The gets the major criticisms of the system (and really all major morality systems in games these days) so now we can move on to what this particular system represents. Joe Tortuga has said that inFamous equates good with altruism and evil selfishness. This is a great starting point, but I think there is a little more to it than that. Cole has the same material motivation regardless of what he does, to get him and his friends out of the city. The moral choice system is all about how you go about it and why you do it. It’s a game looking to the morality of methods rather than what you are doing. Or it is during the story moments at least. The ludic system outside of mission rewards conflicts with this assessment, because once you’ve chosen a path you have to stick with it if you are going to get all the upgrades and you’re going to need them for the later enemies.

If I can be so bold as to asses the philosophical implications of what you are doing in this super powered conflict, the choices and role you set for yourself is one between Heinleinian co-operation and protection versus Randian domination and selfishness. The good morality is where Cole seeks a path of noble co-existence and in the face of a threat protection of the weaker race. The evil spectrum, however, seeks a path of conflict and eventual subjugation by purporting your genetic superiority over the heads of the masses. Does Cole choose to follow an ideal of co-operation to foster better results through more difficult and trying means or follow the greater good through methods of conflict believing he knows best because he is superior? Or to put it in terms more of my intended audience can understand; it is the Professor Xavier school of thought verses the Magneto one.

Or at least that is the conflict as the designers try to portray. Like I said in my previous posts, the earlier sections of the game are clearer and follow a vision while the later ones tend to get muddled and loose sight of the implied objective to the mechanic. The first two choices are prime examples of this. Do you choose share the food equally to those that need it or do you keep it for yourself because you can? Do you fight the riot cops mano-a-mano because you have the strength to do so or do you sick them on the crowd and make the fight much easier and bloodier? There is no one to force you one-way or the other. To quote Ayn Rand, “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me” seems very apt to the evil half of this dichotomy. Had they stuck to Heinlein/Rand conflict the morality meter might have made sense; it would have given us concrete attributes that we can map the morality meter to. This is a well-worn conflict, (X-Men, Harry Potter, Dragon Ball Z, Marvel’s Civil War, He-man and the Masters of the Universe) though this is the first time I’ve seen it represented within an individual instead of two opposing individuals/groups.

As it stands in the later sections of the game a host of issues come up where the morality meter loses focus of what it was representing. Why would the police help you in terms of the prison riot, after you’ve taken missions to fight and kill them? Why would people call to you for help with their surveillance problem if you’ve been indiscriminately murdering people left and right? Why would a photography student want to take pictures of you doing stunts knowing you could electrocute him just as easily? Why would you capture Alden and not kill him and remove the threat period? Why would you blow up a gas tank to weaken an enemy and harm civilians when you have already fought and beaten several of this type already? And why in the hell would people attack you, ineffectively I might add, when you could zap them into nothing?

These problems can be solved had Sucker Punch really worked out what they wanted from the morality system. At times it’s about a conflict of how you do things and at others a straight up good/evil morality play, ignoring the relativism of such a comparison. Such a good and evil dichotomy has to recognize they are two sides of the same coin differing only by margins. The margin they chose in this case is method. But they ignore that and in same cases offer two completely unrelated options. The only way for the story to reach its conclusion as scripted would be to focus on method, which is a far more interesting concept than what we ended up with. In that case when people talk to you while you are choosing the infamous path, they would focus on ends, knowing appealing to your means would be pointless. It would also bring the title into alignment with the meaning. Famous vs. infamous isn’t a question of what you do, but how people perceive you. It’s one of the reasons I find the choice about the poster to be actually be meaningful rather than extraneous. Either way you are technically famous in that a lot of people know who you are. For example you can be famous for your card playing, meaning you’re really skilled, or you could be infamous for your card playing, meaning you are a known or suspected cheater. The end result is the same; it is the method and meaning of what you do that matter.

This conflict is especially interesting in light of the game’s ultimate mission. It was to make Cole capable of making the difficult choices; able to do what is needed to be done. Exploring the morality of how he does it is made even more important, because Kessler doesn’t care how you do it, just that you do. This is fine and makes him a better than average villain (for a video game). While the game’s entire premise is worked up on how you do it rather than what you end up doing. It gives you no options in that regard and recognizes the limitations of the medium, but instead of embracing that and working with it to proved an interesting how assessment, it uses it as a crutch for some subpar morality meandering.

While the story of inFamous is told through the standard methods of cutscenes, found messages and calls from allies and mission handlers, it adds aftermath commentary. In the form of propaganda the game provides story related and world building feedback on your actions. The messages only relate to the main story missions so the words don’t change, but the effect they have on you as the player as you relate to your in game character is different.

The first of the two main propaganda machines are the USTV acting as the government mouthpiece with its all too peppy and creepy anchorwoman assuring the public that everything is all right. It’s an obvious fact that we as a city are not the intended audience for these news reports, because anyone with working eyes can see they are lies. They display everything as sunny and keep to the script. All the credit of any good Cole has managed to accomplish is given to military efforts. The picture of the city is painted rosy, saying that things have almost returned to normal within the quarantine. It subtly leads the player to realize that no one will ever leave Empire City to make no one can contradict the government. It is truth control.

The other voice is the Voice of Survival, who starts as a teacher and motivator on how the people can survive their new circumstances and in some cases acting as a public service announcement as in the case of the children needing coats and blankets. He later turns into a propaganda machine himself, creating panic and subverting any good being done in the city by deliberately misappropriating credit and painting Cole out as the enemy regardless of Karma level. The turning point begins when Cole gets out of bed and steps into the public, right after the food drop. Through most of the game we think of him as popularity hog, noting that fear and panic causes more people to listen to him. But he is not a propaganda machine for himself, but was working for the First Sons the whole time. Here good intentions gone awry.

The dichotomy between them is not really right wing vs. left wing that so much of our modern news networks have become about. Truth control and keeping to the message is not unique to the right as American political news channels would have you believe; it has been used extensively by the left in communist dictatorships. Nor is the anti-government, rabble rousing anarchy movement so entrenched in the left as European history would have you believe; if Texan governor calling for succession and the many militia cells around the country are any indication. Instead the dichotomy on display is one of power. USTV instills power into the hands of the establishment as a faceless entity (again not a construct of communism and the left). The Voice of Survival instills the power into total opposition of the others’ messages regardless of idealistic consistency. (I know I’m going to get flack for this) Think of it is as Lawful Evil vs. Chaotic Evil. The dichotomy is not in purpose or method, but in who benefits.

