[EvoG]

Prompted by the great time I'm having finally finishing Wind Waker, having started over after a two year hiatus, I was itching to play Beyond Good and Evil(xbox) again but alas, it hasn't been added to the Xbox360 back-comp library, and having disconnected the old unit, I was a bit without. Then I recalled GameTap having it in their collection, so on I went, and the process was smooth and the whole system is very well executed. Great presentation, great performance and of course boatloads of games.

GameTap is absolutely wonderful, especially for the diehard gamers here, but for 'diehard' AGer's, there are a bunch of great adventures, both old and new, including as I said, BG&E. I've read several posts over the past several months, and I know there was some curiosity, so just to voice some praise, its VERY much worth the price of admission, moreso now that its 2 weeks free and only 9.95 per month for the year (12 mos), being that its normally 14.95 otherwise. Great, the lot of you should run and check it out...

Anyway, what I've actually been curious about and haven't seen it specifically addressed in older BG&E posts....what exactly attracted you to this game? Knowing full well how poorly it sold has me wondering why WE found the game when the rest of the gaming masses have not. This on top of the fact that many here are rather against the idea of doing anything dextrous in their gaming (not a slight mind you, just a passive statement empirically derived ) makes this all the more fascinating that its made a key following here.

What was it that not only attracted you to the game, but how is it you even found out about it in the first place to prompt you to investigate?


Happy New Year all!


Cheers

[RLacey]

I was attracted to it (aside from because I found it at a knockdown price) because it's by the guy who created Rayman and because it got good reviews.

I found out about it by reading magazines and finding the demo .

[EvoG]

Hey Lacey, just to note, not wanting my question to sound juvenile, but I ask because while it may seem like there are obvious answers (reviews/demo/word-of-mouth), it's actually about the "why" of it all. "Why" was it that the reviews and demo worked so well to attract us to the game, but not to very many people otherwise, and even so, why is it that AGer's latched onto the game when it clearly has elements (two precisely) that AGer's dislike, though of course it has very strong elements that AGer's do like. Then again many games do as well, so why BG&E in particular?

Female lead?

Fantasy/SciFi element?

Freedom to explore a reasonably realised world?

Interaction density is actually not as dense as some have said it was, so I'm not convinced its that. Dialogue is 'info-board'-ish, with no dialogue paths, just simply running through each option until sucked dry. The action can get a tad heavy (relatively speaking) and there is both driving/shooting, melee and stealth. Considering how disliked action is in AGer's minds, why was this more or less not an issue?

Wind Waker (only because I mentioned it above) does all this and more, yet there seems to be a solid consensus that BG&E is the game to talk about, but less so, Zelda. So there IS something about BG&E. I know why I like it, but I'm not a great measure for this question as I play every game of every genre under the sun(for the past 20 years to boot since Pitfall and Raiders of the Lost Ark[my two very first owned videogames! ]), so the odds of me both coming across the game and then liking it are very high...I mean I feel like I'm the only person on Earth who's played and absolutely loved Sphinx and the Curse of the Mummy. But there are those discriminating gamers that may not comb the gaming sites for reviews, or buy every gaming magazine every month or who are easily turned off, seemingly arbitrarily, by a game mechanic they "know" they won't like. Those are the people I'd especially like to hear from, though please, everyone opine.

Cheers!

[RLacey]

Ah, I get you; sorry that my previous post was a little stupid.

The thing that attracts me to Beyond Good & Evil is actually much of what attracted me to Rayman 2 (let's ignore the original, which was a really, really flawed game). I'm a sucker for the quirky characters (both in terms of personality and the actual creatures that they are), and the world design that - and this isn't meant in a rude way at all - I can't describe as anything other than "French".

For me it's not specifically about the female lead character, the specific fantasy/sci-fi nature of the setting or the freedom to explore a "reasonably realised world" (and I'm not entirely sure that Beyond Good & Evil is actually much more than a series of linear levels clumped around an open hub), it's about the overall atmosphere, which I found to be quirky, more relaxed (things aren't rammed down your throat in a "BIG EXPLOSION! WORLD IN DANGER! FIGHT, SHOOT, KILL!" type of way) and very much aimed at entertaining me rather than simply burning vivid images onto my retinas.

