Anytime I hear the words ‘more’ and ‘accessible’ grouped together in a conversation about an upcoming videogame, I get a little twinge of fear in my stomach. I can tell you that when I read that Ubisoft chief exec Yves Guillemot said that the newly announced sequel to Beyond Good & Evil was going to be “more accessible,” that twinge turned into full on dread. All too often when games have become “more accessible” they’ve become stupider, easier and less challenging, and that seems to be exactly Guillemot and Ubisoft’s plan.
“We saw with Beyond Good & Evil that so many customers were extremely happy with the game,” Guillemot told Next-Gen at this years Ubidays. “We had a different audience at that time. We had more core gamers than casual gamers than we have today.
“We think the game was probably a little too difficult for the general gamers at that time. We’re going to make it more accessible and make sure that it’s really done for the new generation that’s come into videogames.”
Alright, I’ll admit the game didn’t sell well and Ubi probably wants to shake things up to make sure it does this time. But was it really that hard? I was challenged throughout but never to the point of exaparation and I don’t think even a casual gamer would have that much difficulty with it. Maybe the large open world would be initmidating but take that away and I don’t think you’ve got a Beyond Good & Evil game anymore. And you definitely won’t have as great a story. The core gamers are still here Ubi, please make sure you don’t forget us. Here’s hoping that more accessible means a deeper story and intrinsic controls and not the dumbing down of the characters and simple button mashing.
