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    Beyond: Two Souls

    Game » consists of 7 releases. Released Oct 08, 2013

    An interactive supernatural thriller from the studio behind Heavy Rain and Indigo Prophecy. It tells the story of Jodie Holmes, a girl with mysterious psychokinetic abilities.

    Quantic Dream Unveils What Lies 'Beyond'

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    alex

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    Edited By alex

    I am one of those people that tends to think, or at least associate, in quotes. Be it from movies, books, television, or even games, memorable lines from other works constanty pop into my head, even in only the most tangentially relevant scenarios. Following the end of the E3 press demo shown for Beyond: Two Souls, the latest game from Heavy Rain developer Quantic Dream, a quote from the movie Doubt began playing over and over in my head. At the very end of the film, the character played by Meryl Streep slowly says "I have doubts...I have such doubts!" with increasing levels of volume and distress. By the end of the demo, I was practically mouthing those exact words.

    Ellen Page stars as Jodie Holmes, both in voice and in likeness.
    Ellen Page stars as Jodie Holmes, both in voice and in likeness.

    It's not that I don't trust Quantic Dream to make a good game. Even at their worst moments, both Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain still showed at least a modicum of unrealized promise. My issue is that I don't entirely trust David Cage. Cage, who is simultaneously Quantic Dream's creative lead and designated mouthpiece, is a man who talks a very good game. He speaks in grandiose terms, talking of creating unprecedented emotional resonance, of truly cinematic gameplay, of creating wholly unique connections to the characters you play as, and play alongside. At times, flashes of those grandiose claims have appeared in Quantic Dream's games, though it's impossible to say that they have been wholly successful. It is, in some respects, similar to the situation one often faces when listening to Peter Molyneux talking about his various projects. He speaks with such clarity of vision that you sometimes don't realize that the things he says are kind of insane, and potentially impossible to deliver on. David Cage said a lot of things when demoing Beyond: Two Souls for me. I don't know how many of them I actually, earnestly believe.

    I'll say this: if Quantic Dream actually does deliver on what Cage says Beyond will be, then it's going to be something pretty special.

    If you haven't seen the demo from the PlayStation press conference, I've embedded the truncated trailer version below. You ought to give it a look before we go any further.

    Having seen that video, you now have the basics of the game's concept. Jodie (Ellen Page) is a troubled young girl who has a connection to an otherworldly force she has named Aiden. Cage was unsurprisingly unwilling to divulge too much info regarding the nature of Aiden's existence, save but to say that Aiden has been with Jodie for much of her life. Players will actually see that relationship evolve over time, as the game takes place over the course of 15 years of Jodie's life, as she matures and finds herself in increasingly perilous situations.

    Based on the single chapter Cage showed, much of that peril will come in the form of shadowy government forces that seem keen on capturing or killing Jodie for as-yet-unrevealed reasons. The S.W.A.T. cop you see in the above video is the central antagonist of this chapter, though Cage stopped short of calling him the game's primary villain. One gets the impression that there may be some additional antagonistic forces at work here.

    Interestingly, the chapter sequence we began with played not from Jodie's perspective, but rather Aiden's. At various points throughout the game, you'll be able to take control of Aiden, who is not able to take corporeal form but does have the ability to interact with the environment in limited fashion. The scene opened on a train traveling through some unidentified corner of America. Jodie sat fast asleep in her seat, hood pulled tightly over her head so as to both shut out the light and perhaps avoid anyone seeing her face. As Aiden, you are effectively left to your own devices for a time. You can float through the train car, knock objects around, drop the temperature around people to make them shiver, or even bug Jodie, who generally admonishes you for bothering her. Interestingly, you can even float outside of the train car, watching the rainy, darkened world speed by from a closer perspective. However, you are limited to a certain distance of movement, as Aiden is "tethered" to Jodie. It can only travel within range of that tether, which only Aiden can see in the form of a glowing blue rope of pure energy.

    It's not long before things start to go wrong. The train makes an unscheduled stop, and, while still controlling Aiden, you can wander outside to discover a number of cops surrounding the train. You can overhear their, frankly, kind of hammy dialogue regarding what's going on--one of them actually says "These orders come from THE TOP, man," with stone-faced seriousness. Curiously, the train then starts up again, but now there are cops on the train looking for Jodie. It's up to you to warn her, which you can do multiple ways. Cage chose to show Aiden knocking her stowed backpack onto her head, which she wasn't appreciative of. However, once she saw the law was approaching, she began frantically searching for an exit.

