Why Beyond Good and Evil Tanked

Via Joystiq, a post on the JumpButton blog talking with a PR manager at Ubisoft about the title Beyond Good and Evil. Despite critical acclaim and crackerjack gameplay, the title just didn't do very well commercially. The rep explains why it did so badly in the stores, and what that means for future quality game titles. From the article: "When BG&E was released in 2003, it was competing against some of the strongest franchises in gaming. Like a weak wolf cub in a litter, it was forced to fight its siblings for attention and nurturing. Strong brands such as Tom Clancy and the reinvented Prince of Persia were the favourite sons that year. While XIII, a stylish FPS based on an obscure Belgian graphic novel, almost suffered a similar fate to BG&E, but sales in European territories still managed to qualify that game for Sony's best-seller Platinum label. It was only late in the piece that IGN.com managed to arm us with a majestic and summarizing quote for the difficult BG&E: 'Zelda for grown-ups.'"

XIII described as 'obscure' - that's a good one.

[Qbertino]

Xiii is a, if not the classic franco-belgian thriller 'comic'. It's been running since 1983 and - curiously enough - it's story takes place mostly in the US.

BG&E

[FlynnMP3]

The game starts with a cinematic sequence. It is pretty engaging. Then all of a sudden, you are thrown into battle with the Doms. These are the ultimate enemy of the planet Hillus and the galaxy. As you play the game, you find out why you are here what you are doing. You are a reporter tasked to expose the real thruth and inform the people. Along the way you actively see that teamwork and caring are rewarded. The cities change based on your progress. There are a very sad moments as well as a quite a few feel good moments. It is easy to identify with the main character.

The ending of the game throws everybody for a loop. It is a cliffhanger of galactic magnitude. On the support forum you'll find an online petition to continue the story in a sequel. http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/908103432 /m/907107432/p/1 [ubi.com] It is filled with personal stories of how the game affected them and how much they want the story to continue.

It really is a heartwarming game and once you play it, you realize how much it stands out against your collection of games. If you enjoy adventure cinematic epic stories at all and can put up with somewhat limiting character control, the game is really worth your time. About 10 hours worth of your time.

Best Zelda-esque game, since Zelda

[mikeisme77]

I have moderator points and I was going to use them for comments in this story... But this game is in my top five games of the current (or last) gen (depending upon how you look at it). It is the only game besides the original Metal Gear Solid and Eternal Darkness that I thought was awesome (and short) enough that I took the time to play through it more than once. The game can easily be beaten the first time in 10-12 hours (similar to Metal Gear Solid), but the storyline is great (very 1984ish). The gameplay is a mix of Zelda and (as strange as this may be) that Pokemon Snap game (where you took pictures of the Pokemon). The puzzles weren't as challenging as maybe they could have been, but they were pretty solid. The battles were more difficult, and I think more action packed than either Ocarina of Time or Wind Waker. This really was an incredible game and anybody who hasn't played it should really at LEAST borrow it from a friend or rent it--you won't regret it.

Perhaps you should look a little closer

[edremy]

I decided to try the game out on a PC since it seemed to be different from the piles of me-too FPSes and RTSes.

First, there was no option to invert the yaxis on the mouse, an utter killer for people used to it. Come on guys, nothing screams "bad console port" (I'm looking at you, Silent Hill) like missing this simple option.

The camera had a tendency to swing wildly at bad times, obscuring the action

Finally, the game simply didn't run. I got to a place where I had to go to the next stage. Crash. Hmm, reload. Crash. Try changing graphics/sound options. Crash.

I returned it and bought something that actually *worked*

Dreaded Traingle Key Error!

[LordJezo]

For those of you wondering about the post above check out this link:

The triangle key error [ubi.com]

I am not sure if Ubisoft ever did anything about it but the problem was so serious that you could not even beat the game if you did not download the unofficial patch to fix it. It's a PC error and I encountered it during my playthrough.

The fact that Ubisoft released a game so broken it was actually unplayable and then never bothered to fix it, had to rely off of a fan created patch, a bad taste was left in my mouth for this company.

Re:Obscure ?

[DeeDob]

Actually, he's right and his comments are far from lame.

There are three "main" existing ways of creating a story driven with text that is aided by drawings.

A) There's the way that originated in america: The "comic" version.
The comic version is small publication that is sold in the way that magazines are sold. A periodical release. Usually contains publicity and the paper size is usually small. Small number of pages (if you exclude publicity). Sometimes a "collection" of comics can be re-published as "trade-paperbacks" in a larger volume.

B) There's the way it originated in Europe: The "graphic novel" version.
The graphic novel version is longer than a "comic". Their release is irregular (usually once every year or two for a major series). The number of pages is often "around" 40 and the size of the pages themselves are bigger.

C) There's the way it originated in Japan: The "manga".
Usually black and white, very small sized, but with a number of pages that is often over a hundred.

NOW, you can use any terminology you want, but these three ways of doing things are there. Comics exist in Europe, Bigger "graphic novels" also exist in North America. Mangas now exist everywhere, but they are often cut in "comic" size for the american market. Likewise, comics are often presented only in their trade-paperbacks form in Europe.

TinTin, Asterix and XIII are all originaly made the European way. Big graphic novels.
SpiderMan, X-Men, BatMan are all originaly made the North American way, small comic publications.
Ranma, Sailor Moon, are all originaly made the Japanese way, small books with tons of pages.

Now about XIII...
XIII is a MAJOR series of "European-type" graphic novels. Just because it hasn't been released or is wide-known in the U.S. doesn't mean it's "obscure".
XIII is big in Europe. It's scenarist, Jean Van Hamme, has done some of the most well-known European graphic novel series that i would rank right after TinTin and Asterix in popularity.

Saying that XIII is "obscure" is to put a blind-fold over your eyes and refusing to see that there are people living outside your own country that are doing thing you don't know of.

I don't live in Europe, i live in Quebec, Canada. Due to the fact of the bilingual situation here, we get the best of the three ways (European, American and Japanese [we get both english and french translations of those]).
In our market, European graphic novels actually is making it as big as the American way, if not even bigger.
The french versions of american comic books (in their trade-paperback forms as they don't exist in "comic form") are NOT those that sell the most. European graphic novels like XIII sell a lot more.