While all the nominated games have strong stories, Beyond Good & Evil's stands out due to its ambitious scope and interesting delivery. Michel Ancel and his team serve up a compelling tale that plays with many of the standard conventions you'll find in most any game. The story follows an archetypal heroine who fits the standard "unassuming hero swept up into amazing circumstances" requirement for most action adventure games. You'll even find a pretty standard "good versus evil" setup. However, as the story unfolds, you'll find that the definition of what is good and what is evil is a lot more complex than you're originally led to believe.

That the game doesn't opt for a standard black-and-white approach to its characters and their motivations is refreshing. Trying to discover just what is going on and how your actions fit in to everything pulls you into the game quite nicely. The fact that the game's characters are highly expressive and brought to life using excellent animation, artwork, and voice acting certainly helps matters, too. Best of all, the journey you take to find out the truth will make you think. It's rare to find a video game with something to say about the nature of truth and the power of the media, especially one that's critical of these things, but Beyond Good & Evil manages to do just that. While the other games in the category all have strong stories to tell, Beyond Good & Evil manages to have a message that will stay with you after you've finished it.