    Jodie's connection to the entity known as Aiden appears to have gotten her into a lot of trouble with some nefarious forces.
    Jodie's connection to the entity known as Aiden appears to have gotten her into a lot of trouble with some nefarious forces.

    This was the moment where Beyond morphed into an actual game. Control switched to Jodie, and she began running through the train car, away from the cops. Periodically other cops or other obstacles would pop up, and in order to get past them, button prompts would pop up, requiring specifically timed presses, movements of the Sixaxis controller, or the old "mash the buttons until that really strenuous thing you're seeing on screen is over with" mechanic.

    So, yes, in this regard, Beyond does appear to bear some strong resemblance to Quantic Dream's previous games, in that action is based heavily around contextual mechanics. However, Cage noted that in any situation where contextual actions weren't appearing, the player would be in total control of Jodie. Later during a chase through a wooded area, Jodie had the ability to wander just about anywhere in the area, only finding a few obstacles that couldn't be traversed. Cage stated that while there was really only one way out, there were different paths to take in order to get there, and varying challenges to overcome to escape.

    Though not necessarily the case in the previously mentioned scene, player choice will have consequences on how the story plays out. Cage said that Beyond probably wouldn't feature the frankly ridiculous number of endings available in Heavy Rain, but that there were alternate paths that the story could take, depending on how you play. He was also quick to point out his general disdain for the idea of a "fail state," or "game over." He explained that he believes such a condition just creates an awkward loop in the story, so to counteract that, the team has simply created situations where less-than-ideal scenarios can play out if you fail a specific sequence, and not in a "I chose wrong or performed poorly, so now I'm dead" kind of way. To use the example he gave, he said that were you to unsuccessfully avoid the police anywhere along the way in this chapter, you could be arrested and taken into custody. You would then have to escape police custody in an entirely different sequence than what we were shown, though if you were successful there, the conclusion would more or less play out the same.

    Cage also took great pains to emphasize that in Beyond, no two chapters would play precisely alike. He was reticent to extrapolate on that point, save but to say that the goal is to make each chapter feel "unique." He doubly emphasized that the chapter we were seeing was a much more action-oriented chapter than many of the others in the game would be. He explained the regrettable need to emphasize action over introspection when demoing a game to a public audience, given the desire to not lose the audience's attention.

    The action was most certainly on display. Rather than just give you a blow-by-blow of every event, I will simply truncate things by saying that Jodie goes through some severely awful shit. At various times, she is chased by cops, chased by angry police dogs, knocked about by men twice her size, is forced to jump off a moving train, blows through a police barricade, and is repeatedly shot at by what looks like the majority of a metropolitan police force's S.W.A.T. unit.

    Aiden has the ability to capture, or even kill other people when Jodie is in trouble.
    Aiden has the ability to capture, or even kill other people when Jodie is in trouble.

    Of course, all of this plays out with numerous contextual quick-time events, as opposed to standard action game mechanics. Much like Heavy Rain, Quantic Dream has framed every scene with an eye toward the cinematic, often pulling back and making quick cuts between individual QT events. There's also a preponderance of shaky cam during some of the chapter's more hectic moments that is, to put it bluntly, more than a little nauseating. Dear video games: we don't even like shaky cam in movies, so we extra don't want it in our games. Thanks.

    Still, even with the questionable camera shaking, there's no denying that Beyond looks pretty phenomenal, even in its relatively early development state. Much ballyhoo was made about the use of Ellen Page as both the voice and likeness of the lead character, and it's clear that Quantic Dream has taken great pains to make Jodie's facial expressions subtle and believable. There were a few moments where things looked perhaps a bit "uncanny," but by and large the work they've done on her character is extremely impressive. Cage explained that all of the game's actors, including Page, were given the full motion-capture treatment. Heavy Rain used some facial capture effects, but the bodies were animated by the developers, which sometimes led to unnatural looking movements. Cage believes the motion-capture action has solved that problem, and based on what was shown, the animation has definitely come a long way. Some of the non-central characters still looked a little rough in spots, and the sheer visual fidelity of the game seemed to be dragging the framerate down in spots, but this being early code, that's perhaps to be expected.

