Cultural Impact: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. I don't need to explain the impact of the role of dialogue choices in this game had on future Western RPGs and interactive movies and visual novels to the VGC community. It was kind of a big deal though back in 2003 to be able to have that level of control over the narrative progression of your character. Also frankly more interesting than the contemporaneous Star Wars film trilogy. Connecting the game play itself to the telling of the game's story so directly as this, in an adventure such as this, was quite a new and fresh experience at the time. I'd still rank it as my second-favorite game from that year. (Recognize though that The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker was actually a 2003 release here in the United States and that were I to accordingly include that in my mental selection for '03 accordingly, my calculus might be different.)
My Favorite Game: Beyond Good & Evil.
2003 was the fateful year my country decided to invade Iraq in order to destroy an assortment of WMD facilities and Al Qaeda networks our fearless leaders insisted were there despite UN inspectors being unable to find them. This...development...had a profound impact on my perception of things. (It probably didn't help matters that I happened to come from a military family and as such was predisposed to take such matters more personally than perhaps most would even.) It also happened to be "the year of the Matrix", which was so dubbed because two Matrix sequels (Reloaded and Revolutions), along with The Animatrix and the tie-in video game Enter the Matrix all release within a six-month time window between May and November, electrifying an online fan community with activity and interest (surrounded on both sides by the notable release of Ghost in Shell: Stand Alone Complex and Innocence, I might add). I became a superfan of the Matrix franchise, Ghost in the Shell, Serial Experiments Lain, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and the cyberpunk genre in general, but especially The Matrix and the aforementioned anime material. The ethos of radical doubt held great appeal to me. I started reading stories about how ideas like universe we know potentially being a computer program were increasingly being taken seriously in tech and philosophical circles and just generally began falling into a conspiracy theory mindset, before long graduating to 9/11 truther shit and more. It wasn't too long before I found myself having questions about what "really" happened in Roswell, whether the moon landing really happened, what crop circles were about, etc. Yeah, mistakes were made. Still, you can understand where the trail of distrust began and also, ya know, my personal want of it all to have some profound meaning.
Anyway, with that backdrop established, I was drawn to Beyond Good & Evil by its title, which I happened to know by then was the same as that a famous work by the nihilist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, and by the game's stellar reviews. Beyond Good & Evil turned out to be...
...and the Iraq War was...
...just by coincidence. In point of fact, the game's creators intended it to be a kind of commentary on post-9/11 America. It was actually conceptualized as a grand, space-faring open-universe adventure spanning numerous planets, but the technology available at the time simply didn't afford them the ability to realize that vision, and so the grandiose scope got scaled down a lot to something much more intimate and, ultimately I think, more rewarding than the developers themselves seemed to realize. With its cast of eccentric yet lovable characters and hits on serious themes, it carried the tone of a darker Saturday morning cartoon perfect for the combination of my age and mental place in life.
Jade was also pretty unique and interesting protagonist for her time. Back then the likes of Lara Croft from the Tomb Raider franchise usually informed the way game developers presented their action heroines and anti-heroines. For the characterization of Jade though, the devs had the groundbreaking idea to consult with actual women in order to make the character both likeable and realistic. The result was a more nuanced, multi-talented, and less sexualized sort of female lead than was typical of the age. Jade is capable of defending herself, but relies mainly on her photography and other skills in the course of her efforts to unearth the truth behind the war that's raging in the background (and occasionally the foreground) and her witty yet good-natured relationship to her uncle Pey'j became an especially endearing fixture of the experience for me.
Beyond Good & Evil is sometimes compared to the Legend of Zelda and Ratchet & Clank games in different capacities, but what it really was was a pure adventure game with a wide variety of different game play styles represented fluidly in its repertoire, including photography, exploration, platforming, hovercraft racing, flight, stealth, and (mostly defensive) combat all present, accounted for, and executed with style. It will be returning to my all-time top 30 on this year's greatest game's list.
Other Thoughts: The gaming community had been abuzz with excitement just in general for about a decade by this point. By the the mid-90s, there was tremendous interest in the generalized transition to gaming in 3D. Leading up to that, that excitement found outlets in the transitional advent of "2.5D", increased use of mode-7 technology, experiments like the Virtual Boy, etc. etc. Then the leap happened and numerous franchises and genres had to be reinvented accordingly, which gave unto the whole medium a feeling of freshness. Everything felt new again! And by the time the buzz about 3D itself finally began to die down, a new console generation hit, bringing with it a hot new line-up of launch windows for its various platforms. 2003 was the year that the launch windows were over and the dust began to settle. This was the point, I would say, when gaming in 3D generally started feeling normal. This was the point where people were officially used to it and had some general idea of what to normatively expect from the various applicable genres of games.
From this point forward, I started hearing increasing talk of some people missing 2D gaming. As if partly to satisfy this emerging demand for games that were the right combination of retro and new, a new online download service called Steam launched in 2003. Although its offerings wouldn't really begin to hit the cultural mainstream for another several years, there's no way I can let any discussion of this year go without a mention of that historic development.
Last edited by Jaicee - on 04 November 2023
