides hostile areas with puzzles and enemies, there is also a city and other friendly areas to explore, where various items and gadgets can (and sometimes must) be bought. There are several mini-games and even an online ranking system (used by entering codes online after they are assigned in-game when the game is saved).

Spellings

  • За гранью добра и зла - Russian spelling
  • 撕裂的天堂 - Chinese spelling (simplified)
  • 神鬼冒險 - Chinese spelling (traditional)
  • 超越善恶 - Ubisoft Store Chinese spelling (simplified)

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Screenshots

Promos

Credits (PlayStation 2 version)

318 People (219 developers, 99 thanks) · View all

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Project Producer
Story
Dialogues
Game Design
Music Composed and Performed by
Sound Designers
Cinematics Orchestration
Drums & Percussions
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Technical Manager
Jade Engine & Tools Developers
3D Research
Console Lead Developers
Animation Tools Developers
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 87% (based on 104 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 295 ratings with 16 reviews)

Shouldn't be overlooked for bigger-name adventures

The Good
Rayman creator Michel Ancel has realised an ambitious vision of the futuristic world of Hylis - a central city (think Star Wars) with islands of varying sizes dotted around a huge lake (don't think The Wind Waker). His green-lipsticked photographer heroine, Jade, is unquestionably cool, undoubtedly French and makes a welcome addition to the growing list of noteworthy female gaming characters. Her companions (a Buzz Lightyear type and a Mr. Fix-It pig), with whom teamwork is key, are also well thought out and acted with admirable humour.

The game is very playable; whizzing around the lake on your hovercraft, which handles very well, is a joy. The game's puzzles, whilst mostly of the lock and key type, are logical and usually interesting although not always particularly taxing, often requiring Jade to make use of one of her companions (e.g. one character pressing a switch whilst another goes through a door). There are some excellent stealth sections, requiring Jade to creep past guards and sneakily take out their air supplies with her wrist-mounted disk shooter. The camera works very well too, rarely obstructing the player's view of the action as so often happens in modern games. The photography aspect is cool - Jade is a freelance photographer working on an assignment for the local underground newspaper. As well as her mission to uncover the secrets of the Alpha Sections and the DomZ, Jade can photograph the local wildlife. This is a great aside from the rest of the game, and the sight of the enormous whale in the lake is truly awesome. The lush graphics, interesting plot, characters and mini-games make this one to get hold of.

The Bad
Some players may feel that the game is too short for an action/adventure game at around 10 hours - and also that there's little warning of when the end is coming. It is quite possible to have gone straight from mission to mission without really exploring the whole world, which is regrettable. Having mentioned this, it's also worth pointing out that it's a shame that there aren't more places to explore. On first sight of the city, it seems huge. In reality, most of it is for show. Perhaps Beyond Good & Evil 2, if there is a sequel (and there are hints that this may be the case), will expand the universe a little and give the player more distractions from the main thread of the game.

The Bottom Line
BG&E deserves a hearty recommendation for anyone who enjoys action/adventure games in the mould of Starfox Adventures, the Zelda series, etc.

PlayStation 2 · by Paul Jones (274) · 2004

Waiter, there appears to be a Metal Gear Solid in my Zelda.

The Good
I like the fact that the protagonist in this game, Jade, is not really a hero by default. She is not like Link, Dovahkiin or any other fantasy-store protagonist who somehow becomes the Chosen One. Jade is a photographer who knows a tiny bit about combat, but not enough to justify calling her a fighter. The story goes that she becomes embroiled in the troubles of a resistance that seeks to expose a corrupt government by photographing their secrets and by doing so saving the world, I like the idea of the everyday hero and the idea itself is really clever.

Working with the camera is fairly interesting. You can use it to see the world from a First-person perspective and scan your surroundings more accurately, but the camera also identifies objects and organisms. For example: Aiming the camera at a door would tell you, Fi-style, that the object you are looking at is indeed a door. In a more useful situation though: The camera revealed to me what a very strong enemy's weak-point was and this became essential to me when fighting that enemy.

I really like the character of Jade and her uncle Pey'j. The two of them have a very lovable relationship and the dialogue between the two seems very realm which helped endearing the two characters to me despite of Pey'j been more of a comic-relief type that I would normally hate. Jade is more serious though, but it was mostly her design that I didn't really like. Once again it is proven that character is more important than looks, I suppose.