    The action really started flying fast and furious in the scene's climax, wherein Jodie finds herself surrounded by S.W.A.T. cops after arriving in a small town. Once again, control shifted to Aiden, as Jodie became pinned down behind a parked car. Aiden's task was to get rid of the army of cops milling about, periodically firing at the car she was sitting behind. This involved a variety of different interactions with both the environment and the enemies themselves. In some cases, Aiden could simply knock a car over, or even crush a nearby clock tower, causing it to fall on a bunch of cops' heads. However, Aiden also has the ability to take possession, and in some cases even kill other people. Possessing them allows Aiden to completely control their bodies, so it can, say, use a sniper to kill other cops, or have a helicopter pilot crash straight into a bunch of S.W.A.T. vans. Those who can be possessed glow orange, while those who can be outright killed appear to glow red. When Aiden kills them, you can see a glowing, body-shaped energy cloud float upward, which one can assume means they have died.

    Some of these different concepts appeared earlier in the level, but the final sequence combined many of them into a flurry of action. The pacing of this scene was certainly frantic, though given the sheer volume of enemies around, it was a little weird just how long they stood around more or less waiting for Aiden to come over and kill them. It's also maybe a little bit hokey just how the determination between who you can possess and who you can't is made. Obviously those who can be possessed glow orange because there is a very specific thing you can do with them in order to kill them, but in the context of Aiden's powers, it just strikes as strange that he can only possess these very specific people.

    As with all Quantic Dream games, your enjoyment will likely depend on how much you buy into the writing and characterizations.
    As with all Quantic Dream games, your enjoyment will likely depend on how much you buy into the writing and characterizations.

    I mean, it's video games we're dealing with here, so of course there's going to be some fudging of logic for the sake of mechanics and functional gameplay. However, when I'm faced with the lofty aspirations Cage talked up regarding the game, namely his desire to explore his own ideas about the nature of life and death (the game was partially inspired by the loss of someone close to him), and the various stabs at bridging the gap between cinema and game that the studio has made previously, I can't help but nitpick details that seem decidedly gamey, and even a little hokey.

    I might be skeptical, but that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy what I saw of Beyond. It's a sharp looking game with some really intriguing-looking story elements, but I can't say that what I saw seemed overwhelmingly better than what the writing and mechanics of Heavy Rain offered. For some, that will be an exciting enough statement to get them interested. For me, as someone who enjoyed parts of Heavy Rain but not the greater whole of it, I can't quite bring myself to buy in whole hog.

    My tack from here on out with all things Quantic Dream is to simply ignore the hyperbolic language and keep my expectations grounded. With a David Cage game, I know that there will be strong visuals, a story that will, at the very least, offer some intriguing twists and turns, and that my personal engagement with the action will largely revolve around simple contextual actions. If Quantic Dream can successfully push these elements beyond what the studio has done in its previous works in the ways Cage seemingly aspires to, then that will be a truly exciting thing. From what I've seen of Beyond so far, I believe that to be, at the very least, possible. Like I said, I have my doubts, but I'd love for them to be wrong.

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    alex

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    #1  Edited By alex

    I am one of those people that tends to think, or at least associate, in quotes. Be it from movies, books, television, or even games, memorable lines from other works constanty pop into my head, even in only the most tangentially relevant scenarios. Following the end of the E3 press demo shown for Beyond: Two Souls, the latest game from Heavy Rain developer Quantic Dream, a quote from the movie Doubt began playing over and over in my head. At the very end of the film, the character played by Meryl Streep slowly says "I have doubts...I have such doubts!" with increasing levels of volume and distress. By the end of the demo, I was practically mouthing those exact words.

    Ellen Page stars as Jodie Holmes, both in voice and in likeness.
    Ellen Page stars as Jodie Holmes, both in voice and in likeness.

