Beyond: Two Souls (2015, Playstation 4) Review

(2 / 4)

Also on: Playstation 3

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A MATTER OF LIFE & DEATH

Here's to Beyond: Two Souls, a daring attempt to make an entrancing, high-end cinematic experience in video game format. It stars supreme A-list actors Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe, and boasts great visuals and a bombastic musical score produced by Hollywood superstar Hans Zimmer. All the efforts poured into it makes me feel ashamed for not liking it better. In fact, this game seems tailor-made for me, the old cinema snob and story-nut that I am. So why am I looking back on it now with such indifference?

First things first: Already in the main menu the game sets itself apart from the rest. Your first choice is level of difficulty - one of two - and the game's creators Quantic Dream obviously don't target the usual bunch of hardcore players. One of the choices awkwardly cites: "I usually don't play games". That is bold.

This, together with the realisation that Beyond: Two Souls premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, of all places, makes me think I'm reviewing this game for the wrong blog. Director David Cage always intended to bring the interactive medium into new territories, eliciting emotion through drama rather than gameplay thrills. Sure, there's gameplay in Beyond: Two Souls, but its sole purpose is to serve the narrative. It's intended to pull you deeper into the experience.

THE STORY OF JODIE 

You can play the game alone or together with a friend, in which case one of you will control a girl called Jodie (Page) and the other a lost soul called Aiden, who is bound to her body. If you play alone, you may switch freely between the two. For the sake of this review, and for the sake of finishing the game as soon as possible, I played on my own.

Jodie's tale is about growing up and finding her place in a world that seems clueless what to make of her. People both fear her abilites and want to exploit them. Because of that, her coming of age is more troubled than most. Few people really seem to acknowledge Jodie's needs since, naturally, Aiden's services are what they really want. Beyond: Two Souls follows the pair from early childhood into adolescence, through a total of 24 chapters of varying tone and quality.

I won't spoil too much here, but Jodie's life is a sad one. At an early age she's abandoned by her family, who deem themselves unable to care for her. A kind-hearted scientist named Nathan Dawkins (Dafoe) takes her in, studies her and teaches her to control her powers. We soon also learn that she, at some point in her teens, joins the C.I.A., who stand to gain much from a girl with her talents. I'll leave the rest for you to find out. Let it be known that loads of twists and coincidences make Jodie's early life into a sort of perfect shit storm.

Your performance as a player supposedly determines the way the story goes, and there are no second tries. Whenever you fail, you'll have to live with the consequences. If you flunk an action sequence, Jodie will be visibly wounded, and maybe walk with a limp for the remainder of the chapter. This strengthens our empathy for Jodie. When we fail her, it hits us right in the guts.

She is a well-written character, and an amazing performance by Ellen Page provides all the nuances that makes the experience work as drama. Page's trust in facial animation is enough to allow for her to use her underacting instincts. She oversells nothing, making her emotions come across as natural rather than acted. And surprisingly, the acting is solid across all parts. Or functional, at least. Frankly, none of the other characters are written nearly as well as Jodie.

However, the story consequences don't seem too dire most of the time. The game is pretty strictly directed, and doing things differently during a rerun won't bring you through some completely different story arc. A New Game plus opens up the possibility to play all chapters chronologically. But the overarching plot is already determined. After all, Jodie herself is the one who narrates the thing from the start. Not until the very end do you get to make some drastic decisions.

Trashing a game for having a predetermined story is bollocks, but there are times when the interactivity seems totally unnecessary. After a snowball fight, a big bully started creaming poor little Jodie in the snow, and the game wanted me to have Aiden choke the bully to make it stop. But I refused to do it, and the creaming just went on and on. It would have lasted seemingly forever. So I had no choice in the matter - after a couple of minutes of creaming I had to choke the kid.

At a later point Jodie was sobbing because of separation anxiety. This would not stop until I performed a certain action in the room I was in. But I wanted to explore, which made the sobbing go on for an absurdly long time. In the end, I was laughing, because come on - no one sobs that long. She was clearly faking it at that point.

