I mean, obviously, below is lousy with spoilers.
Beyond: Two Souls (B:TS) is a game I completely ignored on its release. I ignored it for the same reason I ignored Heavy Rain: it's a Quantic Dream game, and Quantic Dream made Indigo Prophecy (Fahrenheit in Europe), a game which, about halfway through, jumped the shark so completely that it was able to pull off a triple somersault mid-leap before hitting a perfect three-point landing upon its arrival in Crazyville.
I'm going to address Indigo Prophecy before I get into B:TS, as, for me, I can't talk about the latter without at least mentioning the former. The primary problem with Indigo Prophecy is that the plot, characters and dialogue are all, to put it politely, poor. This is not a new thing for videogames; there is a lot of bad writing in videogames, but it seems so much more of an issue in Indigo Prophecy because, unlike those other games, the story is not in service of the gameplay. Instead, the roles are swapped, and so the moment when the Internet assumes corporeal form and masquerades as a dead old lady in a wheelchair is that much harder to accept gladly, because I furiously waggled the left stick and rhythmically mashed the shoulder buttons for six hours just to see that god damn plot development. What started out as an intriguing premise and a fun way to create a murder mystery/police procedural feels obliged to tell you to save the world because this is a videogame, and that's what the player always does in videogames.
But that was nearly a decade before B:TS. B:TS has the advantage of improved technology, immense star power in the form of its cast and, surely, a far larger budget. B:TS should be so far ahead of what Indigo Prophecy could deliver that they are barely comparable. And, for the most part, I think it is.
I've always liked to think that a graphical prowess is entirely independent of a good game, that a good game is good regardless of how few or many polygons are being pushed. It annoys me that I think B:TS is a better game because of how gorgeous it looks. It's really astounding: thanks to its incredible design and art, its greater control over framing and direction than most games and its ultra widescreen aspect ratio, the game looks better on PS3 than many I've played on current-gen. The characters are brought to life through convincing motion capture and facial animation, and I can only assume that someone must be incredibly proud of managing to avoid dead-eye stares across the board throughout the entire game.
The acting, too, maintains a high level of quality from both the lead and supporting cast, and lines are delivered convincingly and with the weight and emotion as required by the scene. Ellen Page, in particular, puts in an entertaining performance, especially impressive when I'm sure that her celebrity could've allowed her to phone it in had she intended to.
The plot is equally intriguing; Jodie's story is told through a narrative that leaps almost chaotically from time and place non-linearly, but never to the effect of confusing me (the timeline on the loading screen admittedly was of vital help). I'm not typically interested in stories regarding ghosts, spirits, the paranormal and all the mystic bullshit that can normally haunt it, but it works here. Aiden, Jodie's entwined spirit, is a smart inclusion to allow for puzzle solving, delivery of exposition and exploring Jodie's character from a different perspective. You're not Jodie, you're Jodie and Aiden, and thanks to his ethereal nature, Aiden is the one character whose development you're most in control of throughout. Ellen Page's facial expressions and the emotion in her voice help us understand what kind of person Jodie is, but Aiden is a silent protagonist. When choice is given to the player in control of Aiden, the path the player takes shapes what kind of character Aiden becomes: is he playful or reserved? Protective or vindictive? Mischievous or malicious? The limited interactions allow for a surprising degree of variation.
It allows for some really well-structured and entertaining levels. In "The Dinner", the scene starts with Jodie at home in a messy apartment, laying on a sofa half-dressed, with an hour to make dinner for a potential boyfriend whom Aiden doesn't like. Trying to clean up the place and herself and preparing a meal while simultaneously trying to stop Aiden tearing the place up (and tricking you into getting locked out at one point, which caused me to burst out laughing with how well I'd been played), was more fun and appropriately stressful than it had any right to be. "Homeless" is multi-stage level where you try to survive in the midst of a stark winter blizzard, utilizing Jodie's wits and Aiden's powers to protect you and your friends who are written convincingly enough to the point where I genuinely cared about saving them from the many trials that were thrown at us.
About halfway into the game, I was envisioning any LTTP that came of it to be one long apology to David Cage and my proud assertion that I was now eager to see whatever else Quantic Dream thinks up, but then B:TS decided that, no wait, this is a videogame, and so we're damn well going to have to save the world.