    It's not that I don't trust Quantic Dream to make a good game. Even at their worst moments, both Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain still showed at least a modicum of unrealized promise. My issue is that I don't entirely trust David Cage. Cage, who is simultaneously Quantic Dream's creative lead and designated mouthpiece, is a man who talks a very good game. He speaks in grandiose terms, talking of creating unprecedented emotional resonance, of truly cinematic gameplay, of creating wholly unique connections to the characters you play as, and play alongside. At times, flashes of those grandiose claims have appeared in Quantic Dream's games, though it's impossible to say that they have been wholly successful. It is, in some respects, similar to the situation one often faces when listening to Peter Molyneux talking about his various projects. He speaks with such clarity of vision that you sometimes don't realize that the things he says are kind of insane, and potentially impossible to deliver on. David Cage said a lot of things when demoing Beyond: Two Souls for me. I don't know how many of them I actually, earnestly believe.

    I'll say this: if Quantic Dream actually does deliver on what Cage says Beyond will be, then it's going to be something pretty special.

    If you haven't seen the demo from the PlayStation press conference, I've embedded the truncated trailer version below. You ought to give it a look before we go any further.

    Having seen that video, you now have the basics of the game's concept. Jodie (Ellen Page) is a troubled young girl who has a connection to an otherworldly force she has named Aiden. Cage was unsurprisingly unwilling to divulge too much info regarding the nature of Aiden's existence, save but to say that Aiden has been with Jodie for much of her life. Players will actually see that relationship evolve over time, as the game takes place over the course of 15 years of Jodie's life, as she matures and finds herself in increasingly perilous situations.

    Based on the single chapter Cage showed, much of that peril will come in the form of shadowy government forces that seem keen on capturing or killing Jodie for as-yet-unrevealed reasons. The S.W.A.T. cop you see in the above video is the central antagonist of this chapter, though Cage stopped short of calling him the game's primary villain. One gets the impression that there may be some additional antagonistic forces at work here.

    Interestingly, the chapter sequence we began with played not from Jodie's perspective, but rather Aiden's. At various points throughout the game, you'll be able to take control of Aiden, who is not able to take corporeal form but does have the ability to interact with the environment in limited fashion. The scene opened on a train traveling through some unidentified corner of America. Jodie sat fast asleep in her seat, hood pulled tightly over her head so as to both shut out the light and perhaps avoid anyone seeing her face. As Aiden, you are effectively left to your own devices for a time. You can float through the train car, knock objects around, drop the temperature around people to make them shiver, or even bug Jodie, who generally admonishes you for bothering her. Interestingly, you can even float outside of the train car, watching the rainy, darkened world speed by from a closer perspective. However, you are limited to a certain distance of movement, as Aiden is "tethered" to Jodie. It can only travel within range of that tether, which only Aiden can see in the form of a glowing blue rope of pure energy.

    It's not long before things start to go wrong. The train makes an unscheduled stop, and, while still controlling Aiden, you can wander outside to discover a number of cops surrounding the train. You can overhear their, frankly, kind of hammy dialogue regarding what's going on--one of them actually says "These orders come from THE TOP, man," with stone-faced seriousness. Curiously, the train then starts up again, but now there are cops on the train looking for Jodie. It's up to you to warn her, which you can do multiple ways. Cage chose to show Aiden knocking her stowed backpack onto her head, which she wasn't appreciative of. However, once she saw the law was approaching, she began frantically searching for an exit.

    Jodie's connection to the entity known as Aiden appears to have gotten her into a lot of trouble with some nefarious forces.
    Jodie's connection to the entity known as Aiden appears to have gotten her into a lot of trouble with some nefarious forces.

    This was the moment where Beyond morphed into an actual game. Control switched to Jodie, and she began running through the train car, away from the cops. Periodically other cops or other obstacles would pop up, and in order to get past them, button prompts would pop up, requiring specifically timed presses, movements of the Sixaxis controller, or the old "mash the buttons until that really strenuous thing you're seeing on screen is over with" mechanic.

    So, yes, in this regard, Beyond does appear to bear some strong resemblance to Quantic Dream's previous games, in that action is based heavily around contextual mechanics. However, Cage noted that in any situation where contextual actions weren't appearing, the player would be in total control of Jodie. Later during a chase through a wooded area, Jodie had the ability to wander just about anywhere in the area, only finding a few obstacles that couldn't be traversed. Cage stated that while there was really only one way out, there were different paths to take in order to get there, and varying challenges to overcome to escape.

