The Boy found an excellent-quality trailer/sneak peek at some of the awesome that will inevitably be Beyond Good and Evil 2. I was excited for this from the time I finished the first one, and I’m still excited now! Beyond Good and Evil is my favorite game of all time, hands down. I’ve played through it at least eighteen times, twice in French and once in Spanish, just to shake things up a little. I mean, this game literally changed the way I thought about video games. Up until I played it, my choice of video game heroines were Lara Croft, and Coco Bandicoot… I mean, their pixelated badassery was great, don’t get me wrong.
There just weren’t that many strong, female protagonists back in the halcyon days of cartridges and D-pads. The ladies didn’t really make a breakthrough until the Playstation 1, with the Tomb Raider, Coco, and a scant few others. And most of the games that came out of the states didn’t star a female character–she was in the background. That was the position that women took in gaming: ten paces behind a man. I mean, even now, in 2010, there still aren’t that many games that star a woman coming out of the United States. Just a brief sweep of the game covers reveals the same gritty white male with some sort of backstory-related facial scar.
Sure, there are games where you can decide if you’re a man or a woman, but the worlds in which the male and female character operate are not created equal. Just look at Oblivion, where the stats for your character are different, depending on if you are male or female (spoiler: the women are usually physically weaker, what a surprise.) As well, in games like Fallout 3 and Mass Effect 1, the clothes or facial disfigurements change for your character if they’re female–in Fallout 3, Sexy Sleepwear becomes a teddy on a female model, whilst being pajamas on a male model, and in ME1, the scars for the women are noticeably smaller and more discreet than the men’s massive facial scars.
The point is, there are few games that star women, and those that do usually feature prominently her tits, not her personality. The game is marketed to men, not to women. We can’t even have our own heroes!
But Beyond Good and Evil was different! For those who’ve never played it, it had nothing to do with Nietzsche. The game stars Jade, a photojournalist, an “Action Reporter.” She lives on the planet Hyllis in a lighthouse, taking care of a cadre of orphans with her “Uncle Peyj,” a pig-man. On a suspicious mission from a suspicious character, Jade and Peyj uncover a government conspiracy relating to the safety of their planet from the alien threat, the Domz. It’s full of action, adventure, and interesting characters that, even if you only meet them for a moment, seem totally complete. Sure, the boys at Mammago Garage in the game are kind of a stereotypical version of Jamaicans, but they’re also rhinoceros-people, so I’m not really sure what’s going on there.
Regardless, the game was awesome, and starred a non-sexualized female who was able to handle herself. She had an interesting background (she’s also an orphan), and was a complex, deeply moving character that I easily related to.
I hope they finish this game. I hope it’s awesome. I hope it shows gamers that a female doesn’t need to have her tits hanging out to catch their attention.
Without further ado, and with my rant at its completion, I present to you the trailer I mentioned earlier:
Oh yeah, it’s that good.
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