One minute, I'm channeling a man's dead wife and telling him to let her go, the next, I'm infiltrating a Bond villain underwater lair in a mad-dash attempt to avoid the apocalypse. Apparently, the Kazirstanis (yes, they made up a country to act as a vague menace, another sign of great videogame storytelling), god damn them, will unleash the full power of the Infraworld (where the dead are, right) to catastrophic effect if my team of CIA douchebags and I don't go in there and do it ourselves anyway in the process of trying to blow up Blofeld's summerhouse. I accepted this mission from the US government immediately after finding out that the US government stole me from my mother as a newborn before chemically lobotomizing her, being knocked out by G-men seconds after this discovery and waking up in a secret government lab so clinical, dastardly and ripe to be torn apart by its own research gone wild that it would give the CEO of the Umbrella Corporation a raging hard-on.
It's like I put a VHS tape of Ghost in and, right about the scene where pottery-making is happening, someone taped over the rest with the second half of The Core.
And it's such a fucking shame. The characters were good! The plot was fascinating! I was attached to Jodie and wanted to see how the story ended. But they couldn't resist turning it into a videogame. You have to save the world! Action! Suspense! Global crises averted by plucky person sitting on a sofa gripping a DualShock® 3! I couldn't just have a well-crafted personal tale about a girl and her mischievous-or-malicious twinned spirit, could I?
And you had to go and end twenty fucking times, didn't you? Coda, fake to black. Coda, fade to black. Over and over. That last five minutes of The Core was recorded over with The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King: Extended Edition.
Bleugh. I still like B:TS. The good parts, I think, outweigh the bad, and Quantic Dream are still doing something not many others are. Thanks to games like The Walking Dead, cinematic, interactive fiction has become a respectable, wide-reaching genre, but not many devs can deliver the production values that Quantic Dream bring with them. It's engaging and exciting, and I hope that the curve of their improvement continues into the future with their next project.
There's a lot I'm thinking of that I haven't typed. Part of that is because the OP is long enough already, and part of it is because it's still a vivid jumble in my head. My primary question to you, Gaf, is what do you think of the story's progression in B:TS? Am I alone in thinking it totally lost it in the last third?
Also, should I go back and play Heavy Rain?
Beyond: Two Souls (B:TS) is a game I completely ignored on its release. I ignored it for the same reason I ignored Heavy Rain: it's a Quantic Dream game, and Quantic Dream made Indigo Prophecy (Fahrenheit in Europe), a game which, about halfway through, jumped the shark so completely that it was able to pull off a triple somersault mid-leap before hitting a perfect three-point landing upon its arrival in Crazyville.
I'm going to address Indigo Prophecy before I get into B:TS, as, for me, I can't talk about the latter without at least mentioning the former. The primary problem with Indigo Prophecy is that the plot, characters and dialogue are all, to put it politely, poor. This is not a new thing for videogames; there is a lot of bad writing in videogames, but it seems so much more of an issue in Indigo Prophecy because, unlike those other games, the story is not in service of the gameplay. Instead, the roles are swapped, and so the moment when the Internet assumes corporeal form and masquerades as a dead old lady in a wheelchair is that much harder to accept gladly, because I furiously waggled the left stick and rhythmically mashed the shoulder buttons for six hours just to see that god damn plot development. What started out as an intriguing premise and a fun way to create a murder mystery/police procedural feels obliged to tell you to save the world because this is a videogame, and that's what the player always does in videogames.
But that was nearly a decade before B:TS. B:TS has the advantage of improved technology, immense star power in the form of its cast and, surely, a far larger budget. B:TS should be so far ahead of what Indigo Prophecy could deliver that they are barely comparable. And, for the most part, I think it is.
I've always liked to think that a graphical prowess is entirely independent of a good game, that a good game is good regardless of how few or many polygons are being pushed. It annoys me that I think B:TS is a better game because of how gorgeous it looks. It's really astounding: thanks to its incredible design and art, its greater control over framing and direction than most games and its ultra widescreen aspect ratio, the game looks better on PS3 than many I've played on current-gen. The characters are brought to life through convincing motion capture and facial animation, and I can only assume that someone must be incredibly proud of managing to avoid dead-eye stares across the board throughout the entire game.