    Though not necessarily the case in the previously mentioned scene, player choice will have consequences on how the story plays out. Cage said that Beyond probably wouldn't feature the frankly ridiculous number of endings available in Heavy Rain, but that there were alternate paths that the story could take, depending on how you play. He was also quick to point out his general disdain for the idea of a "fail state," or "game over." He explained that he believes such a condition just creates an awkward loop in the story, so to counteract that, the team has simply created situations where less-than-ideal scenarios can play out if you fail a specific sequence, and not in a "I chose wrong or performed poorly, so now I'm dead" kind of way. To use the example he gave, he said that were you to unsuccessfully avoid the police anywhere along the way in this chapter, you could be arrested and taken into custody. You would then have to escape police custody in an entirely different sequence than what we were shown, though if you were successful there, the conclusion would more or less play out the same.

    Cage also took great pains to emphasize that in Beyond, no two chapters would play precisely alike. He was reticent to extrapolate on that point, save but to say that the goal is to make each chapter feel "unique." He doubly emphasized that the chapter we were seeing was a much more action-oriented chapter than many of the others in the game would be. He explained the regrettable need to emphasize action over introspection when demoing a game to a public audience, given the desire to not lose the audience's attention.

    The action was most certainly on display. Rather than just give you a blow-by-blow of every event, I will simply truncate things by saying that Jodie goes through some severely awful shit. At various times, she is chased by cops, chased by angry police dogs, knocked about by men twice her size, is forced to jump off a moving train, blows through a police barricade, and is repeatedly shot at by what looks like the majority of a metropolitan police force's S.W.A.T. unit.

    Aiden has the ability to capture, or even kill other people when Jodie is in trouble.
    Aiden has the ability to capture, or even kill other people when Jodie is in trouble.

    Of course, all of this plays out with numerous contextual quick-time events, as opposed to standard action game mechanics. Much like Heavy Rain, Quantic Dream has framed every scene with an eye toward the cinematic, often pulling back and making quick cuts between individual QT events. There's also a preponderance of shaky cam during some of the chapter's more hectic moments that is, to put it bluntly, more than a little nauseating. Dear video games: we don't even like shaky cam in movies, so we extra don't want it in our games. Thanks.

    Still, even with the questionable camera shaking, there's no denying that Beyond looks pretty phenomenal, even in its relatively early development state. Much ballyhoo was made about the use of Ellen Page as both the voice and likeness of the lead character, and it's clear that Quantic Dream has taken great pains to make Jodie's facial expressions subtle and believable. There were a few moments where things looked perhaps a bit "uncanny," but by and large the work they've done on her character is extremely impressive. Cage explained that all of the game's actors, including Page, were given the full motion-capture treatment. Heavy Rain used some facial capture effects, but the bodies were animated by the developers, which sometimes led to unnatural looking movements. Cage believes the motion-capture action has solved that problem, and based on what was shown, the animation has definitely come a long way. Some of the non-central characters still looked a little rough in spots, and the sheer visual fidelity of the game seemed to be dragging the framerate down in spots, but this being early code, that's perhaps to be expected.

    The action really started flying fast and furious in the scene's climax, wherein Jodie finds herself surrounded by S.W.A.T. cops after arriving in a small town. Once again, control shifted to Aiden, as Jodie became pinned down behind a parked car. Aiden's task was to get rid of the army of cops milling about, periodically firing at the car she was sitting behind. This involved a variety of different interactions with both the environment and the enemies themselves. In some cases, Aiden could simply knock a car over, or even crush a nearby clock tower, causing it to fall on a bunch of cops' heads. However, Aiden also has the ability to take possession, and in some cases even kill other people. Possessing them allows Aiden to completely control their bodies, so it can, say, use a sniper to kill other cops, or have a helicopter pilot crash straight into a bunch of S.W.A.T. vans. Those who can be possessed glow orange, while those who can be outright killed appear to glow red. When Aiden kills them, you can see a glowing, body-shaped energy cloud float upward, which one can assume means they have died.