USTV is far more obvious in both its purpose and backer (I wonder if it is because of their more structured nature and obvious lies to anyone in the quarantine). The Voice of Survival not so much. Only at the end when we see him as a pawn in the hands of Kessler and the First Sons does his motives make any sense. He isn’t anything, but anti-Cole and anti-government. Grievances and ideals do not matter so much as personal motives for the propaganda. His lies are not as obvious, because anything happening on one island has no way of informing others on the other island or even other parts of the same island. The Voice of Survival props himself up as the news hound of Empire City against the obvious lies of USTV. He becomes more credible regardless of his lawlessness.

Of course that is not to say Cole does not participate in his own version of propaganda. He has no TV stations or broadcast equipment (although I don’t know why not with what else his electricity powers can do). He has the advantage of being on the ground. His actions speak far louder than either of the propaganda machines. If you stop out of your way to save a fallen person by electro-shocking them back to life, you have changed that person’s mind about you. If you suck out their life force, then those around will you for what you are. The selfish and violent verses the altruistic and precise and which one you let the citizens of the city see. Additionally, one of the side missions is for you to choose which poster a design student will plaster all over the city. Neither has a message in anything but what the art conveys. ‘Do you want to be seen as a savior or as a dominator? the game asks? These posters will be with you until the end of the game and will subtly alter the perception of you. They are your propaganda as you try and disprove the TV talking heads or confirming what they’re saying.

Like the milieu of inFamous, propaganda is something else that gets shuffled to the sidelines. In the opening chapters it is a constant thorn in your side and a major plot point. It is what starts the riots. Later It becomes nothing but an in game commentary of how different parts of the world take the unfolding events, omitting your actions in them, so Sucker Punch didn’t have to record two different videos, but it has none of the impact or worthiness it did in the beginning. Once my posters were plastered on every wall of the warrens I never felt threatened or othered by the city regardless of what these two sides said about me. Again a great chance for commentary or uniqueness lost on the developers.

Also one last note to developers: If you have audio tracks that are unrepeatable and interesting, DON’T PLAY TWO OF THEM AT THE SAME GODDAMN TIME.

Then the next cinematic paints a picture of a pure John Locke style society arising from the isolation and the destructive factions making a grab for power. Life becomes cheep, brutish and short. The first two missions further emphasize this by placing you in a context where you are fighting for survival. Both the mad dash to the food drop and then the desperate attempt to escape the island show the effects the breakdown of society have had. These two missions give the impression of desperation and need. It was these moments that sucked me into the world of inFamous. I could put aside the floaty controls and the imprecise fighting mechanics. Despite what happens after those two missions in regards to milieu I still felt a connection to whatever dim representation of the setting remained. The game from the end of the second mission onward does all it can to undermine its own setting.

There are too many structural inconsistencies that I constantly see. Only when enemies show up and start shooting does panic break out. There isn’t even a subdued panic from people of having their world turned upside down. The citizens are not used to this world, why would they act calm and collected in the face of starvation, plague and death. They wander about blissfully down the sidewalk as if nothing is wrong and their tax returns are already in the mail. Even when enemies do show up the citizens don’t always behave accordingly. They will run in a panic to get away, towards the firing gangs. They will antagonize them by throwing rocks at the machine gun and shotgun toting bad guys. I was promised a closed off, fish out of water refugee like city and I get a New York surrogate with a convenient reason I can take the Holland Tunnel out of there.

The impression I was given was that we were in a metropolis turned third world outpost due to the tragedy and blockade. Apart from citizen stupidity let me list a few things that do not ring true with the milieu established. Off the top of my head:

-cars are still running with plenty of gas and people with a desire or apparent need to use them
-generators can restart themselves and are out in the open instead of heavily defended and concealed
-police being any force of law and order rather than another faction vying for control or else not having broken down completely without any governmental support
-the trains being of any use or people having anywhere to go using them (the mission where they are used as a prison for hostages actually makes sense)
-being able to restart an entire city’s power regardless of what Cole is capable of, because there is no such thing as a self-sustaining generator
-not speaking about AI specifically, but where are people out on the streets at all if there are roving gangs of death squads about

Given the intro, none of these make any sense. Cole outright told us all law and order was shot, gangs had risen up and installed anarchy. People were being killed and raped left and right. No one was allowed in or out of the city, enforced by a military blockade. Why aren’t the police effectively another gang, but instead going about business as usually? Where is all the gasoline coming from, because it doesn’t seem to have run out after two weeks? This is for both the cars and portable generators. Plus who would waste it on a car in the first place? Speaking of which, where was the city’s power grid getting its fuel. If there is so much crime, killings, rapes and perpetual darkness, then why are people out and about? Shouldn’t they be holed up in their houses most of the time? Why are people excited about the trains running when they can’t go anywhere?

I can excuse the generators since their ludic and narrative purposes are too intrinsic, but at least give us perpetual rolling blackouts. I felt unease and minor terror when I wandered into areas where they didn’t have electricity yet, because it was dangerous for Cole. Once the power was up and running there was no threat anymore to the avatar or to any of the story elements. You can only feel society’s fear and unease if at points you feel it yourself because of how it affects your avatar in the game world. As long as there was a light switch around, I never felt threatened. The few moments where the game seems to know what it should be doing with its milieu are undoubtedly the best of the game. As I said before the opening is pitch perfect, additionally the introduction of each new island presents a sense of terror of the unknown and of unrelenting chaos. When you stepped out of the tunnel or made it over the bridge you get that sense of dread. The lights you worked so hard to restore are gone; you are at ground level and are being shot at before you can even get your bearings. For a fleeting instant you ask yourself, what have these people been going through while I was fixing the other island? A third point was a mission where you protect the engineers who are fixing the bridge between the first and second island. You actually feel like you are making a difference and getting things back to normal. Everything else seems superficial compared to this mission because squads of the Reapers and Dustmen trying to stop you for it would affect their territorial control. Finally the side mission called Gang War simply for unleashing a level of chaos on the screen that you don’t see anywhere else in the game. It was so volatile I could not see what I was shooting and may have only done half the work as the two gangs proceeded to kill each other. These instances reinforced the degradation of society promised by the game.

Empire city is presented as such an important place and in the need of a superhero. The city was hurting and it was up to us to try and put it right. That was the most interesting part of the game: the restoration of society from chaos. The story, villains, and conspiracy were passable, being primed from a comic book aesthetic. I have no problem with the comic book aesthetic, but the intrinsic promise- the set of rules the beginning of a creative work puts down that are the core of the experience that creative work intends to deliver- is betrayed and not lived up to by taking it’s cue from the wrong comic book. It tries to copy the structure of Spiderman when it should have looked to the world building of Brain Wood’s DMZ.