Interestingly, at least from where I'm standing, Beyond Good & Evil is a game that I love despite disliking most of its constituent parts. I've always felt that the stealth sections are too hard in a game which really shouldn't be about difficulty - there are a couple of downright cruel sections towards the end of the game that I must have attempted a dozen times - while the racing sections had me throwing stuff around the room out of frustration. The rest of the game, meanwhile, boils down to melee fighting that I'd be surprised if anyone loses (last boss excluded), some ship combat which is relatively easy and a handful of minor puzzles and collecting pearls.

It really shouldn't work. And yet it does. You may not have many choices as to what dialogue you use, but what's there is well written, quirky (I'm going to keep using that word) and - at times - poignant, though I'm sure there are others on this forum who found the game far more emotionally engaging than me. The world is restrictive and yet has been made to feel alive by the small changes that occur as the game progresses. And I never thought I'd see a pig that I could genuinely describe as sweet, with Jade's uncle (!) being an extrmely endearing character.

Oh, and the moments of humour. The "Don't break up the team" line will remain with me forever.

That's a bit rambling, and I doubt it's actually helped much, but thanks for taking the time to read all of that (and if you haven't then "Grr!")...

[Aj_]

I just completed for the second time today, it's a fantastic game with great characters, a great story, amazing atmosphere, inspired art, and well thought-out gameplay. It has a lot of interaction and non-linear gameplay, you feel like you're playing a game, not on tracks. Camera angles, they're there when you need them, and when you need the camera to play the game, it lets you play (I can't stand fixed-cameras like in Resident Evil, BS3, or Fahrenheit). I downloaded the soundtrack(it's free!), and it compliments the game better than most of the games I've played. The voice acting is flawless, but not really one of the game's strengths(accept Double H). The atmosphere the music, SFX, and graphics generate is no better in any other game.

After being told puzzles, and adventure gameplay didn't take a big part in the game, I thought I was losing my memory. I can confirm that the game has a majority of exploration, interaction, and puzzles(while the majority of them are BS3 or Syberia 2 style, some are Discworld style, but automatically select which items to use). There are a few surprisingly fun, yet simple, mini-games involving chases(after a looters, or away from alpha sections, a table-top game, and cups. The animation is perfect, it's remarkable. Everything works well, there are no camera problems, there are no glitches, it's an annoyance free zone.

It's a bit short, and because it varies so the combat, stealth, platforming, and puzzles are simplistic, short, and really easy. Games are getting shorter, and easier, but I think that the game could easily have been 3 times longer(just by making the world bigger, and the adding a few more missions to places), while I probably wouldn't expand the stealth element (stealth games are all about the enviroment, and the level design is superb), combat was nearly pointless, and platforming elements weren't used enough(and mostly automatic, although far better implementation than BS3's).

I had no intentions of getting it because the adverts and the animal people gave me an impression of a whacky immature game(it is, but it has style,ike Shadow of the Templars, where a lot of other games like it don't *cough* Fahrenheit), and gave me no idea what the gameplay was going to be like. Lots of people here, and reviewers, said it had a wonderful story, and was very well made, and that's good enough for me. In the end I got a lot more than that, the game is excellent in every department.

[MoriartyL]

The first thing I heard about the game that got me interested was that it was being made by Michel Ancel, the genius designer responsible for Rayman 2. Looking into it more, I found out that it was inspired by Zelda. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is my favorite game, which singlehandedly turned me from a casual fan of Warcraft 2 into an obsessed fanatic certain that videogames were the art of the future. Anyhow, then I read that Ancel was using the Zelda structure to utilize many different types of gameplay- at that moment, I wanted to get the game. Then I played the demo, which was so inspiring it drove me to a brand new direction in my musical compositions. (It wasn't the soundtrack of the game that inspired me- it was the gameplay.) After all this, there was no way I wouldn't have gotten BG&E- and this was all before the game was released, and before the good reviews were written.