After a rather action-packed opening sequence the game calmed down a bit and I learned that fighting was a rare pleasure and not an everyday occurrence. Most of the time you will be exploring the world, solving puzzles, doing side-quests, gathering items or taking pictures. I also give credit to the producer for putting that in the demo for the xbox 360 HD-release, as opposed to Brütal Legend which never showed it was an RTS until people bought and played it.

The game has a lot of different mechanics: moving, combat, driving and photographing just to name a few. This makes it all the more surprising that all the mechanics function very well (except for one I didn't mention and will get back at) and allow you to do everything as fluently as possible. I could also walk around for a while and then step into a vehicle, without suddenly having to figure out the controls all over again, which is a nice extra.



The Bad
The game is terrible at immersing the player into the world it is trying to create. Whereas good games like say... Dragon Age 2 would provide you with written information about the world around you or even explanations within dialogue, this game just kinda drops you in the middle of everything and never explains a damn thing. Why is Pey'j a pig? Why are there talking rhinos? Where am I? Who am I fighting? How does this world function? All basic questions that the game failed to answer, this is not immersing, this is what you get when a five year old writes the story for your game.

The big moment when I stopped playing this game was in an enemy facility when suddenly and out of nothing I was faced with sneaking sequences. I would say "introduced", but that word couldn't be more inappropriate. The sneaking comes out of nothing and not even a hint regarding the controls is shown. The game just automatically assumes you know how to sneak in videogames and when the enemies spot you. I am a bit of a gaming veteran, so I figured this out fairly fast, but even then it barely worked and I stopped having fun. The very first enemies you have to sneak past are heavily armored elite soldiers who throw grenades at you and kill you in two hits and don't tell me "You just suck at sneaking" because I played sneaking classes in Oblivion, Skyrim, Alpha Protocol and quite a few other games, I can sneak, but not in this game.

The game has a problem that I left unmentioned in my review on Kingdom Hearts, namely that the game switches between spoken dialogue and text-boxes. It. Drives. Me. INSANE. Have some damn consistency and either use text or use spoken dialogue, not both. I simply hate it when I talk to a character and I am treated on a few lines of dialogue before the game switches to a cut-scene where the characters speak.

Another small problem I have is with the name of the world, it's called Hyllis. While that is not really a problem, it's a fine name, it does mean that the inhabitants are called "Hyllians"... Sound familiar? The game is already very similar to a Zelda game, but this is just taking the piss.

I also didn't really like the way the inventory screen works. When you press start it show you a menu with your objectives, some items and other stuff, but not the actual inventory. To open the inventory you have to click on a specific slot which contains some weirdly named... thing and then it shows you the items that you are carrying. This first became a problem when I had to type in a code located on a ticket (God forbid that just having the ticket is enough), but I couldn't find the ticket anywhere and spend one and a half hour rigorously exhausting all the possibilities in an attempt to find out where it had went.

The Bottom Line
One of the easiest ways to farm some dislikes on a Mobygames review is to have a very negative opinion on a game that is critically acclaimed and generally considered to be an underrated gem, but frankly I don't give a damn because the truth deserves to be heard. While Beyond Good and Evil starts off pretty decent and allows you to enjoy a pretty simple fantasy adventure, it just poisons itself when it introduces sneaking mechanics to an already overloaded game.

If you are the kind of hipster gamer that will religiously defend anything as long as it's not mainstream then get this game and start sending me hate-mail. Everybody else can turn right and buy Wolfenstein 3D or something, everything on the XBLA or PSN is better than this.

PlayStation 2 · by Asinine (957) · 2012

Fun, but superficial and limited

The Good
Beyond Good and Evil is an attempt to merge several genres (platform action, puzzle-solving, melee fighting, driving, and sneaking), adding a Zelda-like propensity to collecting and unlocking.

Beyond Good and Evil is a smart game - it is good at creating illusions, good at holding hands in such a way that we don't feel offended. It knows when to change gears, and it has a great sense of tact and tempo. There is a lot of attention to the player here - as little frustration and as much fun as possible is obviously the goal. The game smiles at the player, it tries to entertain him as much as it can. All this is done with minimal pomp, and (at least in the beginning) in a fairly natural way. That's why the gameplay rarely gets boring - like a snake, it drops its skin and wears another; it is like an entertainer with several masks, a musician who plays different instruments and improvises on different tunes.

