Beyond Good & Evil

What if Pokémon Snap were political commentary?

You don’t really expect a game made in the wake of 9/11 to look like Beyond Good & Evil. There’s no flashback to Afghanistan, no presidential address from the White House. The only American accent in the main cast belongs to an anthropomorphic pig whose exclamations evoke the gold rush era (“Cramity! Flagnabbit!”). Yet this colourful fantasy adventure from 2003 is politically of its time.

Ubisoft Montpellier set its adventure in Hillys – supposedly a whole planet, but home to just one Mediterranean-style town set in the mountains, which the locals mine for crystals. This otherwise placid setting is disturbed by two things: first, a distinctly French approach to roundabouts; and second, daily attacks by a parasitic alien race known as the DomZ.

A private military force called the Alpha Section has stepped in to loudly declare itself the protector of the people of Hillys – especially when there are television cameras around – but bombings and kidnappings continue apace. This isn’t a game about the fall of the Twin Towers, but what came afterward: the wars and affronts to personal freedom justified by a vague crusade against a non-specific enemy.

Beyond Good & Evil’s protagonist, Jade is no soldier or vigilante. As the game begins, she’s running a refugee shelter out of a lighthouse. Actually, at the very moment it begins, she’s practicing yoga beneath the boughs of a blossoming tree, on the shore of a still lake, as the sun sets over the hills of Hillys. There’s an undeniable spirituality to Ubisoft Montpellier’s work that can be traced back to Rayman 2, a 3D platformer about saving the Glade Of Dreams from clanking, industrialised Robo-pirates.