But that's just me- if I remember correctly, I didn't get into AGs until after playing BG&E. Yep, I'm new. I think the reason AGers aren't into Zelda is first of all because it bears such strong hints of the Japanese RPG. BG&E, made as it was in France, appeals more to Western sensibilities. It's much faster-paced, and less reliant on RPG cliches like the perfect hero/villain conflict. It focuses more on characters and story, and less on the experience- as such, it is closer to adventure design. Finally, the short length works in BG&E's favor- it's much easier to convince an AGer to play a metalude for eight hours than it is to convince him to play a metalude for fourty hours. If he were to try to pick up Zelda, he'd get tired of it within one hour because the story hasn't gone anywhere yet.

[Jackal]

Originally Posted by EvoG

...why is it that AGer's latched onto the game when it clearly has elements (two precisely) that AGer's dislike, though of course it has very strong elements that AGer's do like.

Considering how disliked action is in AGer's minds, why was this more or less not an issue?

I think you're incorrectly categorizing (some/many) people as "AGers". There are lots of adventure gamers that can't handle or simply don't like action, period, and I don't think BG&E had any appeal for them whatsoever. But there are many others that play adventures without exclusively being AGers. I would say the vast majority of people on this board fall into that category.

From this group, it's not unusual to hear people complain about action in what is otherwise a "pure adventure". But that's not the same thing as disliking action entirely. That's more a case of "if I want an action/adventure, I'll play one. When I want an adventure, I don't want action in it, especially when the action usually sucks." Since BG&E quite clearly has a significant amount of action, people either reject it outright and say nothing, or accept and play it on those terms. So you won't get the same complaints as you would from the staunch AGers who THINK it's a pure adventure and find out it's got difficult action sequences, as we have with BS3 or Wanted or various other adventures.

I really don't think there's anything at all strange about people raving about one of the precious few story-driven, character-rich games to come to PC. And I don't think it's disproportionately inclined towards BG&E over others. Depending on tolerance for certain genres, we're the same people that enjoyed and talked about Outcast, Max Payne, KOTOR, Fahrenheit, etc.

Wind Waker (only because I mentioned it above) does all this and more, yet there seems to be a solid consensus that BG&E is the game to talk about, but less so, Zelda. So there IS something about BG&E.

I suspect that "something" is nothing more than BG&E being multi-platform, including PC. I'm sure if as many people had Cubes as PC's or other consoles, Wind Waker would be just as highly discussed here.

For myself, who considers the SNES Zelda to be his favourite game of all time, I was sold on BG&E from the second I read "like Zelda". But I absolutely adored the stylized artistic design of the game, as well, which was evident immediately from the screenshots.

[EvoG]

Originally Posted by RLacey

The thing that attracts me to Beyond Good & Evil is actually much of what attracted me to Rayman 2 (let's ignore the original, which was a really, really flawed game). I'm a sucker for the quirky characters (both in terms of personality and the actual creatures that they are), and the world design that - and this isn't meant in a rude way at all - I can't describe as anything other than "French".

See thats where I'm confused. Many games have quirk and color and character. When you strip away all this in BG&E, you're left with a game mechanic thats still tried and true. There isn't a real involved inventory-interaction element, and with my comments above about dialogue, it does stray from the adventure mechanic, but offers the adventure presentation, but in a more immediate and varied game mechanic. See the question stems from why WE like it but was ignored by the masses. I'd hate to believe that it was purely a lack of marketing that sunk it.

Originally Posted by Aj_

I just completed for the second time today, it's a fantastic game with great characters, a great story, amazing atmosphere, inspired art, and well thought-out gameplay. It has a lot of interaction and non-linear gameplay, you feel like you're playing a game, not on tracks.

I didn't think it was all that interactive and as RLacey said, it really is only the illusion of non-linear with the 'hub' section linking the linear levels. But I will agree that it does give the feeling of being able to stretch your legs. I think many people discount the feeling you get from the physical aspect of 'exploration'. This is one of the strongest reasons I absolutely love the GTA series, notably San Andreas. The feeling of being, of exploring, is unparalelled in any game. Many features are constantly bulleted, but I it always seems pure physical exploration is hightly undervalued as a core element, where I see it as a significant mechanic to futher tie the player to the world.