At the time I was playing infamous I was coincidentally reading Brain Wood’s DMZ, the comic series where new American civil war has turned Manhattan into a DMZ (Demilitarized Zone). No one is allowed out and only specific people let in, like the main character Matty Roth as an embedded journalist. Gangs have carved out territory for themselves, these new nations measured in blocks. Electricity is only accessible for an hour a day and only from certain buildings. The island is stratified with no one daring to go past   st street. The two setups are too similar for no one to have not noticed. It wouldn’t have been hard to slightly adjust certain things for the presence of super humans. In fact doing so merely exacerbates the conflict already there. It becomes a test of wills only with the strength to back it up contained not within numbers, but individuals.

The similarities continue into the details. The two news organizations in DMZ and inFamous are practically identical, both have become docile mouthpieces of the government and not based off of stupidity and laziness like in real life, but stooges that understand where the power is. Then there is the opposing mouthpiece that pretty much exists to counter the “legitimate” news program. Both Matty’s girlfriend from DMZ and Cole’s from inFamous are medical professionals in training. In DMZ this is used to give Matty and the reader a glimpse into the unsanitary conditions and hardships of the people. InFamous uses it to suggest and imply why DMZ shows and represents. Power struggles are a common theme of the two works, both on the inside and influences from the outside. Rooftop living arrangements become necessary, because street level is no longer safe. Though the rooftops aren’t used as much by inFamous’ citizens. But then I’ve already told you they have as much survival instinct as a suicidal tightrope walker.

I am not saying inFamous should have been DMZ. That is stepping beyond my realm as a critic, but I am going to point out the faults of one work, especially in light of someone else doing it better in another. It’s even more a missed opportunity since inFamous apes the comic book aesthetic and DMZ is, wow, a comic book. InFamous takes too many of its conventions from the wrong sources. It sets up the bad guys and the controllers of chaos and anything bad can be traced to them. Everyone else is a non-entity with no sense of survival instinct or power. Somehow there are no “little” bad guys trying to scrape their tiny slice of the pie when the main psychic villains fall.

InFamous sees itself as a superhero story in a metropolis turned Wild West town, sort of. When really it’s a story of a DMZ (both comic and real world) setting where super powered humans have arisen. They looked to Spiderman, X-Men and the rest of Marvel’s cannon when they should have looked to Brain Wood’s work, Escape from New York and hell the real-life New York blackout of ‘77.

The game was a missed opportunity and given the game’s ending I get the feeling the sequel will have a different milieu, even if it takes place in Empire City. It seems like the designers didn’t quite get what made me want to keep playing the game. It wasn’t the side missions, or the characters, good lord no. It was the city itself and the what-if the game presented about society, which doesn’t seem too much like a what-if anymore.

Roger Travis, I welcome you to and kind of expect you to point out everything wrong in the following post.

Brutal Legend’s story is an epic, not just epic. An epic represented by the hero’s journey. We progress through the game following this well-worn path in a new and creative environment based on the culture of heavy metal. So why does the game end 2/3 of the way through?

The hero’s journey is divided into three steps. First is the Departure, where the hero breaks away from the mundane world of his previous existence and begins his journey. Then comes the Initiation, where the hero faces trials and contends with obstacles until he succeeds in his quest. Finally there is the Return, where the hero must come back to the mundane world he left, sometimes a struggle unto itself.

Step one is the Departure, the section of the hero’s story where he must break away from his normal and often humble life the thrust forward into the events of greater things. In Brutal Legend we have Eddie Riggs taken from the modern world and thrust into the age of metal. Unlike the average epic hero he does not shy away from journey initially. In fact he embraces it. He agrees to help Lars and become the rebellion’s roadie. Supernatural Aid comes in the form of Ozzy Osborne as the Guardian of Metal, providing upgrades and collectibles. Eddie’s initiation as the monomyth comes with his first mission. You could argue that it is his escape from the Temple of Ormagoden, but there is no agency on the part of the character. That is a struggle of survival not an answering of the call. That portion of the game is still part of the actual call. The Crossing of the First Threshold is the freeing of the Headbangers. Here Eddie has made the choice to fight and in so doing has begun upon the path. Brutal Legend makes an interesting choice by challenging the structure slightly, but keeping within general story telling conventions by having the Crossing the Threshold part mirror the Trials. The First Threshold is the saving of three groups so that they can begin the rebellion. Eddie not only frees the Headbangers, but also arms the Razor Girls by capturing the wild boars and enlists the assistance of the Kill Master by heading into the heart of the spider’s lair.

Once these beginner trials have been completed we stand at the first test of our worth. Eddie takes command for the first battle on the field of Bladehenge. They continue forward and take the battle to the front door of Lionwhyte’s pleasure palace. But it is not until Lionwhyte’s defeat that we enter the Belly of the Whale: the final piece of the Departure of the hero’s journey where the hero undergoes a metamorphosis of the self and world. Eddie is a roadie, always working from the shadows in an effort to make someone else look good. Now he has to step up to the plate. Lionwhyte is dead, but now so is Lars at Doviculus’ hand, the true villain of the story. The first act has come to an end.

The second step is Initiation. Now that Eddie is apart of this new world or has become a new person he must prove his worth of being the hero by tackling the obstacles thrown in his way. The Road of Trials has already been replicated at an earlier point as a means of departing the world of old. Now there is a new set of three challenges. The previous troops were in service of another, but now Eddie must gather the final troops in his own name. The Fire Barons as reward for the ambush at Death’s Clutch, the taming of the Metal Beasts rewards with the Zaulia and the battle at the mines provides the inspiration for the Rock Crusher. In this section of the story we see Eddie and his road crew begin to mirror Odysseus and his. They are now nomads without a home, continuing on their journey to one-day return victorious. Both monomyth figures face trials that test their metal (excuse the pun) in search of their love so far away. This is Eddie’s Goddess, Ophelia, the representation of his unconditional love. The battle in the Death’s Clutch is the beginning of the second act of the story and the revelation of Ophelia as the next villain: the Temptress, the very thing threatening to pull him from the righteous path of his journey. Atonement of the Father does not have to be about the figure’s father, but whatever holds the sway in the hero’s life and defeat it. In Brutal Legend there are two. Ophelia in her Drowned Doom form is the first, as the corrupted creature now uses his love against him. Eddie must overcome his feelings to transcend the divided purpose Ophelia has instilled in him. The other is the shadow of his father, Riggnarok, whom he learns has a connection to this age and a terrible secret to go with it. He is an obstacle deeply connected with the conflict, further cementing Eddie’s place as the hero, but also possibly as its destroyer. Eddie’s father and the secret is something he must defeat but he can do so not by physical confrontation. Only by coming to terms with it can he surpass the father, a recurring theme in epic tradition as Achilles in the Iliad comes to terms with his father, Zeus and Pursues coming to terms with what his father cannot, the Minotaur.

