by OL » Tue Jun 19, 2018 7:01 pm
I won't go on and on about it after this post, because I don't want to ruin anybody's fun if they're really digging what they see here... but good god, am I ever disappointed by how this looks.
Take note that in absolutely no way am I implying anything about how good or bad the game will be. If anything, it'll probably be a stellar piece of interactive entertainment. Ancel is great, and this has been in development for a long damn time. Tons of money and talent behind it, and let's be honest, that usually adds up to good things.
But as somebody who was in love with the original game almost from launch, has beaten it upwards of 5 or 6 times, and has been craving a continuation to the story for about 15 years now... this just doesn't strike me at all as what I'd been waiting for. If you were to show me this with no title attached, and told me to guess what it's supposed to be a sequel to... I don't know that I'd ever come around to guessing Beyond Good and Evil. Maybe the pig would be a tipoff, but otherwise it's just wildly too different for that to be a natural guess.
And for something like this -- the sequel to a game with a passionate and genuine cult fanbase behind it -- I just don't think that's a great way to go about things. Something like this ought to be almost immediately recognizable as being related to the original, and yet... it really, really is not.
Maybe one day I'll warm to it, if the gameplay looks good and all. But it'll probably take a long time. And if you're trying to make a fan-pleasing game like this (what other point is there in bringing back a previously dead IP if not to please the old fans?), the fact that I'll have to warm up to it feels like a bit of a major misfire.
And what the hell is up with the goddamn overuse of the word "fuck"?
The original game was clean as a PG-rated movie. Seriously.
I'm not opposed to swearing in most cases, but I still take note of it when it seems overboard or out-of-place, and in this case it's absolutely both of those things. It's like getting a sequel to the Iron Giant where Hogarth keeps calling his mom a bloody cunt rag.
I'm no prude, but this stuff weirdly just comes off as being totally not right.