Cheers guys(gals?)

[EvoG]

Originally Posted by MoriartyL

The first thing I heard about the game that got me interested was that it was being made by Michel Ancel, the genius designer responsible for Rayman 2. Looking into it more, I found out that it was inspired by Zelda. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is my favorite game, which singlehandedly turned me from a casual fan of Warcraft 2 into an obsessed fanatic certain that videogames were the art of the future. Anyhow, then I read that Ancel was using the Zelda structure to utilize many different types of gameplay- at that moment, I wanted to get the game...

But that's just me- if I remember correctly, I didn't get into AGs until after playing BG&E. Yep, I'm new. I think the reason AGers aren't into Zelda is first of all because it bears such strong hints of the Japanese RPG. BG&E, made as it was in France, appeals more to Western sensibilities. It's much faster-paced, and less reliant on RPG cliches like the perfect hero/villain conflict. It focuses more on characters and story, and less on the experience- as such, it is closer to adventure design. Finally, the short length works in BG&E's favor- it's much easier to convince an AGer to play a metalude for eight hours than it is to convince him to play a metalude for fourty hours. If he were to try to pick up Zelda, he'd get tired of it within one hour because the story hasn't gone anywhere yet.

This is very interesting...the consideration that the story is constantly being doled out rather than requiring the player to work rather extensively towards the next story point. This distinction that in RPG's you're playing within the sandbox of the gameworld, happy to engage the puzzles and denizens, exploring and increasing your characters abilities, only then to choose to move onto the next section that reveals more of the story, whereas in BG&E, you're more or less constantly fed the storyline at every reasonable point, within the gameplay as well. Metal Gear Solid, especially Snake Eater, does this as well, being that Kojima is of course heavily influenced by the storytelling in cinema, yet I dont think its as highly regarded here, but perhaps due to its theme more than anything.

Thanks Moriarty, great post.



Cheers

[Aj_]

Originally Posted by EvoG

I'd hate to believe that it was purely a lack of marketing that sunk it.

Well that was the reason why I didn't get it when it was released.

I didn't think it was all that interactive and as RLacey said, it really is only the illusion of non-linear with the 'hub' section linking the linear levels

There was ton of interactivity, and optional content. I really haven't seen many games that have a lot of non-linear gameplay not having a hub, or hubs, and a main path that although you can complete a number of objectives in any order, takes you down a linear path to conclusion. Given that it's also an incredibly short game.

[EvoG]

Originally Posted by Jackal

I think you're incorrectly categorizing (some/many) people as "AGers". There are lots of adventure gamers that can't handle or simply don't like action, period, and I don't think BG&E had any appeal for them whatsoever. But there are many others that play adventures without exclusively being AGers. I would say the vast majority of people on this board fall into that category.

I think you're perhaps right, I just wanted to avoid the "Who's a DieHard AGer and Who's a WellRounded Gamer" Poll thread. I probably did assume there was more of a hive mind here with regards to adventures, considering that the outspoken members like Trep and Squarejawhero, looking for marked changes in the AG paradigm, were the minority. I think I'm seeing more now, and with your post Jackal, that this is not the case. Maybe the vocal minority is to blame for my indiscretion?

Originally Posted by Jackal

From this group, it's not unusual to hear people complain about action in what is otherwise a "pure adventure". But that's not the same thing as disliking action entirely. That's more a case of "if I want an action/adventure, I'll play one. When I want an adventure, I don't want action in it, especially when the action usually sucks." Since BG&E quite clearly has a significant amount of action, people either reject it outright and say nothing, or accept and play it on those terms. So you won't get the same complaints as you would from the staunch AGers who THINK it's a pure adventure and find out it's got difficult action sequences, as we have with BS3 or Wanted or various other adventures.

This was my concern after posting...that the replies would be skewed more towards those that like a broader selection of games, rather than the odd AGer who's rather strict in their gaming tastes, but found BG&E palatable.

