So, my more-or-less full thought on the Beowulf Origin Story. People say that the complement sandwich method of critique is not helpful, so I'll just go ahead and get the worst part of my criticisms out of the way first. Needless to say, the below text contains spoilers.
TL;DR: personally, I think this story is a travesty for Skullgirls lore, and honestly it's just not a great story, but it is perfectly serviceable one if you ignore that and I think most casual fans will like it
It has become clear to me now that there is no one at Autumn Games, or whatever external parties are involved with the creation of this story, that cares about established lore. Here are the worst offenders:
- The story began 38 years ago, a year before Beowulf was born. (Thankfully, getting Beo's age of 37 correct was the least they could do). A refresher: the current story takes place 7 years after the end of the Grand War, which raged for approximately a decade. So, this is set way before the War started.
- Lorenzo comes to threaten Theo, Beo's father, to force him to throw a match against Veleno, a Medici-affiliated wrestler. The awkwardness of the head of the most powerful crime family to come personally threaten a wrestler aside, he also brought Black Dahlia with him. The problem is: Black Dahlia was originally a ASG soldier, who eventually defected to the Medici after working for the Labs for some time. The ASG Labs would have been established around the start of the Grand War, since it was financed by King Franz's government in exchange for them building weapons for the Canopian Military. Needless to say, the Labs should not even have existed yet at this time, let alone having produced Dahlia in her current state.
- Even if the Labs did exist then, it is extremely unlikely that Black Dahlia would be working for the Medici yet. And EVEN if we see Dahlia then, who is said to be around 50-60 years old now, she would have been in her 20s at most, not her current appearance as an older woman. Apparently the writers don't know that Dahlia is not immortal like Lorenzo
- The timeline and lore error of the ASG Labs' existence is further emphasised by Elaine, Beo's mother, being recommended to join "Lab Zero Clinic" for treatment. We know that, even while the ASG Labs exist, the existence of Lab 0 is top secret, since they conduct extremely dangerous researches on Skullgirl blood. Completely asinine to think that they would open a public clinic calling themselves "Lab Zero", again displaying ignorance on the writers' part about the role and history of the ASG Labs
- Worse still, the person who recommended Elaine to go there was Sister Agatha, i.e. Double. There are 2 problems with this. Firstly, why on earth would Double be helping the work of the ASG Labs, when it has been clear that she is antagonistic to them, as seen by her attacking Lab 8 in the 2E timeline. Secondly, we know that Double needs to keep a low profile and stay hidden in order to influence and manipulate people in New Meridian. We know that Sister Agatha is the current disguise of Double in the present timeline, 38 years later. Why would Double be disguised as the same young nun, using the same name, for all that time? It's not like this is an on-and-off disguise she uses either, because we also see Sister Agatha appear again in another scene 9 years later, and another a few more years later with grown-up Beowulf. In that time we see Veleno age from a young wrestler to an old man. Surely someone would notice the weird immortal nun that has looked the same for 40 years?
- This is a minor one but still a bit annoying. Chapter 2 takes place in River King Casino, even though River King Casino is not built until at least 16 years before the current timeline, established in Big Band's story. The story isn't specifically stated to be happening there, so River King Casino could be used just as a placeholder, but still there could be other locations that could have been used instead such as the Medici Tower or the NWA Arena (which we don't know exactly when it was built) that would have fit with the timeline
- Another minor one: Veleno exclaims "God, he looks just like [Theo]" when seeing grown-up Beo. The main religion of Canopy is Trinitism, which worships the 3 Goddesses. We have seen in previous stories that people use the term Goddesses or at least just one Goddess, not God, when invoking their dieties. Even if it's relatively minor it shows the lack of care when considering the universe and its established lore
- Weird retcon: Double, for some reason, got involved with Beo's family, in order to get him to fulfill some sort of "destiny", when we have seen in his 2E story that Double only sees him as a useful idiot who she can sic on ASG soldiers in order to slow them down, and whom she tried to murder once he stopped listening to "Zane". This is not a man with some destiny to fulfill, and that's not a bad thing. More on this later.
These are, at best, conscious retcons, or, at worst, outright errors and contradictions (I would bet on the latter). Separately, the below are my criticisms on the story writing itself and some of the softer retcons that I think have made Beowulf's lore worse:
- The whole Lab Zero Clinic subplot is either a pointless red herring, or a bad retcon that has made Beo, in my opinion, a less interesting character. Assuming it was intentional, I think the intention of the writer was to show that Elaine went to Lab 0 and received some sort of experimental treatment, which caused Beo to become enhanced with superhuman strength. If this is the case, then I think it does a huge disservice to Beowulf's character. The most unique thing about Beo on the Skullgirls roster was that he is a completely regular human, wielding a normal but sturdy chair, but through sheer willpower and training, allows him to go toe-to-toe against fighters enhanced by magic and science, or wielding supernatural weapons. Having him be another experiment with power derived from the ASG Labs makes him so much less unique
- If the Lab 0 connection is not related to him becoming enhanced, then it's just a completely dumb story point. You'd think if she went and got some experimental drugs from some shady lab, they could at least have provided them for free or intern her as a test subject. Why the hell is she even out and their family going broke from paying for doctors? What would be the point of going to the Labs at all?
- Another stupid retcon is changing Beo from a wrestler who carves his own path through life to be some sort of long-term project of Double. Again, I think this makes him much less unique in the cast, when we already have other characters like Umbrella that has this attribute.