Apotheosis is the act of defying. Here Eddie must contend with his love for Ophelia and what she has become. Apotheosis is the contention of this contradiction within himself and he must defy one or the other to continue on. He chooses the rebellion continuing on the myth of his father Riggnarok and the hope that he can bring Ophelia back to the light. He kills his notion of love for her and defeats her in the mines and then follows her to the Sea of Black Tears. This is the final part of Initiation: The Ultimate Boon. It is the achievement of the ultimate goal of the journey. What the hero has been working towards the whole time. It is what the struggle has been all about and he must achieve it. In many other myths the boon is a transcendental object that grants the hero powers needed to complete his quest at home: the Holy Grail, the Golden Fleece, etc. Here Eddie’s boon is not an object, but people: the soldiers of his rebellion. The entire journey has been about gathering an army to fight off the Tainted Coil and set the world of men free. With the completion of this battle Eddie has done just that, he gets the final unit, the Rock Crusher. It is not a single unit that has been the goal, but all of them. However to achieve the Ultimate Boon the hero must face the ultimate danger, his own mortality. The journey takes the hero to hell and thus can he achieve the transition from being a divided person into a single spirit. Odysseus’ trip to the River Styx in The Odyssey is replicated in Brutal Legend’s version of hell, the Sea of Black Tears, the most dangerous place for men in the age of metal. For it tempts the race of man with power at the cost of their souls. Ophelia’s defeat at the Sea of Black Tears is emblematic of Odysseus’ journey to Hades. Eddie transcends himself and has centered his spirit and purpose on the final challenge, the right to return and ousts the usurpers as Odysseus’ did to the suitors back in Ithaca.

Now here’s my problem with Brutal Legend: Where the hell is the third and final step? We have Departure and Initiation, but where is Return? The hero must return from his trails and tribulations a proven man and come home. Odysseus must return to Ithaca and be reunited with his wife. Jason must return with the Golden Fleece to Iolcus and be placed upon the throne. Luke Skywalker must face Darth Vader one final time and become a Jedi. So where the hell is Eddie Riggs returning after the tour to defeat the being he has unwittingly betrayed his cause to. This is more than just the physical travel or distance. The hero’s journey is about the emotional and spiritual journey of the man mirrored in his actions. Eddie has completed all the tests, but the game rushes the end and we do not get to see the fruits of his labor. Generally there may be a Refusal of Return, but that is not necessary for Eddie, there was no refusal to begin the journey there is likewise no need to refuse returning. The journey was not about going home to the modern era, but from the shadows to the spotlight to become a hero and then a return to the shadows away from the spotlight. The Magic Flight where the hero escapes with the boon is the major letdown when it comes to the gameplay. This is the step rushed through with the final battle occurring in the same location as the previous one. The confrontation is so quick, boiled into one fight sequence that you fight by yourself that it feels cheep. This is the step where you should have taken the boon, the army that you had been gathering, home. The final struggle against the Tainted Coil would have been the fight to return, not just home to Bladehenge, but to the previous state of existence, to return as the man behind the scenes. Rescue from Without would have used all the units gathered to fight back the hoard on the battlefield. We do get The Crossing of the Return Threshold in a cutscene. The game does, however, allow the final two parts of the third step to be integrated. Master of Two World and Freedom to Live where Eddie lives without fear of death and it instead becomes the freedom to live. The story is over, but the open world is now at your command to finish both in terms of the myth and sandbox.

Brutal Legend sets up the hero’s journey superbly and then quits before we can get going in the final act. There is no final act. We have a two-act structure on our hands. The defeat of Lionwhyte and escape to the mountaintop is the end of the first act, the defeat of the Drowning Doom and Ophelia is the end of the second act, and the return to Bladehenge and defeat Doviculus should have been the third act. Not only in story terms, but also in the terms of the hero’s journey. Tim Schafer for whatever reason just gave up on the story too soon. It would have been the return of Eddie Riggs spiritually as well as physically, his place in the world restored as the final soliloquy states, he works behind the scenes to make someone else look good.

It took a while, but I’ve played another game worthy of the Killer 7 Argument. I just finished playing through Braid for the second time after my first complete save was lost to a corrupt hard drive. The second playthrough was a huge help in getting my head around what to make of the game and figure out what I specifically thought of it.

Braid is the indie puzzle platformer by one Auteur Jonathan Blow. Regardless of what some other critics may say, he is the author of the piece and that is not a bad thing. He is not only the game designer, but did everything else save the beautiful art which was passed into the very capable hands of David Hellman.

(If you want to get nitpicky about the term Auteur, yes it is technically wrong to label him that given he’s only made one game.)

I bring up the Auteur factor, not just because of the intense control that some feel from the game designer’s hand in the text and puzzles, but also because of the intrinsic way that the game is woven and layered.

While thinking upon the game I could not help, but call it literary. It is game that works on any level you wish to examine it. On the surface it is a bunch of mind-bending puzzles that sometimes have deceptively simple solutions in a colorfully cartoon world. And if that is as far as you want to look, the game will not penalize you for it. The game works on that level. If you delve deeper into the different facets of the game you have a picture of a man trying to figure out what happened to the princess and how to rescue her in true Mario fashion. Again if you delve deeper you come into the problem of Tim being an unreliable narrator and that the puzzle worlds are not real at all. And you can continue delving deeper and deeper into the symbolism and intricate interconnectedness of the different elements to the themes and message of the game.

At no point does the game punish you for stopping your analysis. It is a work that is meaningful and can be recognized as such even without a degree in literature, philosophy or game design. Braid also doesn’t rely on a single or few elements to convey all it’s meaning, but rather uses all of them. I hesitate to bring up the comparison and please call me out on it if you feel the comparison or connotation of it goes too far, I wont fight you on it, but in this fashion Braid reminds me of Citizen Kane. Like Citizen Kane all the elements of the work come together to present a singular vision: the art, the music, the mechanics, the story, the text, the symbols, the level design and the puzzles. I cannot say I have seen this unified nature so tightly packed together in any other game.