Originally Posted by Jackal

I really don't think there's anything at all strange about people raving about one of the precious few story-driven, character-rich games to come to PC. And I don't think it's disproportionately inclined towards BG&E over others. Depending on tolerance for certain genres, we're the same people that enjoyed and talked about Outcast, Max Payne, KOTOR, Fahrenheit, etc.

Max Payne really? Wow. I thought it was outstanding, but despite the presentation, it was more over-the-top action than an adventure, clearly my kind of game, but not a typical adventure on any level. Interesting. I know your point was simply that yes, even a game thats full on action can have such a compelling story, that the attraction is clear, but man I'd just as well leave Max Payne to the hardcore of us rather than the casual.

I completely neglected to mention KotoR, especially 2. You feel this is as regarded perhaps even as much as BG&E? I mean out of any games to date, its the only one I can recall where dialogue actually MATTERED, and was never resigned to being an information-board convention. If anything KotoR 2 is superior in the many ways of character interaction for the simple fact that you can distinctly affect how the NPC's feel about you and even if they'll bother communicating with you in the future...all due to dialogue. This has never been achieved in a traditional AG (again as far as my recollection takes me).

Oh and just to note, I simply could not get into Prophecy(fine, Fahrenheit ) I absolutely disliked all the characters. Anyway.

Originally Posted by Jackal

I suspect that "something" is nothing more than BG&E being multi-platform, including PC. I'm sure if as many people had Cubes as PC's or other consoles, Wind Waker would be just as highly discussed here.

For myself, who considers the SNES Zelda to be his favourite game of all time, I was sold on BG&E from the second I read "like Zelda". But I absolutely adored the stylized artistic design of the game, as well, which was evident immediately from the screenshots.

Well while this is clearly a great point, you bring up a succinct observation...BG&E is multi-platform, giving the world of gamers an opportunity to play it, and yet, still....nada. If anything, the Gamecube gamers, indeed loving Zelda, should've been inclined to RUN towards BG&E.


Cheers

[RLacey]

I should point out that I would never describe myself as an adventure gamer. I'm a gamer who plays adventure games, but I certainly don't confine myself exclusively to one genre (as recent purchases of ganes like Quake IV, The Punisher and Grandia II might suggest). In fact, if someone were to take a detailed look at my game collection they'd probably tell me that I don't take nearly enough interest in the adventure genre! Not that I begrudge people who want to play only adventures, but Beyond Good & Evil appeals to me for a mixture of reasons, some related to my like of adventure games and others for wholly different reasons.

[RLacey]

Originally Posted by EvoG

Well while this is clearly a great point, you bring up a succinct observation...BG&E is multi-platform, giving the world of gamers an opportunity to play it, and yet, still....nada. If anything, the Gamecube gamers, indeed loving Zelda, should've been inclined to RUN towards BG&E.

I do wonder if you're confusing lack of success with lack of appeal. The latter is due to Ubisoft creating a game that nobody wants to play or enjoys playing when shown (something I'd be hard pushed to apply to Beyond Good & Evil, as I've yet to meet someone who's played it without enjoying it), while the former can be due to any number of reasons.

If memory serves, Beyond Good & Evil was released during the Christmas season, at much the same time as Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, and far more marketing went into the latter title. Yes, there's arguably the issue of selling the idea to people initially - if I told you that I wanted you to play a game about a photographer and a pig who go around on a hovercraft photographing animals and trying to save their local city from aliens you may well not be sold on the idea - but everyone who has actually played the title seems to have enjoyed it.

[EvoG]

Originally Posted by RLacey

I do wonder if you're confusing lack of success with lack of appeal. The latter is due to Ubisoft creating a game that nobody wants to play or enjoys playing when shown (something I'd be hard pushed to apply to Beyond Good & Evil, as I've yet to meet someone who's played it without enjoying it), while the former can be due to any number of reasons.