These are examples of the way Beyond: Two Souls sometimes doesn't work as intended. Admit it, Quantic - I was supposed to stop that bully instantly, and I was not supposed to explore that room at all. Free choice as illusion only applies as long as the illusion's intact.

GAMEPLAY LACKS LUSTRE

The way you interact with the story is very scant. The more low-key explorative moments work the best. This is where you walk Jodie through a certain area, looking for things to interact with to progress the story. These are the most heartfelt, best written moments of the entire game, and lay the foundation of the emotional bond with Jodie. Most of her early chapters belong here but some really sweet moments later in life also bring complexity to the character. She is surrounded by a well thought out, beautiful world design, which makes the exploration all the more compelling. I would have been happy to play the entire game this way. Especially since those are the only parts where Quantic prove they know what they're doing - both in writing and gameplay.

Which brings us to the action-oriented chapters. These utilise reflex based gameplay to heighten suspense, revealing some harrowingly flawed and limited gameplay mechanics. These are basically quick time events and mostly reminded me of Dragon's Lair - a reference not intended to flatter.

You are supposed to follow on-screen prompts of what button to press, and sometimes, when the action slows down, you're meant to quickly pull the left analogue stick in the direction Jodie moves her body. Problem is, which way that's supposed to be is not always apparent, and when it is, you hardly feel like you're accomplishing anything. A few stealth segments work the same way - you press the right button at the right time, and if you fail - well, there you go with the combat again.

Controlling the mischievous Aiden seems like fun early on, as you roam the air freely and move through walls. He can choke opponents, assume control over their bodies, commune with the dead, push objects to wreak havoc or activate them if applicable, or even heal wounded allies. With all those abilites, you might think that you would have a ton of possibilities in tackling every situation. Well, you'd be wrong. Every enemy can be dealt with in one predetermined way - and that's it. Just follow the on-screen prompt and you'll know what to do.

I played Beyond: Two Souls my way, and felt no desire to go back and play it any other way. This would be okay, if I didn't get the impression that Quantic really want you to experience the different story threads. Why else would they account for the other threads at the end of each chapter? The big flaw is that these outcomes, for the most part, are not based on choice - they're based on performance. For instance, if you fail an action sequence, or miss to explore something, you might get a different outcome. But why would you fail on purpose, just to see a different result? Where does that leave the gameplay?

HOPES FOR A BETTER FUTURE

After such harsh words, Jodie herself is still standing strong. I'd recommend Beyond: Two Souls to people who empathise with the hardships of well-defined fictional characters. As a character study it is well worth experiencing once. She's a strong lead. Forget the people surrounding her - they're mostly one-note narrative tools to help her grow.

The saddest flaw is Nathan Dawkins, the scientist who is so excellently portrayed by Willem Defoe. Nathan ends up with the most horrendously written character arc (of course I won't spoil it) I've witnessed in a long time. I shook my head in disbelief as he uttered his last line and disappeared out of the story. In the closing parts of the game, people overall behave like they don't have a modicum of logical reasoning left twixt their ears.

Beyond: Two Souls is just like that - a mixed bag of emotions, tones and quality. It displays an unusually strong central character who basically carries the entire game by herself. That's nothing to take lightly. But is it enough?

I'll not give up on Quantic Dream. After all, this is only my first foray into their work. They apparently have the goods. But can they deliver? If Detroit: Become Human repeats the same mistakes I might just have had enough of disappointments.

Visionary game studios like genDESIGN, Naughty Dog, CD Project Red and Rockstar have already shown how to create complex emotional stories in the interactive medium without sacrificing gameplay in the process. I would readily recommend anyone to check out their games. Beyond: Two Souls is trickier. Play it by all means, but for the love of God, don't play it for the challenge of gameplay. Don't play it for story choices. Play it for the love of cinema. Play it for the love of Aiden and Jodie, and the bond they let us share.