The most interesting aspect of the gameplay is cooperation with your teammates. Those are the all-around mechanic Pey'j, Jade's "uncle" and a representative of the species sus sapiens, and a super-cool military-trained agent Double H. Both can open heavy grates (Pey'j by using pliers, Double H by wearing a helmet and breaking them down with his head), press buttons that Jade can't access, and perform other useful actions. Both guys are also quite helpful and even indispensable in fights. Particularly dynamic are boss battles, which are a combination of simple melee fighting, gyrodisc throwing, Super Actions, and special strategies unique to each boss. Both your companions also have their own health meters, inventory, and AI in combat. You can issue commands to them by pressing the triangle button, and manage their inventory by giving them healing items.

The various locations of the game are accessed by vehicles: hovercraft and space ship (late in the game). You glide over water and dock in order to access the city or another location. At a certain point you receive a jump upgrade, which allows your hovercraft to jump over obstacles. Sometimes you must navigate your hovercraft on a road with gaps and avoid enemy fire at the same time. There are a few "hovercraft dungeon" areas where you interact with objects by shooting or pushing them. There is also hovercraft fighting in the game - at your disposal are rapid fire and a cannon that causes massive damage. Your space ship can obviously fly, but it is equipped the same way as the hovercraft, and also participates in battles. There are also a few minigames to spice things up.

It is hard to describe the setting of Beyond Good and Evil properly. It has some sci-fi elements, but they don't play an important role; the only city in the game is reminiscent of small, cozy European towns with narrow streets and brick houses. The bright, slightly cartoony visuals perfectly fit a certain fairy tale-like atmosphere of the game: its world is populated by humanoid animals, giving the game a sweet, endearing vibe equally remote from ultra-realism and Japanese gratuitous "cuteness".

The Bad
Beyond Good and Evilis beautiful, charming, and elegant; but it is not deep. Everything here is restricted to following the designers' admittedly well-crafted, but limiting scheme. Unfortunately, the game's very low difficulty level doesn't go well at all with its linearity. In essence, it's a typical example of a jack of all trades which is master of none.

If you look closely at the gameplay, you'll see that much of it consists of minigame-like challenges that trick you into mistaking them for full-fledged concepts. Every puzzle needs to be solved in a specific way rather than require you to think outside of the box. At first I thought that the game will eventually present more complex situations, but this didn't happen: after you familiarize yourself with your basic arsenal you'll have no trouble at all figuring out what to do in every situation. So as a puzzle game, Beyond Good and Evil is quite basic and unsatisfying.

This approach is evident in combat as well. The battles must be the game's most restricting, unremarkable, and unexciting feature. They are confined to small areas and are woefully scripted, leaving next to no room for any kind of creative tactics. You can win most fights by simply mashing down the attack button.

Beyond Good and Evil likes creating illusions. One of them is the illusion of non-linearity. When you get out to the surface for the first time, you see a large world that looks totally open-ended. You want to take your hovercraft and simply drive around, like in GTA. But very soon you discover that most of the areas are blocked, and you can go only where you are supposed to go. Later in the game, optional areas do appear, but it is still a far cry from a truly open-ended world, which this game would certainly greatly benefit from. Also, the game eventually forces you to collect so many pearls that you'll probably have to explore those areas no matter what. There is no comparison here with the freedom of movement and abundance of secrets and things to do offered by Zelda games.

The story is weak and treated with irritating negligence. What could have been a suspenseful tale full of moral ambiguity turned out to be a disappointing, simplistic affair. After the very first mission we find out that Alpha Section are the bad guys. From this moment on we work for the "good" fellows from Iris Network and sabotage Alpha's activities as much as possible. That's the whole story, and the blatantly "to be continued"-style ending doesn't compensate for its lack of quality in any way. The characters are also anything but deep: even though Jade starts strong, she doesn't develop at all during the course of the game and treats everything with a startling calm bordering on lack of emotions.

The Bottom Line
Beyond Good and Evil is a classic case of style over substance. Snapping pictures of sentient rhinoceroses and buying gadgets from a Chinese walrus is fun, but the actual core gameplay comes only in small portions, making you crave for a bigger, deeper, and more generous game.