If memory serves, Beyond Good & Evil was released during the Christmas season, at much the same time as Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, and far more marketing went into the latter title. Yes, there's arguably the issue of selling the idea to people initially - if I told you that I wanted you to play a game about a photographer and a pig who go around on a hovercraft photographing animals and trying to save their local city from aliens you may well not be sold on the idea - but everyone who has actually played the title seems to have enjoyed it.

But this is assuming for a moment they didn't 'know' how to sell it. As it is, you're not being sold a photography sim with a pig companion, rather, you're up against a government conspiracy. The thing is that you ARE an "action reporter", and not a "muscled-super-soldier", both which I suppose give clearer ideas of what to expect from gameplay. Perhaps Jade on the cover with a camera immediately sent vibes that it was far more passive (which I suppose it is) and perhaps of similar vein to Fatal Frame? Maybe?

Either way, you're definitely right about the christmas release, which was just ridiculous, and worthy of its own thread I suppose ("Christmas versus Summer..WTF?!"). Christmas is for the mainstream...the parents...the gift givers. How can they expect to both be informed (they weren't until the last minute) and look past the Maddens and the Licenses? I mean to drop it to 20 bucks a month later is not telling gamers there is confidence in the title, despite unreasonable expectations. Sell the same game during the summer drought and I could see the complete reversal. Gamers hungry for anything new, take the time to absorb information about the game...aren't inundated with information about other, sparkling and dazzling games.

Ah well, I think I'm seeing clearly that its appealing perhaps to a still narrow field of gamer that DOES have some reasonable connection to the pure adventure genre despite penchants towards games as a whole, genre more or less irrelevent.

Cheers

[MoriartyL]

Originally Posted by EvoG

If anything, the Gamecube gamers, indeed loving Zelda, should've been inclined to RUN towards BG&E.

I did! As for the rest of the GCN market, pay them no mind- they're fools.

Seriously, there was an easy and effective way to market this, and Ubisoft completely missed it. Picture this: The front of the box could have actually said, in big letters, "From the creator of Rayman 2". On the back of the box it would say, "From Michel Ancel, the creator of Rayman 2, comes an epic blah blah...". Remind the hardcore how much they love his work. Actually, to be more effective, they should have started playing up Ancel's name as far back as Rayman 2's release. I mean, he designed that game's controls, he directed it, he wrote it, he even designed the characters- so why not play his involvement up? Even back then, they could already have been building up Ancel as a "brand name". That way, when he started BG&E, they'd have a ready-made fanbase ready to buy it.

[RLacey]

Don't forget that the box art for Beyond Good & Evil was different between territories...

The "renegade reporter" US box-art:



The stylish if undescriptive European box:



And, on the back of my European PC case it says "From Michel Ancel, the mind behind Rayman." It may be in small text, but it is there.

[MoriartyL]

Originally Posted by RLacey

And, on the back of my European PC case it says "From Michel Ancel, the mind behind Rayman." It may be in small text, but it is there.

The American GCN box doesn't say that at all. You know, people go to see movies when they like the director, but Ancel not only directed BG&E but also wrote the story and designed the game design and contributed to the art, and Ubi isn't trying to capitalize on it. It makes no sense.

[EvoG]

Yea, and oddly, while no offense is meant, remember American McGee's Alice? Huh? I really liked that game a lot, but why was it important to have a then "unknown" in the title of the game!? My whole career in this industry, there's always been that divide between developer recognition(or complete lack thereof) and publisher control. Hell, forget my career, for crying out loud, thats solely why Activision was formed 20 years ago!

Ancel not being a significant part of the marketing is clearly a faux pas ( <-- see what I did there )?

Anyone have sales figures on this game? Budget?

[Jackal]

Originally Posted by EvoG

I think you're perhaps right, I just wanted to avoid the "Who's a DieHard AGer and Who's a WellRounded Gamer" Poll thread. I probably did assume there was more of a hive mind here with regards to adventures, considering that the outspoken members like Trep and Squarejawhero, looking for marked changes in the AG paradigm, were the minority. I think I'm seeing more now, and with your post Jackal, that this is not the case. Maybe the vocal minority is to blame for my indiscretion?