The acting, too, maintains a high level of quality from both the lead and supporting cast, and lines are delivered convincingly and with the weight and emotion as required by the scene. Ellen Page, in particular, puts in an entertaining performance, especially impressive when I'm sure that her celebrity could've allowed her to phone it in had she intended to.
The plot is equally intriguing; Jodie's story is told through a narrative that leaps almost chaotically from time and place non-linearly, but never to the effect of confusing me (the timeline on the loading screen admittedly was of vital help). I'm not typically interested in stories regarding ghosts, spirits, the paranormal and all the mystic bullshit that can normally haunt it, but it works here. Aiden, Jodie's entwined spirit, is a smart inclusion to allow for puzzle solving, delivery of exposition and exploring Jodie's character from a different perspective. You're not Jodie, you're Jodie and Aiden, and thanks to his ethereal nature, Aiden is the one character whose development you're most in control of throughout. Ellen Page's facial expressions and the emotion in her voice help us understand what kind of person Jodie is, but Aiden is a silent protagonist. When choice is given to the player in control of Aiden, the path the player takes shapes what kind of character Aiden becomes: is he playful or reserved? Protective or vindictive? Mischievous or malicious? The limited interactions allow for a surprising degree of variation.
It allows for some really well-structured and entertaining levels. In "The Dinner", the scene starts with Jodie at home in a messy apartment, laying on a sofa half-dressed, with an hour to make dinner for a potential boyfriend whom Aiden doesn't like. Trying to clean up the place and herself and preparing a meal while simultaneously trying to stop Aiden tearing the place up (and tricking you into getting locked out at one point, which caused me to burst out laughing with how well I'd been played), was more fun and appropriately stressful than it had any right to be. "Homeless" is multi-stage level where you try to survive in the midst of a stark winter blizzard, utilizing Jodie's wits and Aiden's powers to protect you and your friends who are written convincingly enough to the point where I genuinely cared about saving them from the many trials that were thrown at us.
About halfway into the game, I was envisioning any LTTP that came of it to be one long apology to David Cage and my proud assertion that I was now eager to see whatever else Quantic Dream thinks up, but then B:TS decided that, no wait, this is a videogame, and so we're damn well going to have to save the world.
One minute, I'm channeling a man's dead wife and telling him to let her go, the next, I'm infiltrating a Bond villain underwater lair in a mad-dash attempt to avoid the apocalypse. Apparently, the Kazirstanis (yes, they made up a country to act as a vague menace, another sign of great videogame storytelling), god damn them, will unleash the full power of the Infraworld (where the dead are, right) to catastrophic effect if my team of CIA douchebags and I don't go in there and do it ourselves anyway in the process of trying to blow up Blofeld's summerhouse. I accepted this mission from the US government immediately after finding out that the US government stole me from my mother as a newborn before chemically lobotomizing her, being knocked out by G-men seconds after this discovery and waking up in a secret government lab so clinical, dastardly and ripe to be torn apart by its own research gone wild that it would give the CEO of the Umbrella Corporation a raging hard-on.
It's like I put a VHS tape of Ghost in and, right about the scene where pottery-making is happening, someone taped over the rest with the second half of The Core.
And it's such a fucking shame. The characters were good! The plot was fascinating! I was attached to Jodie and wanted to see how the story ended. But they couldn't resist turning it into a videogame. You have to save the world! Action! Suspense! Global crises averted by plucky person sitting on a sofa gripping a DualShock® 3! I couldn't just have a well-crafted personal tale about a girl and her mischievous-or-malicious twinned spirit, could I?
And you had to go and end twenty fucking times, didn't you? Coda, fake to black. Coda, fade to black. Over and over. That last five minutes of The Core was recorded over with The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King: Extended Edition.
Bleugh. I still like B:TS. The good parts, I think, outweigh the bad, and Quantic Dream are still doing something not many others are. Thanks to games like The Walking Dead, cinematic, interactive fiction has become a respectable, wide-reaching genre, but not many devs can deliver the production values that Quantic Dream bring with them. It's engaging and exciting, and I hope that the curve of their improvement continues into the future with their next project.
There's a lot I'm thinking of that I haven't typed. Part of that is because the OP is long enough already, and part of it is because it's still a vivid jumble in my head. My primary question to you, Gaf, is what do you think of the story's progression in B:TS? Am I alone in thinking it totally lost it in the last third?
Also, should I go back and play Heavy Rain?