PlayStation 2 · by Unicorn Lynx (181780) · 2016

[ View all 16 player reviews ]

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Beyond Good & Evil appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Jade

Jade's character design is actually based on her French voice actress Emma De Caunes.

Nietzsche

In an interview on LadyGamers.com, Tyrone Miller explains how the game relates to Nietzsche:

Many people assume that Beyond Good & Evil is a reference to the Friedrich Nietzsche book by the same name. Although you could probably make an argument – this game really has no connection to the German philosopher. As an action reporter, players need to investigate beyond the superficial facts of what is good and what is evil – which is dictated through government propaganda in the game. The player has to see what nobody else can see, what is hidden to the people of Hyllis. This theme is relevant to issues we face today – understanding the reasons behind the apparent facts.

Promotional websites

The publishers registered the websites for both the iris network (www.irisnetwork.net) and the Hyllian gov. (www.hylliannews.com) both featuring promotional material and assorted stuff.

Save games code

All the saved games in Beyond Good & Evil are marked with an "Internet Code". The purpose of this code is two-fold, first it enables you to go to the official website and check your ranking against all the other BG&E players in the world. Secondly, upon completion of the main game, you'll be able to use your saved game code on the official website and obtain instructions on how to go about obtaining missing MDisk #13 within the game.

Soundtrack

  1. In the Beginning
  2. Dancing With Domz
  3. Home Sweet Home
  4. Hyllian Suite
  5. Mammago's Garage
  6. Isle de Noir
  7. Mineshaft Madness
  8. Say Cheese, Fellas
  9. Akuda House Propaganda
  10. Ancient Chinese Secrets
  11. Don't Fear the Reaper
  12. Fear the Reaper
  13. Fun and Mini-Games
  14. Funky Bar 100
  15. When Domz Attack
  16. Slaughterhouse Scramble
  17. Sneaky Jade Suite
  18. Organic Beauty
  19. Violent Jade Suite
  20. Heart of Darkness
  21. Metal Gear Domz
  22. Something Completely Different
  23. Behind Enemy Lines
  24. Free Your Mind
  25. Thoughtful Reflections
  26. Enfants Disparus
  27. Above and Beyond
  28. Unacceptable Losses
  29. In Hot Pursuit
  30. Sins of the Father
  31. Redemption

In February 2004, Ubisoft released MP3s of Beyond Good & Evil soundtrack to NintendoInsider.com. These are still available for download, but as of April 2005, downloaders must register with the web site and go to the Members-Only Board to receive a frequently changing password.

Title

According to Michel Ancel, the game was originally to be named Between Good & Evil, but the marketing department did not like that name, so it was changed to Beyond Good & Evil.

The original title I gave the game was Between Good & Evil (see my first logo included) - which the marketing department didn’t like back then. For me, the meaning of this title is that you are always in the middle of an internal and external conflict, based on our conception of good and evil. In this game and in our world, propaganda thinks in our place; tells us these are our enemies and these are our friends. When you go beyond the appearances, you discover your own truth. That’s the theme of the game and marketing finally accepted this title, and just replaced the between by beyond, which fits better with the vast universe and story.

Awards

  • 4Players
    • 2003 – Best PC Action-Adventure Game of the Year
    • 2003 – Best Console Direction of the Year
    • 2003 – Best PC Music of the Year
    • 2003 – Best PC Direction of the Year
    • 2003 – Biggest PC Surprise of the Year
  • EGM
    • February 2006 (Issue #200) - #171 out of 200 of the "Greatest Games of Their Time"
  • GameSpy
    • 2003 – #3 Game of the Year
    • 2003 – #2 GameCube Game of the Year
  • PC Powerplay (Germany)
    • Issue 06/2005 - #8 Likeable Secondary Character (for Pey'j)

Information also contributed by Big John WV, Mark Ennis, Sciere, Terrence Bosky, WildKard, WindowsKiller and Zovni

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Kotario.

PlayStation 3 added by Lain Crowley. Xbox 360 added by Sciere. Xbox One added by MAT.

Additional contributors: Jeanne, Zack Green, Sciere, Ilya Atkin, Klaster_1, firespot, lasttoblame, Paulus18950, Cantillon, Patrick Bregger, FatherJack, 一旁冷笑.

Game added December 11, 2003. Last modified March 11, 2024.