    Some of these different concepts appeared earlier in the level, but the final sequence combined many of them into a flurry of action. The pacing of this scene was certainly frantic, though given the sheer volume of enemies around, it was a little weird just how long they stood around more or less waiting for Aiden to come over and kill them. It's also maybe a little bit hokey just how the determination between who you can possess and who you can't is made. Obviously those who can be possessed glow orange because there is a very specific thing you can do with them in order to kill them, but in the context of Aiden's powers, it just strikes as strange that he can only possess these very specific people.

    As with all Quantic Dream games, your enjoyment will likely depend on how much you buy into the writing and characterizations.
    As with all Quantic Dream games, your enjoyment will likely depend on how much you buy into the writing and characterizations.

    I mean, it's video games we're dealing with here, so of course there's going to be some fudging of logic for the sake of mechanics and functional gameplay. However, when I'm faced with the lofty aspirations Cage talked up regarding the game, namely his desire to explore his own ideas about the nature of life and death (the game was partially inspired by the loss of someone close to him), and the various stabs at bridging the gap between cinema and game that the studio has made previously, I can't help but nitpick details that seem decidedly gamey, and even a little hokey.

    I might be skeptical, but that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy what I saw of Beyond. It's a sharp looking game with some really intriguing-looking story elements, but I can't say that what I saw seemed overwhelmingly better than what the writing and mechanics of Heavy Rain offered. For some, that will be an exciting enough statement to get them interested. For me, as someone who enjoyed parts of Heavy Rain but not the greater whole of it, I can't quite bring myself to buy in whole hog.

    My tack from here on out with all things Quantic Dream is to simply ignore the hyperbolic language and keep my expectations grounded. With a David Cage game, I know that there will be strong visuals, a story that will, at the very least, offer some intriguing twists and turns, and that my personal engagement with the action will largely revolve around simple contextual actions. If Quantic Dream can successfully push these elements beyond what the studio has done in its previous works in the ways Cage seemingly aspires to, then that will be a truly exciting thing. From what I've seen of Beyond so far, I believe that to be, at the very least, possible. Like I said, I have my doubts, but I'd love for them to be wrong.

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    Skyrider

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    #2  Edited By Skyrider

    I'm ready for some Ellen Paige Page.

    Oops, misspelled her name . . . I am truly the shame of my nation.

    On a more serious note, I'm on the fence about this one. I'll definitely check it out, but I can't help but be reminded of Fahrenheit, namely the supernatural aspect of it. It was certainly cool, but once that aspect really started to ramp up and shit got crazy, it started to take me out of the game as well. I don't know why, but I get that same vibe from the trailer.

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    Choffy

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    #3  Edited By Choffy

    Loved Heavy Rain and what it tried to do so I'm obviously excited to play this.

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    FluxWaveZ

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    #4  Edited By FluxWaveZ

    I suppose I'm going on a media blackout of this game because I already know I'm going to get it. Unfortunately it'll be a long wait, though.

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    nightriff

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    #5  Edited By nightriff

    I actually can't wait for this game, I really like Heavy Rain and understand it had some problems with the story and gameplay but enjoyed the game overall, looking foreword to this next year if it isn't delayed 2 more years

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    prestonhedges

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    #6  Edited By prestonhedges

    "Quantic Dream has made a game that looks a lot like what you'd expect a Quantic Dream game to look like. You probably already know what that means to you."

    Seems a bit defensive. I'm on the fence until I see game play.

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    Grixxel

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    #7  Edited By Grixxel

    @Skyrider said:

    I'm ready for some Ellen Paige.

    I'm not, ugh.

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    leejunfan83

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    #8  Edited By leejunfan83

    Interesting but I'll take an experiment any day over shoot shoot shoot em ups

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    Tarsier

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    #9  Edited By Tarsier

    more terrible facial animations by quantic dream. including worlds worst actor ellen page.

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    MindOST

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    #10  Edited By MindOST

    How much Ellen Page is too much?

    Like, what's the recommended daily intake?

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    TechnoSyndrome

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    #11  Edited By TechnoSyndrome

    David Cage is a hack

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    delta_ass

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    #12  Edited By delta_ass

    Ellen Page sure is in a lot of Sony games.

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    Tarsier

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    #13  Edited By Tarsier

    @Taku128 said:

    David Cage is a hack

    yup

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    Portis

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    #14  Edited By Portis

    As long as every character doesn't sound like someone French trying to do some sort of weird American accent like in Heavy Rain, I might play it.

