This page requires you to know the story of Beyond a Steel Sky and Beneath a Steel Sky, or having had played the game.
I almost rated Beyond a Steel Sky a "Solid" but the more I thought about it, the less I thought of the game. For example, part of the issue with the game that it doesn't know whether it's a comedy or not. Beneath a Steel Sky expertly wove that, because they recognized that Foster, despite the setting and his situation, is a comedy protagonist, which had you to do some pretty heartless things. You could argue that he's a terrible boss, incompetent boob, and an asshole, but ruining Gilbert Lamb's life still seemed like someone was projecting.
BASS2 doesn't do that nearly as well. While Foster often causes chaos, he basically destroys society in the end. Much as Foster's protestations to the Ministers were valid, about free will and not taking pleasure at the expense of another, but you can't just radically change/destroy society overnight and not expect severe repercussions. There was a scene of unhappy citizens running toward guards, and with civil unrest like that, riots and war is a near-certainty, especially as their leaders are now non-existent. Nice job breaking EVERYTHING, Foster, and poor Joey has to suffer for it.Yes, they brought back Joey, the original board and all, only to kill him off in the third act. The other issue is that there's a major plothole. It doesn't explain why Raquel changed when her name was said, and if Orana had any inkling of what was really going on, taking Raquel to the "Reflections Spa" to get brainwashed was a terrible idea.
It's a shame because there are so many other moments that make a lot of retrospect, that Android-Joey was the one that rewrote history because he was trying to remove things that citizens would find "unhappy". With as thick as the credits were, it felt like there were probably some different ideas that the game went through. It's something that was always on Revolution's mind...and what exactly have they been doing all these years? Their last game was Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse and that was a decade ago. Clearly there were some ideas that were being tossed around that somehow got in with the final product, and while it could've been a lot worse, the result isn't exactly good either.
Enh, no one cares about my opinion anyway. Click here to go back to the main game page.