Grab Beyond Good & Evil OST for free!

Beyond Good and Evil is one of my favourite games ever (might be smart to finally do that list one day and publish it here). I love its green-lips heroine, races design, story, orphaned alien children, graphical design and of course great soundtrack. It is therefore with much pleasure that I would like to point out that the aforementioned soundtrack is available for download free of charge (the password for the album is MySpace.com/HyllianMusic and the list of mirrors is here).

While the music tracks from Beyond Good and Evil haven’t reached the ultimate status that mp3 can dream of, namely being put in the permanent folder on my Zen Stone player, they are quite memorable and I do come back to listen to them every now and again. There is also a good deal of variation between them: ranging from ambient oriental music (“Ancient Chinese secrets”) which I have used as a background for one of my tea ceremony dates, through weird sounds of “Propaganda”, to aggressive techno-ish boss fight theme (“Sins of father”), they provide a good variety of tunes for different moods.

The soundtrack was in fact released for free long time ago, which is when I got it, but it’s just quite recently that it has popped up on MySpace. Even if it’s just the clever marketing ploy in order to draw our attention to incoming Beyond Good and Evil 2, I am comfy with it, because I do like freebies, plus this soundtrack is really awesome. Also, worth noting is this interesting remix of one of the main themes, availabe at OCRemix – it is an unofficial remix, but it’s quite good, so I allow myself to link to it as well.

Barts’ Short Bursts vol. 3 – smart reading edition

Since the concept of Barts’ Short Bursts is a dynamic one and still in its infancy, I have decide to evolve its formula a bit: if possible, each of these posts should have a theme to it. Instead of being a random heap of links and information, such post would provide you with a bunch of interesting things that are not totally from different dimensions, but are somehow connected.

Today’s post will provide you with links to a lot of reading material, hence the name:

* Saracen, the Arabian Knight, has played Deus Ex and obviously likes it a lot. Read his reflections on politics, philosophy and other serious issues in one of the best games ever created in his blog post. It is a pleasure to see praise one of my favourite title written by someone coming from totally different cultural background. Also, it goes to show that truly good pieces of art and story, be it a movie, a theatre performance or a game, can be appreciated regardless of spectator’s origins.

* Trent Polack shares some thoughts on game design and emergent gameplay in this article entitled “An economy of fun”. Whether you want to create your own game one day or not, this constitutes a very interesting piece of lecture.

* Recently published game Velvet Assassin is based on the tragic events that took place during World War II, namely the heartbreaking story of Violette Szabo. Is basing a game on such real life drama an exploitation or is it not? Alec Meer from RockPaperShotgun put down his doubts in form of a short article. Be sure to check comments, too.

* Even though I haven’t blogged about it, I got to play Braid. Contrary to most folks, however, I didn’t like it, among other things because of its insane difficulty level and demonic puzzles. Krystian Majewski has written a great article on Braid’s difficulty and nasty tricks it plays on innocent, unsuspecting gamer. I really wish Jonathan Blow would have read it before publishing Braid.

* Last, but not least, Simon Ferrari deciphers some of Beyond Good & Evil themes. While I don’t necessarily agree with all that he put in the article and some of his connotations are a bit too far-stretched for my taste, it is refreshing to see other of my favourite games (I really should make a list one day) analysed from a different perspective.

As a bow to all the other true hardcore readers, I have decided to be somewhat malicious this time and not to adorn this post with any shiny images – the little letters will have to suffice, dear gamers.

Even further beyond Good and Evil

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away there lived a girl who was a reporter and lived in a lighthouse. Her name was Jade – very fitting, since she had green hair and used green lipstick. Since the planet she lived on has been struck by war and the girl had good heart underneath tough street-smart tomboy skin, she was running a shelter for war orphans of all races. It didn’t matter whether a kid had horns or blue skin – she tried to help them all. Unfortunately, her job was not always allowing her to pay all the expenses, so one time electricity was cut off, just when evil DomZ attacked, leaving her and kids without a shield. Lots of trouble resulted, including new job, joining resistance, taking part in illegal races, assembling a spaceship, flying out in space and taking lots of photographs…

This is a premise of Beyond Good and Evil, a very good but underappreciated game. To give you the taste of it, I suggest you watch this very atmospheric trailer:

You might also want to see the excellent fan-made trailer and game beginning, as well as Jeff Gerstmann’s videoreview.

It has gained a cult status quite some time after it has been published, because even though it was really fresh and with captivating story, it didn’t really sell well. Unfortunately, we, who loved the story and stylish execution of it, were left with story that begged for continuation, as BGaE was only a first part in what was planned to be the trilogy.

It is therefore with great joy that both me and many others have welcomed the news that after long time Ubisoft has decided to allow the original game’s creator, Michel Ancel, to continue the story in a sequel.

Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado let me present to you the first teaser of the second part to this beautiful and touching story:

Yes, the art style has changed to a more gritty and serious look, yes, this is some desert setting suggesting that “we are not on Hyllis anymore, Toto“, yes, I have a ton of doubts and fears concerning the sequel, but nevertheless it’s Beyond good and Evil 2 and Michel Ancel is behind it! Just how cool is that!

I hope they don’t screw this one up.

Carlson and Peters, page 364