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    alex

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    #15  Edited By alex

    @Portis: A couple of the bit players in the background sounded a little off, but so far all the main actors they've shown have sounded accurately American.

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    deactivated-5e49e9175da37

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    I find it weird that a guy does all this work to make unique games that feature the kind of problems and influences you can't find elsewhere, and a gameplay system that allows you to legitimately be involved in more complicated scenarios than most games... and then introduces magical powers and fighting cops to it. I was excited for Heavy Rain because it looked like cold hard noir built around a system in which action, dialogue and exploration were all meaningful gameplay that could impact one another.

    So far, I think that you could make this exact narrative of a girl with a powerful ghost friend and make it into a behind the back shooter where you play the ghost friend. I haven't seen anything that shows that this narrative requires Quantic Dream's context-appropriate button gameplay. You could play this sequence like you were Paxtol Fettel in FEAR 3.

    I'm not actually that down on it...but this story doesn't seem like something you need their gameplay for. A police procedural with investigation and showdowns with criminals, yes. A political thriller with suspenseful chases and hiding from assassins, absolutely. A game where your magical spirit buddy shoots energy bullets at cops?

    edit: I suppose what I'm trying to say is I'm kind of let down. There's only one of these style games out every several years, I'd like the narrative to be something that was only possible using context commands and the facial tech and this hasn't proven it. Either I'll be right and bummed out, or wrong and happy.

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    metalsnakezero

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    #17  Edited By metalsnakezero

    This is going to be great just like Heavy Rain was and I expect some good performances from Ellen Page.

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    not_a_bumblebee

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    #18  Edited By not_a_bumblebee

    Weird to think Ellen Page got her start on Trailer Park Boys.

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    Quarters

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    #19  Edited By Quarters

    I adore both Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain. Everything I've seen of this points that I will probably feel the same about Beyond. One of my favorite developers, hands down.

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    emergency

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    #20  Edited By emergency

    @Tarsier said:

    more terrible facial animations by quantic dream. including worlds worst actor ellen page.

    Funny guy.

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    jukeboxzer0

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    #21  Edited By jukeboxzer0

    I loved Heavy Rain so I'm probably going to dig this.

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    Carlos1408

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    #22  Edited By Carlos1408

    Looks good so far, I'm interested. :)

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    SeanFoster

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    #23  Edited By SeanFoster

    @Quarters said:

    I adore both Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain. Everything I've seen of this points that I will probably feel the same about Beyond. One of my favorite developers, hands down.

    Me too!

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    Pink_o_mat

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    #24  Edited By Pink_o_mat

    Why is David Cage making games instead of movies?

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    RandomInternetUser

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    I still need to play Heavy Rain.

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    MarkWahlberg

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    #26  Edited By MarkWahlberg

    Had the same issue with this demo as I did with the Watch Dogs one: interesting concept for a potentially neat adventure-puzzle-y sort of game, that turns out to just have slightly fancy shooter mechanics.

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    ZmillA

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    #27  Edited By ZmillA

    didn't read the article, going to try to go cold on this one. Still, I need this game.

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    jukeboxzer0

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    #28  Edited By jukeboxzer0

    @MarkWahlberg: wait, is beyond a shooter?

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    Dixavd

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    #29  Edited By Dixavd

    What was he playing with? Was it just a normal controller or do they wish to continue to use the Move controller (as they eventually did with Heavy Rain)?

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    alex

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    #30  Edited By alex

    @Dixavd: Regular Sixaxis controller.

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    Tarsier

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    #31  Edited By Tarsier

    @emergency said:

    @Tarsier said:

    more terrible facial animations by quantic dream. including worlds worst actor ellen page.

    Funny guy.

    ehh, if you thinks thats funny you dont understand acting. the facial animations thing is subjective. but i think quantic dreams facial animations have gotten worse not better. not that theyve ever been good.

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    Y2Ken

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    #32  Edited By Y2Ken

    I'm potentially more excited about this than I was for Heavy Rain. Not a must-buy yet though.

