Beyond: Two Souls

I return to the blogging medium after many many months because my thoughts and feelings on Beyond: Two Souls cannot be contained in a mere facebook post.  So here we go.

Beyond: Two Souls is the spiritual successor to Heavy Rain, which since it's release has become a prime example of cinematic storytelling in video games.  It had its issues, from sometimes unintuitive controls to story relics that were once significant but were then thrown to the wayside, but overall I found it to be a superb game where your choices truly did matter to the story because if you mess up, you have to just keep going.

The same applies to B:TS.  Make your choice, good or bad, and live with the consequences until the very end.

For those unfamiliar, B:TS tells the story of Jodie, who ever since she was a child has been linked to a ghostly entity named Aiden who, for the most part, seems to be there to protect her.  The story is told in a non-linear fashion, starting at the end and jumping around different times in Jodie's life.  From her time as a child being kept in a lab and studied, to a young woman being recruited by the CIA, to escaping their clutches and living homeless and on the run, to her final role...which I won't spoil.  Throughout the story you play as both her and Aiden, who can assist her in all manner of paranormal ways that I'll detail in a bit.  Their unique relationship, and the larger implications of Aiden's existence, are the main thrust of the narrative, and boy what a fascinating narrative it is.

First, though, let's talk gameplay.  Just as in Heavy Rain, almost all the action is controlled by this unique variation on quick-time events.  Push buttons in a certain order, flick the right stick in a certain direction, mash a button enough before time runs out, etc.  However, it felt simpler here.  The button commands were not nearly as strenuous as some of the ones found in Heavy Rain.  In one sense, that's good, it means things flow more smoothly.  In another sense, I found it took away a layer of difficulty that I thought added to the experience.  Even with something as simple as cooking a meal.  In Heavy Rain if you wanted to cook something, it took some careful moves.  In B:TS, however, despite not being a cook Jodie manages to fix up Asian Beef with a couple simple swipes of the right stick.  The most difficult part of that sequence was actually deciding whether I wanted to add ginger since it wasn't in the recipe.  I know it sounds ridiculously nitpicky, but immersion is the key in a game like this, and Heavy Rain's slightly more complicated controls actually made me feel more invested in the outcome of each action.

What's new here, gameplay-wise, is Aiden.  With a push of the triangle button, you pop into Aiden's floating, tethered perspective.  As a ghost, you can do basically everything you would think a ghost could do.  Wander through walls (though your tether only stretches so far), move objects, possess people, as well as the non-obvious powers of healing wounds, creating a telekinetic shield that reflects bullets, and allowing Jodie to commune with certain objects and/or corpses to see how they ended up where they are.  As you might imagine, this lends a kind of puzzle element to certain sections where you use Aiden's various powers to assist Jodie through.  And once again, it feels a bit simpler than I'd have liked, but still adds some nice variation.

So the controls may be a bit dumbed down from Heavy Rain, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, as it means the whole narrative experience can flow more smoothly.  And what about that story?  Does it help for things to be smoother?

In Heavy Rain the story suffered for various reasons, from relics of discarded storylines (the whole blacking out/waking up elsewhere plot) to the often disjointed nature of tracking 4 different protagonists in a branching choose-your-own-adventure style game.  In B:TS, unfortunately, some of the same problems persist.  Despite only having one protagonist now, the story is told in a non-linear fashion, meaning there's still some fragmenting issues, especially concerning the possible romance with your CIA partner Ryan Clayton (which is a whole nother can of worms about feminism I will likely need a separate post for).  The entire section where you're homeless also feels strangely out of place, **SLIGHT SPOILERS** with some unwarranted moments of contemplating suicide as well as a completely random baby birth and escape from a burning building. **END SPOILERS**

I feel I should also mention that B:TS has a recurring problem in that Jodie+Aiden = practically invincible.  In Heavy Rain, if you messed up, you could lose a main protagonist. In B:TS, you're (eventually) a trained CIA agent tied to a supernatural being that can protect her from all harm, or heal any harm done.  Basically the stakes are a bit lowered.  So while the game does do a good job convincing you in the moment that you could die at any moment, when you get the chance to take a step back you're reminded that, once again, things seem easier than they should.

That being said, despite it's troublesome moments, Beyond has one of the most compelling, fascinating, and emotionally-investing narratives ever assembled for a game.  I laughed, I cried, I got so scared I wanted to crawl out of my skin and run away, and a couple times I'm fairly sure I forgot how to breathe the action was so intense.  It has sci-fi, action, suspense, horror, drama, everything you could ask for.  It takes you from science labs to a crumbling middle-eartern city, a suburban home to a desert ranch, even from a horror-filled hospital to an underwater sci-fi base.  And somehow, through it all, it never loses its humanity or its emotional core.

What truly helps this is the ASTOUNDING leap in graphics made here.  If this is a glimpse of the next gen, sign me up.  Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe deserve Oscars for their portrayals here, because each truly do deliver a movie-worthy performance.  Every minutiae in their facial expressions can be seen.  Every line is delivered with emotional weight behind it.  They are the reason this story is as effective as it is.  Unfortunately this also means that weaker acting also shows through, like from Kadeem Hardison as Willem Dafoe's assistant Cole, who is supposed to essentially be a father figure (along with Dafoe) for Jodie but simply didn't deliver a strong enough performance for me to have cared about him.

What brave new world is this, where we're not just talking about how a voice actor does syncing their voice to a game, but the actual full performance of an actor?  Crazy stuff.

To sum up, Beyond: Two Souls is not perfect, but when you're in the midst of it boy does it play like it is.  Yes, it's missing some of the complexity in its controls and has lower stakes for messing up than in Heavy Rain which reduces immersion somewhat.  But it also delivers, in my opinion, a better narrative experience that makes up for what it lost.  I cannot wait to delve back into the world and see how different choices will effect the story.

Beyond: Two Souls gets a 10/10.