- This also includes Double basically indirectly giving him the Hurting. It feels like the writers really fail to understand what makes Beowulf compelling, and believe that the only way to make him important to the plot is that he must have some predetermined destiny, superhuman power, and a special weapon given to him. What a miserable way to try to "fix" a character in the exact aspects didn't need fixing.
- Beowulf's lore was a completely blank slate, and this would have been a perfect opportunity for Autumn to do something truly unique with him. But, nope, now Beo is just another sad orphan whose misfortune derived from the actions of the Medici Mafia. Now he joins the packed club of Filia, Squigly, Ms. Fortune, Peacock, Marie. To a lesser extents, Cerebella (manipulated by the Medici but we don't know how exactly she became an orphan) and Painwheel (not technically an orphan but at least disowned in her story). Sure, the Medici are the main antagonistic force in New Meridian, but they could have done ANYTHING with his story. His family didn't even originally had to be from New Meridian. Completely wasted potential.
- Not to mention the "down-on-his-luck fighter who needs to work for the Mafia" is such a cliche story. It's not "bad" in vacuum and it's a trope for a reason, but along with all the other issues it just makes the story so much more boring
- A fundamental issue with this story is that it doesn't even feel like a "Beowulf story". Hell, he didn't exist in the first chapter and was barely a character in the second. He really only appeared in the final chapter and didn't do anything much apart from making some funny quips. Theo and Elaine are good characters and their interactions were nice to read, but that should have been 1/3 of the story at most. The majority of the story should have been focused on Beowulf. Could you imagine if Filia's Origin Story had the first 2 chapters be entirely her parents talking about how Marcus left the Mafia, only to show Filia meeting Samson in the last chapter, and then showing Marie's attack and her parents being murdered on a "montage" on a goddamn TV screen?
- Following on from that, the most interesting part of his history, the Grendel fight, was not shown AT ALL. The lead-up to his fight with Grendel would have been the perfect opportunity to give a wider look at the SG universe, especially wartime Canopy Kingdom and the tensions between humans and Gigans that led to the Grendel fight being set up by the Reniors with the help of the Medici. Did Beowulf have any reservations about that fight? Was he terrified? Excited? Did he really know, as Double taunted him, that Grendel was drugged and his victory was hollow? We know that, behind his nonchalant facade, Beowulf was deeply distressed by having killed Grendel and his Mother. They could have shown his grief and guilt that led to him retiring from wrestling and trying to go into entertainment. It would have led him to organically meet Annie for the first time when he was on her TV show, not the random encounter we got, and they could have had a much more meaningful conversation.
- The Annie encounter we did get was felt completely random and pointless. Why was Annie even hanging around in a random amateur wrestling match? Why did she decide to approach him and give him some cryptic advice? There was no reason she would have known he was involved with Double or his "destiny". In Beo's main game's story, it made sense for Annie to approach him given their past history and the fact that he was trying to chase down the Skullgirl. This is just another forced encounter with a named character that led nowhere
- The scene with Double killing Veleno also felt pointless. Even assuming Beowulf has a destiny, presumably to fight Grendel, become washed-up and reappear in the events of the main game, what does killing Veleno have do with accomplishing it? The Grendel fight was facilitated by the Medici, and if Beo had been wrestling for the Medici, he would still have fought Grendel eventually. Seems like the whole thing is just for shock value and for Veleno to get comeuppance for what he did to Theo, but they could have done that without Double's involvement
- Aside from issues with storywriting, the technical implementation also felt underwhelming. Minor bugs in the dialogues aside, on my Android version, apparently Autumn had not figured out how to keep the display on during cutscenes, so it would go to sleep in the middle, unless I keep tapping the screen to keep it awake. I get that the scenes are spoken and are supposed to be listened to, but the lack of subtitles isn't exactly accessible to hard-of-hearing people, and even for me with the sounds on, there were some dialogues that were difficult to figure out. I still can't make out what the hell the announcer says in the first scene where Veleno breaks Theo's leg.
Having said all that, the story is not bad. The interactions with Theo and Elaine were nice. The lines were competently written for the most part which is a major improvement to the atrocity that was the intro to Shards of the Undying. Beo's quips were fun. Kai and Erica did a great job with the voice acting, which they covered various roles. The artworks were good and the animations really bring the story to life, even if I'm not a fan of the animation style. I'm sure the majority of Mobile players would enjoy it. I hope this release of content get players excited and helps keep SGM development alive, and proves to Autumn that there is real demand for story contents.
Unfortunately, as someone who is particular about SG lore, I don't think this content was made with consideration for fans like me, so Tim's words from the BTS interview rings hollow. I don't view this story as a canon entry into the SG universe and I won't be following any more lore-related outputs from Autumn Games, unless something drastically changes in their attitude to lore-keeping and their way-of-working for storywriting.
I doubt anyone from Autumn would ever read my ramblings or give much value to it, but if they do: You have inherited the development of one of the most interesting game universes, with a long-established lore and passionate fans. I know you must have seen the prior works of previous devs who have tirelessly worked to preserve the original vision of the creators and made sure that the various stories in the Skullgirls universe are part of a more-or-less consistent tapestry of lore and history, which reward deep readings and understandings. We are the people who have stuck with Skullgirls for years, some over a decade. If you care to, you can talk to us. If you put in the time and resources to understand the lore and write stories that speak to us, we will put in the time and resources to support you.