Braid does have marks against it. The puzzles as mentioned before are mind-bending and you can spend forever trying to get your head around what you were suppose to do before you give up and check gamefaqs. The text is baffling at first when put in conjunction to the rest of the game and the epilogue throws everything through a loop. Braid invites inspection and analysis and it almost seems part of the game to do so. It is complex and can seem incomprehensible at first; hell most of us critics are still trying to figure it out.

While all of those can be counted as flaws, they can also be counted as assets to the game. They are intricate parts to the braid of meaning, twisting and wrapping each element around each other. It’s one of the few games that tie its mechanics directly to the themes of its story and vice versa.

Is Braid going to tick you off? Will it make you throw your hands up in frustration? Is the designer Jonathan Blow a big enough prick to warrant not playing the game? I honestly have no idea. But if you have the money and the time give the game a shot, it’s on Xbox Live, Steam for PC and now the PSN. I say give it at least a try and if all else fails, try a walkthrough.

It is a strategy game, which means you are buying things. Buildings to make monsters to bring into battle, recruiting the monsters, building other miscellaneous structures, or heroes to lead your army. In other words, you will be spending a lot of gold (and crystal, mercury, sulfur, gems, ore, wood). You do earn resources, 1000 gold a day from each castle, and there are mines and other resources gathering facilities. If you need more of a specific resource, you can build a market in your castle or find one in the over world. If you have multiple markets and visit one in the over world you can drop trade prices with each market. It is a basic economic model without complexity. Unlike some strategy games now, there is no credit system in the economy.

I know a lot of strategy games of old and now still employ this, but HOMM2 was the game I was playing when these thoughts came to me. In these games you cannot spend more than you have. If you do not have the resources then the purchase is simply unavailable. It sounds so basic why would I have to say it? Well its because apparently no one knows this nugget of common sense if the credit crisis and banking failures are any indication. When said out loud this piece of advice makes perfect sense, but we never put into practice. We are never taught to do so.

Kids nowadays whenever they get money, spend it. (Don’t hound me if you are the exception, I’m one too.) They don’t save for a rainy day or in this case, a nation credit failure. So when they grow up they do not have the tendencies to do so as adults. The United States government is not saving either. Any surplus, of which we haven’t had for 9 years, went straight out of any account it’s in into paying off the debt, as it should. I’m not going to get into specifics, but sufficed to say this economic model is not sustainable. This is a problem, especially when not having money is no longer a barrier to buying things.

In Heroes of Might and Magic II there is, it’s a red circle with a line through it over a symbol of gold. If you can’t afford it, you can’t buy it. Even beyond that is the concept, if you want to win, sometimes you go turns without buying anything, saving up for a bigger, more expensive and more strategically relevant structure that you can afford next turn, or two turns from now or hell a whole week.

If you spend all the money you have whenever you want you will find yourself at a great disadvantage. After a while you will find yourself incapable of doing anything at all and lagging behind your opponents.

My point from all this, is why can’t games teach us this. Yes there are learning simulation games that are boring where that is their entire purpose. But even with games like HOMM2, it can teach, by application. Not everyone will learn, but a system like that can teach a person the idea that if they don’t have money than they should spend it. Or even better, given the advent of easy credit, that if they keep spending they will be in dire straights without any savings or resources.

The connection of such simple ideas, that have no pretension about them, and real life is not new. It is the purpose of art (lower case a) to mirror or reveal the real world in some way. Despite Heroes of Might and Magic II, being on another world with fantasy monsters and magic, it still can connect to our everyday lives in a meaningful way. The way we spend our money. I know it would never come about, but if everyone or even just most of us followed the two simple economic ideas in HOMM2, then we wouldn’t be where we are today.

Video games can teach us something by the act of participation. They don’t teach us how to aim and fire guns, how to launch a guerrilla campaign, or how set up a drug dealing syndicate. What they teach us are ideas, concepts, like any other medium.

What did Heroes of Might and Magic II teach me? The basis of smart money management.

The campaign starts off with a cutscene explaining the premise of The Succession War the game is subtitled for. The old king that had united the continent under his rule has died and left two heirs: Roland the good guy and Archibald the not so good guy. Normally the royal seer would choose, but several ‘accidents’ happened and Archibald accuses Roland of killing and conspiring to take the crown. Roland runs off, fearing for his life and Archibald ‘influences’ the new seer and gets crowned king. Roland doesn’t like that and the two end up going to war. You are then given the choice of which lord to serve, nothing too complicated. The rest of the campaign is a series of missions set up by intermediate cutscenes that give an over arching flow to the campaign.

The game came out back in 1996, long before the industries present fixation on moral choice. Heroes of Might and Magic II starts off with a choice. The implications between the two men are rather clear in deed and imagery. One man offers a clean conscience and a place in the kingdom and the other monetary reward and a place in the kingdom. This is the truest sense of a moral choice, because yes there is an offer of reward, but it doesn’t happen within the mechanics of the game. The choice has no connection to ludic elements whatsoever. The only real difference between the two campaigns is which of the six castle types and therefore which troops you have access to. Each side gets three, an early martial based castle, a midlevel castle and hard hitting late game castle. The choice is between which man you are going to work for and given they offer the same thing it really is about which man are you going to help rule the kingdom.

Roland’s campaign has you starting out in the far corner of the continent with limited money to fight with so you have to gather allies by subduing the local lords, saving the Dwarven kingdom, and gathering resource rich areas before moving on to engage Archibald’s forces. A few extra missions to gather the additional forces and magic for the final assault against the capital where you’ve forced Archibald to hole up in.

Archibald’s campaign is directly opposite in tone, but mirrors the strategy. He forces any reluctant lords to accept his rule and crushes those that will not submit like the Dwarven kingdom. He then engages Roland’s forces and puts down any opposition he faces. A few extra mission as he gathers up additional forces and items before the final assault on Roland’s forces at his summer palace in the remote regions of the continent.

The campaigns mirror each other. The gameplay within the missions of gather gold and resources, build and recruit monsters is the same in both campaigns, so where is the moral choice? What exactly makes working for Roland different from working for Archibald once you’ve started? In this I think Heroes of Might and Magic does it better than Bioshock, inFamous, or KotOR.

The moral choice is in the context. For those who bother to pay attention and see the context the campaigns have set up you will see what your use of the game’s mechanics actually mean within the game world. Nothing is different mechanically, but the means is very different between the two campaigns. In fact, some of the missions themselves mirror each other. In Roland’s campaign you are give some forces to protect a number of Dwarven villages under siege that cannot be upgraded scattered across the map, while in Archibald’s campaign you are given a castle and more resources to go and conquer the Dwarven kingdom.