It probably is a minority here, though not everywhere. Still, that's a different issue. The "shifting paradigm for the future of adventures" discussions tend to cycle endlessly because of an either/or mindset, when in fact most people would be satisified to have some of BOTH, just not at the expense of one for the other.

This was my concern after posting...that the replies would be skewed more towards those that like a broader selection of games, rather than the odd AGer who's rather strict in their gaming tastes, but found BG&E palatable.

I'd also like to hear from someone the latter does apply to. My own observations haven't led me to believe there are many, which is why I pointed out the distinction. But maybe there are more than I think.

Max Payne really? Wow. I thought it was outstanding, but despite the presentation, it was more over-the-top action than an adventure, clearly my kind of game, but not a typical adventure on any level. Interesting. I know your point was simply that yes, even a game thats full on action can have such a compelling story, that the attraction is clear, but man I'd just as well leave Max Payne to the hardcore of us rather than the casual.

Admittedly, Max was a stretch. Obviously we've moved beyond the realm of hardcore adventure gamers with that one. But because of its focus on story and character (and unique presentation), I think the trend was at least similar. To those who wouldn't gravitate normally to an all-out action game, something like MP probably appealed in ways that the Dooms and Quakes do not.

I completely neglected to mention KotoR, especially 2. You feel this is as regarded perhaps even as much as BG&E? I mean out of any games to date, its the only one I can recall where dialogue actually MATTERED, and was never resigned to being an information-board convention. If anything KotoR 2 is superior in the many ways of character interaction for the simple fact that you can distinctly affect how the NPC's feel about you and even if they'll bother communicating with you in the future...all due to dialogue. This has never been achieved in a traditional AG (again as far as my recollection takes me).

Well, again, I can't speak in terms of its widespread appeal, but anecdotally, I'd say it's a definite favourite among the same sorts of gamers that are typically drawn to adventures for story, characters, etc.

Oh and just to note, I simply could not get into Prophecy(fine, Fahrenheit ) I absolutely disliked all the characters. Anyway.

But it sure grabbed people's attention for the sorts of reasons we're discussing. Perhaps less successfully than some of the others. Speaking of which, I forgot to mention Anachronox last time. Another wrongly overlooked game that's typically adored by the story-loving adventure crowd that actually play it.

Well while this is clearly a great point, you bring up a succinct observation...BG&E is multi-platform, giving the world of gamers an opportunity to play it, and yet, still....nada. If anything, the Gamecube gamers, indeed loving Zelda, should've been inclined to RUN towards BG&E.

Yeah, that's an interesting question. I haven't followed console issues closely enough to have much of an opinion on that, other than the marketing sorts of answers already being discussed. I do think that a green lipstick-wearing female protagonist isn't necessarily the strongest model for a predominantly young-male demographic.

[samIamsad]

To be honest, I had never heard of Ancel before I aquired a copy of Rayman 2 last Christmas (2004). Michael... WHO? Besides the marketing issues, maybe it's just... there's no "hook" to this game. The special something that grabs you and makes you want to buy this game RIGHT NOW!!!!1


Why should I buy this? Jackal and some others have tried to get into this before. They're telling you that you're playing some cute girl wearing green lipstick in a world that's full of whacky characters. Ho-hum, okay. So, what else!? And, honestly, I didn't bother with it for a long, long time, either. It's perhaps the same reasons why Grim Fandango (film Noir? Land of the dead? What the...?), Torment (HUH??) or Psychonauts (comic characters? running around in peoples minds? WTF?) didn't sell, while Fahrenheit (conspiracies, murders, blood. COOL!) or Kotor (OMG! Star Wurrrs! w00t, w00t!) did. It's difficult to sell something that doesn't sound immediately appealing, I guess. That said, I doubt it's impossible, but still. Truth be told, if I hadn't been fully aware of the fact that a certain other game had been the new game from Tim Schafer, (the man who brought me some of my favourite games of all time!!), I wouldn't have given a damn about that... Psychosomething either.

I think many people discount the feeling you get from the physical aspect of 'exploration'.

I agree entirely.