Three questions for the listless Beyond Eyes
I had intended this to be a longer piece exploring Beyond Eyes (Tiger & Squid, 2015) and its commodification of disability. But after finishing the game it was hard for me to conjure the energy. Beyond Eyes is toneless and deserves to be critiqued for that (check out Castle Couch’s review), but it is also bland and boring and forgettable enough that I’m not sure it’s worth it in 2020 as I try to fill my life with laughter in love.
So instead here are three quick questions which roughly follow my evolving attempts to enjoy the game as I was playing it. There will be spoilers and I need to give a content warning for discussions of ableism and animal death. Woo.
How does Beyond Eyes depict blindness?
Beyond Eyes opens with a scene of the young girl, Rae, losing her sight during a fireworks accident. Her playfulness is replaced with depression as she adjusts to her new life, her only joy coming from Nani, a stray cat who visits her. One day, however, Nani stops coming, so Rae frantically sets out to find him. Eventually, she does, only to learn that he has died and with him her only friend. As her world begins to turn completely white, credits role.
I anticipated being frustrated with Beyond Eyes depiction of blindness due to its lack of accessibility options for the visibly impaired, and the strong focus on its art direction in promotional materials. The intended read, I believe, is to depict blindness as enabling a different form of seeing which can be just as beautiful as the one able-bodied people see. But while I was prepared for a patronizing, pastel Daredevil I did not expect Beyond Eyes to so immediately forget about its core conceit.
Aside from the opening cutscene, Rae’s blindness is unremarked upon. There are a handful of instances where sounds trick Rae into believing something is there that isn’t, but these moments only further enforce Beyond Eyes conceptualization of blindness as almost wholly debilitating. There are thousands of people living full lives with full or partial blindness, but rather than celebrate their accomplishments Beyond Eyes shallowly imagines a life of bumping into walls and thinking a lawn mower is a semi-truck. On top of that, it is unrelentingly bleak, with the halfhearted after-credits scene doing little to undo watching a wonderful cat inexplicably fall dead, in a cemetery no less.
If Beyond Eyes cared about actual empathy it wouldn’t be designed around a preternatural ability to sense the world around Rae, and would take steps to show ways in which people living with blindness actually function in a visual world. Blindness here functions as a mechanical justification for the art tech. That a little girl gets blasted in the face with a roman candle is circumstantial.
Screenshot courtesy of Tiger & Squid
How does Beyond Eyes design around an invisible world?
Beyond Eyes wants to sell you on a game which unfolds as the player navigates through it. As Rae wanders gardens and parks the ground fills with color and objects spring into view as if invisible until drenched in paint. It is not unlike the opening level of The Unfinished Swan (Giant Sparrow, 2013) but instead of throwing paint balls Rae just wades into a fog of war.
This effect makes for a beautiful trailer but in play is instantly infuriating. Not being able to see level geometry until you are all but on top of it means Rae is bumping into walls, bushes, knee high benches, constantly. Which, fine. Blindness means you can’t see and that turns you into a human bumper car or something. But when every level is a literal hedge maze moving around becomes an act of eliminating options. Imagine solving a maze without being able to see the turns or dead ends before you had travelled down them. Then imagine slowly, so slowly retracing your steps, brushing up against the maze’s edge in case you missed a dirt path meant to guide you.
There is very little to remark upon with Beyond Eyes design beyond its blunt tedium. The game, like disability, exists to showcase the art and does nothing more to gamify what is already an established mechanic of a hidden map. It is the most derogatory and literal application of “walking simulator” I have played, and I find that sad.
Is Beyond Eyes an effective art piece?
So I keep returning to Beyond Eyes art and I don’t think I am being controversial in saying its the most pronounced aspect of the game, both in marketing and in play. And I will not deny that there is a niceness to the game’s soft pastels, minimal textures, and jiggling cats. Beyond Eyes is not unpleasant to look at.
But as an art showcase, Beyond Eyes doesn’t do much to allow the player to appreciate its world. There are no moments of quiet reflection, ala Brothers: Two Sons (Starbreeze, 2013), no striking flourishes to fill up screenshots and give cause to stop nudging against bushes and take in the scene.
Overwhelmingly, Beyond Eyes remains hidden, a blank canvas that we might assume hides something pretty but which is only ever partially revealed. The entire structure of the game seems to be fighting its biggest asset, yet at the same time that asset is built on the premise of slowly blossoming into view. Somewhere between conceptualization and execution Beyond Eyes failed to integrate its aesthetics with its tech to form anything cohesive and complimentary.
Beyond Eyes is fragmented, half-hearted, and dull, and I doubt I would have cared enough to write this much if it wasn’t also irresponsible with its subject matter. I do believe Tiger & Squid had good intentions, and Beyond Eyes is far from paving any roads to hell. I just wish they had spent as much time considering Beyond Eyes’ framing device and mechanics as they did editing its trailer.
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Beyond Eyes was developed by Tiger & Squid. It was reviewed on PC and is available for PC, Mac, Linux, Xbox One, and Playstation 4.