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    addictedtopinescent

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    Nice wrtie up Alex. I'm really a sucker for the type of stuff Quantic Dream does, maybe it's because I'm also a big movie fan. Anyhow, I like that the gae will take place over such a long time story-wise it sounds interesting. The parts about controlling the ghost thing also sound interesting, a departure from Quantic's usual stuff but it might be an interesting one.

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    NocturnusFatalis

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    #34  Edited By NocturnusFatalis

    @Delta_Ass said:

    Ellen Page sure is in a lot of Sony games.

    She's in one..?

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    TechnoSyndrome

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    #35  Edited By TechnoSyndrome

    @xobballox said:

    I still need to play Heavy Rain.

    Because his scripts would be ridiculed by reviewers across the board. Take that same terrible writing to the far less mature world of video games though and people will lap it up in a desire to have their hobby taken seriously.

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    Fire_Marshall_Bill

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    I don;t get the fascination with her. TOO MUCH ELLEN PAGE

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    Chrisjp

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    #37  Edited By Chrisjp

    As long as there aren't any huge plot holes this time, like in Heavy Rain, I'm game.

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    devitiffany

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    #38  Edited By devitiffany

    I actually like Indigo Prophecy more than Heavy Rain because of how crazy that game got. With all the weird psychic/ghost stuff I'm hoping it gets as crazy as Indigo Prophecy.

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    MiniPato

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    #39  Edited By MiniPato

    @Tarsier said:

    @emergency said:

    @Tarsier said:

    more terrible facial animations by quantic dream. including worlds worst actor ellen page.

    Funny guy.

    ehh, if you thinks thats funny you dont understand acting. the facial animations thing is subjective. but i think quantic dreams facial animations have gotten worse not better. not that theyve ever been good.

    I think the facial animations look great. Maybe not better than LA Noire, but certainly up there.

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    dropabombonit

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    #40  Edited By dropabombonit

    This preview is a bit snarky Alex but thanks for giving me more information on the game. I'm a big fan of Quantic Dream so can't wait to play what looks like their best game yet

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    TheFreeMan

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    #41  Edited By TheFreeMan

    Despite the holes in Heavy Rain I had a good time. There were some really great moments with an intensity that I don't see in most games. Hopefully with a more thought-out story and Ellen Page, who's awesome, this'll turn out great.

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    zoozilla

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    #42  Edited By zoozilla

    I'm sad to say I don't really trust David Cage either. I mean, Fahrenheit had a great concept, and the first half was goddamn amazing - then the last third happened, things went bat-shit crazy, and there was no way I could take that game seriously ever again.

    Hopefully this does better.

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    BitterAlmond

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    #43  Edited By BitterAlmond

    All acting skill aside, Ellen Page is not the best person after whom to model a hyperrealistic computer character. Her face screams "uncanny valley," even in the flesh.

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    LastNinja

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    #44  Edited By LastNinja

    @Fire_Marshall_Bill said:

    I don;t get the fascination with her. TOO MUCH ELLEN PAGE

    This did it for me personally

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    reelife

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    #45  Edited By reelife

    @LastNinja: =|....=]....=D....xD

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    KillyDarko

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    #46  Edited By KillyDarko

    I'd probably love Quantic Dream's games if they didn't rely so heavily on QTEs -- that really turns me off :(

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    MarkWahlberg

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    #47  Edited By MarkWahlberg

    @jukeboxzer0 said:

    @MarkWahlberg: wait, is beyond a shooter?

    Technically, no. What I meant was the sequence Alex talks about, where you possess SWAT guys and make them kill each other (as seen in the video here, 19 minutes in), felt a bit gimmicky, in a 'we need to have sequences involving gunfights because video games' kind of way. Like Alex said, it seemed a bit awkward. Not that you're not allowed to have gunfights, of course, but it gave me the same feeling that I had with the firefight in Watch Dogs, of hoping that that's not what the game mostly consists of. That's all.

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    Rasgueado

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    #48  Edited By Rasgueado

    Gosh... I wonder if the *player* is supposed to be Aiden. Hrmmmm... I wonder...

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    bayushi

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    #49  Edited By bayushi

    Forget this. I want Kara

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    High_Nunez

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    #50  Edited By High_Nunez

    It's all about Ellen CAGE am I right???...ok, even I don't know what I mean by that. It rhymes...I'll show myself out.

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