In Roland’s missions you never feel uneasy about the goal you are given, because the context never make you question what you are doing. You are courting allies, not subduing them. You are gathering resources, not taking them. And most importantly, you are defeating enemies, not destroying them.

In Archibald’s campaign you are working for the bad guy. Sometimes it’s cheesy, but it is never hidden right down to the maniacal laughing and the chained up Dragon king next to his throne. The mission that stands out most to me is the one where you have to put down a peasant revolt and are told to make an example of them. There are groups of peasant of wandering monsters armies that number in the thousands. They are the weakest creature in the game, but are powerful in such numbers. The only real strategy to defeating them is to build up some archers and keep your distance as they try to cross the field and cut them down. Then your hero’s necromancy ability comes into play after the battle by turning a third of those you killed into skeleton soldiers. Halfway through the mission I felt sick, realizing what I was doing in the context of the world. I was slaughtering thousands and then desecrating their corpses by having them fight their comrades who were fighting a totalitarian king. Yet there was nothing really different in my actions from when I played Roland’s campaign.

The title to the post refers to the Aesop fable “The Farmer and the Stork.” In it a farmer want to stop the cranes from destroying his crops and so sets up a number of nets to catch them. When he goes to check the traps he find along with the cranes, a noble stork. The stork asks to be released for he is not a crane, nor there to harm his crops. The farmer responds that the stork is as bad as the crane for being with them. The moral of the story is “choose your friends wisely.”

The story highlights another interesting point in that you are not playing as either Roland or Archibald, but a general who chooses to follow either one or the other. In this manner you are not good or evil, but are only a tactician ordering troops and working on strategy. There are only two moral choices in the whole game. The one at the beginning and one about halfway through before the fifth mission, aptly named ‘Turning Point’ for both the point in the war and your own choice. In both campaigns after you are given your orders from the lord you are following you are given the opportunity to change sides. Roland will appeal to your sense of decency and Archibald will appeal to your greed and sense of self-preservation. Should you change sides you are sent a message from your former commander, one of rage and threats by Archibald or one of profound disappointment from Roland.

Beyond those two decisions the only other choices you make are tactical. You are just doing your job. Like the stork caught by the farmer with the cranes you are judged by the company you keep. You are good or evil not by what you do, but by your association with Roland or Archibald.

There may not be more of a message about morality in Heroes II, but the game sets up a structure for examining ones own actions. Looking at your actions in the context given is what morality is about and trying to emphasize that in game is a better way to seek a message about morality than an arbitrary dichotomy within the game.

Throughout Beyond Good and Evil we are treated the cycling propaganda messages, news reports for either the Alpha Sections or the Iris Network. Each group purports the others to be the villains not working for the interest of the people of Hillys. Being that it must be one or the other the goal of the game is to search for the truth. Early on you are approached by the Iris Network to investigate the Alpha Sections and the imagery from their propaganda is much more denoting of villains. While there are two conflicting groups the game is directing you towards a single answer and the revelation of what it is.

The main goal and objectives of the game are centered on investigating and taking photographic evidence to reveal the truth. So while the question of ‘what is the truth’ and ‘what is going on’ are prevalent it is obvious to the player. The saw tooth face of the Alpha Sections commander and the incessant domineering control they seem to have over the planet leads the player to see them as an opposing force to a decent life for Jade and her family. In a meta sense we have the idea of the player conditioned to play as the lone hero. Given the circumstances of the story this role takes the form of an investigative photojournalist.

Though the argument can be made for that this one sided view could be Ancel’s commentary on the nature of viewpoint and subjective truth as it pertains to world view, but I feel that this is not corroborated by several facts of the game. You take control of Jade for the entire game and her entourage are solely made up of members of the Iris Network, including her uncle Pey’j. You could say this naturally colors her view point sociologically, or the fact that she is an entity that the Domz are after and that obviously opposes them that that could color her perception of the relative positions of right and wrong. I find that inconclusive and a little beyond the scope of what the game is presenting.

Beyond Good and Evil takes a simple art style and direction meant to enhance certain tonal qualities of the game. The areas result from a basic color pallet and the characters are set in certain representational color schemes meant to denote symbolic representation and association. Much like the color schemes of superheroes, to simplify the perception and make them instantly recognizable. From this point of view Jade has more in common with the Domz than she does the other members of the Iris Network of Pey’j. She is represented by green, yellow and white like the Domz, while many of the Iris Network have the colors yellow, blue and brown the same as Pey’j. Given the later revelation that she has a deep connection with the Domz, which isn’t completely explained, but seems to be symbiotic in nature, would denote any natural viewpoint from her to be naturally attributed subjectively to the Domz. Instead she works to uncover their plot and reveal the truth the Hillys population.

Furthermore, speaking of character viewpoint it makes sense to examine player viewpoint, which is decidedly in third person. The only time we actually look through Jade’s eyes is in fact when she is looking through the objective lens of her camera. At all other times we view the world from a rotating third person angle. Jade’s camera is the key to objectivity in Beyond Good and Evil. It can capture the moment as it was, not as we think it was. It is the item that captures the evidence and is your primary tool throughout the game. Being a tool of objectivity makes objectivity a primary goal of the plot.

A major theme of the game is objective truth, not subjective truth. The title Beyond Good and Evil when explored means it is representative of something not to be considered within the realm of the two terms themselves. Good and evil are opposites on a spectrum and the title is asking to look beyond them. Good and evil, however, are subjective terms, they have meanings, but what values that they constitute are not set in stone. In asking to look beyond subjective terms we are not asked to make a declaration or take one side or the other, but to look at what is there regardless what it is.

The animals you are asked to photograph are not good or evil. Your actions in taking their pictures may be beneficial, but it is an example of seeing what is there. There is no judgment only what is there. Another part of the world that exemplifies the objective truth of the world is the volcano. Near the beginning of the game you are told a rumor about a cache of pearls at the top of the volcano. This area is only reachable at the end. It starts only as a rumor, an unsubstantiated claim. Jade goes there, however, and turns it from a subjective belief into an objective reality. There is a cavern and there is a cache of pearls to be found. That is all well and good, but I think the two opposing groups represent the real meaning behind the title of the game best. The Alpha Sections and the Iris Network both have their own propaganda reels delivered to the people of Hillys. As is obvious to the player for one reason and another, the Alpha Sections are the evil and the Iris Network is supposed to represent the good. From both groups, however, comes some pretty hard to digest propaganda that is really in you face and difficult to take seriously. The Iris Network issues really make one cringe, because you know they are right, but their delivery makes them sound like insane conspiracy theorists. It’s only at the end in a final plea to the Hillys people themselves does everything change. No one is screaming or pointing fingers. There is no more fear mongering from either side; it comes down to a heartfelt plea and listing of the facts to the people. In a way this is Jade and company’s last stand.

Here it transcends the good and evil squabbles of the two groups and both groups’ attempts to win the hearts and minds of the people. Instead we have a few investigators telling the truth and showing the evidence of what has been happening. They have moved beyond both the Alpha Sections and the Iris Network in this move. It is by far the most important report made. The others may have gotten gradual support, but this is the one that caused the people to wake up and rise up in their own defense.

It is rather a hopeful message that the power of the people is all that it takes to drive off evil. What Ancel believes in here, is when presented with the truth and being a dangerous and horrendous truth, the people will do something about it. Whatever reasons a person may have for acting, be it self interest, survival, revenge, justice or any number of other motives the people will rise to right a wrong. It may seem not like much, but as I’ve said before it takes the power of the people to start things off. With their approval the governor can send the Hillys forces to defend their world.

The world of Hillys is simple when compared to our own. This simplicity allows for objective truth to be found and accepted much easier than it would be in our own. Thanks to Photoshop and the Internet, false information and lies can easily pass as truth. Because of that it makes real evidence harder to believe and accept. If Hillys had been more complex with multiple governments and more people and different areas and different types of thinking I don’t think the Iris Network could have gotten through. The people are always the key and here they happened to be receptive.

Truth is a difficult thing to nail down and differing voices make it hard to see everything objectively. We have to fight for it against all odds for it is the right thing to do and truth like it did quite literally to the people of Hillys, will set you free.

During the game’s tenure as the Vintage Game Club’s focus and playthrough, a lot of the discussion focused on the story and the player’s confusion that came about from it. Indeed it is confusing if you aren’t playing close attention and search out many of the details from conversations. Even then you have to make a number of inferences to get the whole picture.

First of all many people were confused about the supposed mystery in the game. There are two types of mysteries. First there is the puzzle element mystery, generally called the whodunit, and secondly there is the caper, this is generally about how is the hero going to pull this off. Beyond Good and Evil falls into the later category. We know who the bad guys are, if we couldn’t figure it out from the world setup or the propaganda, we are blatantly told by the members of the Iris network. We know the who, we even know the what, when and how. The action of the game revolves around the question “how are we going to prove it?” Everything Jade does is in an effort to answer that question.This leads to the next question that plagued many of the players of the VGC. What does it matter if we can prove the conspiracy? This is where Beyond Good and Evil’s storytelling and polish needed work. If you hunt around you can garner the details that let you infer why, but it is never explicitly explained. To understand why, you have to understand the different groups involved.

Let’s start with the Alpha Sections. This is the military that is stopping the Domz, the unquestionable bad guys of the game. The Alpha Sections work for the Domz or are a supporting arm, we don’t know the specifics, but they pass themselves off as the benevolent protectors of all the planets attacked by the Domz and are touted as especially efficient at combating them. They are an intergalactic group.

Next there is the Iris Network, a group of journalists working to expose the Alpha Sections for what they truly are. Most of the game’s conflict comes from these two groups exchanging propaganda. They are underground, but more well known than a secret terrorist organization or resistance group would seem to be. They are also an intergalactic group.

Then there is the Governor and her people. I can only assume given the themes and manner in which she runs the planet, that she is the democratically elected leader of Hillis. She has her own beliefs, but can only act in the people’s will with sufficient evidence.This is where things get confusing for some people. There is also the Hillian Military. They are the sworn defenders of Hillis specifically. They are members of Hillis defending their homes and are in no way associated with the Alpha Section,save one and this is where the confusion comes in. They both wear fully armored suits of very similar style and color. The people in the dungeons are the Alpha Sections; the people in town are the Hillian Military. You just have to talk to them a few times each to see the difference.

Finally there are the people of Hillis, the meandering populace. Understanding the difference between these groups is key. They are not all on the same side. They are not allied to each other. They all move with their own goals, most of which happen to be the same, but there are nuances and it is in these cracks that the conflict springs up.

Much confusion came up about the conspiracies and the necessity of many actions of the groups. I think there was a fundamental misunderstanding by many of the players of what the different groups were trying to accomplish. On the surface their actions are easily understood, but holes appear in their logic if the Iris was just trying to expose the Alpha Sections and were in danger why such a flimsy security system and if they did this elsewhere then why not bring those examples to light and if the Alpha Sections were imposing martial law why couldn’t they find the Iris network?

The truth I think is that none of the groups have the power many of the players thought they had. Every action every group took was in relation to the general populace of Hillis. They have the true power. The Alpha Sections could only continue their secret abductions for the Domz if they the people supported them and believed they were helping in keeping the Domz at bay. You can see early on one of the children tell Jade that he wants to join the Alpha Sections when he grows up because he thinks they are heroes. The people generally believe the propaganda on the radio and the TV. The Iris Network does want to expose the Domz, but more importantly they want to break their Alpha Sections hold on the people. They state in their early briefings that if they can prove a conspiracy then the people will rise up against them.

The Alpha Sections have to keep up appearances. Everything they do is out of site from the everyday populace. Their headquarters in town is closed off. The two chase sequences that I call some of the best in video games end when you make it back to the city proper. They can’t follow you, because they have to keep up appearances and not give anyone any reason to kick them out.

Meanwhile the soldiers you see in the city are not the Alpha Sections, they are the Hillian Military, who Double H is a member of. Talking to them over the course of the game you realize they serve not the government, but adhere to the philosophy that they serve and protect the people. One even says to Jade not to confuse them with the Alpha Sections; they have nothing to do with the war against the Domz.

The Governor, meanwhile, believes what the Iris Network is telling her, especially since she is being stonewalled by the Alpha Sections. However, she cannot simply tell them to leave, though if she did and exercised her power she could get rid of them. The problem is that the people believe in them and it wouldn’t do anybody any good to get rid of the people’s heroes, especially with the Domz attacking every few days. She has to do this intelligently and cautiously, only taking minor steps when she has enough proof so she can back up her actions should she need to.The whole story fits together quite nicely until the third act and it would have worked had they not changed the final strategy of the Domz to: this has been about Jade the whole time. This is where the major plot hole comes in and I have no way to explain it. Destroying the lighthouse and kidnapping the children can be seen as retribution and revenge for messing with much of their operations, but using it as an excuse just to get Jade to come to the moon is just too much. Why would they wait so long if they knew it was her? And why wouldn’t they kidnap her along with the others?

Another plot hole is when the people do rise up and the cavalry comes to the rescue we end up with a situation where the Domz leader is expressing victory by capturing the fleet on the inside of the shield. To me this in no way constitutes victory, especially when all your ships have been destroyed and your space squid ship thing has already been dealt with. All the military would have to do is blow up the station and the shields would come down. So I’m not entirely sure what that piece of dialogue was about, unless Jade has some ultimate power that in the Domz hands would turn the entire situation around.

This is nothing major, just me trying to clear up a few misconceptions about the narrative that came up. Not all of it could be cleared up, but the ending left a lot to be desired in more than one way. The game was rushed at the end of development that makes me think the ending suffered because of it.

This is the beginning of a new series whose purpose is to highlight the positive aspects of a game that would fall under the Killer 7 Argument and to explain why it fits the definition. This is mostly for games that have been overlooked, but any game fitting the definition is up for evaluation.

For the first iteration I’m going to do Beyond Good and Evil as if you couldn’t have guessed. It was recently the subject of a simultaneous play through by the Vintage Game Club over at Brainy Gamer.

Beyond Good and Evil definitely falls under the Killer 7 argument. It has been called a Zelda clone and in fact has even been called a Zelda for grownups. I’m not sure either of those monikers due it justice. It has many of the elements of a Zelda game: environmental puzzles, dungeons, upgradeable equipments, but there is so much more going on here.

First of all it changes the set-up slightly so we are no longer stuck with a silent protagonist and that protagonist is no longer male. However, the game defies our expectations once again by having Jade not be your standard female protagonist. In other words, she looks like a real human being rather than being some sexed up object to be ogled at and in doing so, ironically, is a far more attractive avatar.

Upon replaying it for the Vintage Game Club many subtle design choices came up in the discussions and revealed that create a simplified experience with the controls. Most of this was noticed early on, because the game doesn’t change its control scheme ever. It has a simple set of unified controls that transition from one mode to another. From this point of view, the R2 button is not the run button, but the move faster button. The hovercraft and the spaceship both use the same buttons to maneuver as Jade does on foot. On the PS2, the X button will always be action, the O button will always be item and the Square button will always be attack. I never noticed until it was pointed out why Beyond Good and Evil was such an easy game to control.

The story is original and the characters refreshing in an industry filled with derivative plots and characters that seem to fill the same shoes that they could be interchangeable. The relationships between the characters feel believable and you under up caring what happens to them and Hillis, the planet they live on, beyond just an avatar to get you to the next dungeon. The camera mechanic as well is a refreshing gameplay element that is not a gimmick, but central to the progressing through the game. It is introduced early on and in a believable manner that it does not feel like a tutorial at all.

In fact the entire beginning section is really a disguised tutorial section and maybe one of the better introduction to a game’s mechanics that I’ve ever seen. All the controls are discernible from the HUD and new controls are delivered through in-game dialogue in a natural and motivational way. By the way, the voice acting is really good. This is something that usually gets looked over in most video games, but each actor here brings their character to life, especially Jade, Pay’j and Peepers.

The art direction is a nice set of blues and greens is beautiful even without modern top of the range graphics. The cartoon style allows the player to get closer to the character than had it been hyper realistic. In either case it’s a nice change from gray and brown.

As much as I like the game as a whole there are many problem areas, most of which I’m sure came about from the fact that Michel Ancel, was rushed through the game’s development near the end and was forced to make cuts and not properly test the whole game.

The plot while a refreshing change does begin to become more obscure and is difficult to follow without paying very close attention to optional dialogue and some extrapolation. Beyond just that there are some major plot holes. Character’s supposedly in suspended animation are able to call after a few weeks while in captivity, injuries that would put someone out weeks are up and about when you leave the bar, and why the bad guys are going through all this trouble in the first place. The ending is an exercise in Indigo Prophecy Syndrome and while the credits leave an impression of what happens afterwords the little clip after that were clearly intended for a sequel that the game really didn’t need.

While I didn’t have a problem with them, many other players did have an issue with the forced stealth sections that make up a majority of the later dungeons. I think most of that comes from the fact they weren’t expected given the normal Zelda formula. Another reason I think that comparison is unfair. It creates a certain set of expectations that BG&E never intended to meet. The levels and gameplay styles come out of the story and are integrated for the purpose of sneaking around. Though a majority of the stealth ire is reserved for the instant kill security bots that show up later. This is not to say that there isn’t combat or action, the game is filled with tense moments created by the stealth that then explode into cathartic action sequences.

I have said before that BG&E is in my top 3 of best chase sequences of all time in video games and after replaying it I stick by that assessment. There is no blur effect that makes it feel even faster like in Burnout and the camera doesn’t shake like in the Bourne series. Instead the slow pace provides a greater sense of danger and therefore a greater sense of urgency. I don’t want to spoil it, but when those sequences come up you’ll understand what I mean.

The side dungeons are really short and aren’t necessary to completing the game for resources like they might be in other games. They are short and in most case extremely easy to the point of being jokes. The gameplay is varied enough that to be interesting to the very end, but the game is short, real short. It’s only about 10-12 hours if you spend time doing all the side dungeons and extras. But that isn’t a bad thing. The game is long enough to do what it needs to do and doesn’t overstay its welcome. Plus if you are rushing through the game you are missing a lot of what makes BG&E so great, the fine detailing. The day shifts from morning, noon, evening and night with regularity and the world’s inhabitants respond accordingly. Looking up at the night sky you find your camera identifying constellations. They have nothing to do with game other than being there. Plus the wildlife that abounds in the game is not just monsters there to kill you, but give the impressions of a breathing and thriving ecology.

Does the game have issues? Yes. Is it for everyone? I can’t think of a game that is. But with all that it falls short in, it does so much else right and different than you can’t help appreciate it. I do wish it had more time to tighten up what was there and add what could have been, but as an entire package it is worth a play through.

I do have a warning for you. The game can be purchased on Steam, but I would hesitate against getting that version. Many complaints pooped up about difficult controls that did not exist with the people who played the console versions. It wasn’t poor coding, but that the analogue sticks were very necessary and the keyboard wasn’t a good substitute for several sections. If you have no other choice I still recommend playing this game.