"I would love to see Beyond: Two Souls adapted into a video game!"
"I would love to see Beyond: Two Souls adapted into a video game!"
Yes, while that certainly does sound like a derisive comment to make about Quantic Dream's latest title, it is the most honest feeling I have about this game. Beyond: Two Souls is essentially a TV miniseries about the lives of Jodie and Aiden told in mildly interactive vignettes.
The biggest issue with the game is that it hardly feels like you're playing. Player interaction is kept at arm's length and you'll constantly wish that you were controlling the action or simply watching a cut scene. The game truly is a series of quick time events (QTEs). Although many games will use quick time events to vary the game and breakup cut scenes with "interactivity," often in the laziest way possible, this game is nothing but quick time events with your input having practically no impact on what plays out on screen. It's most akin to watching a film where you have to manually crank the reel to play. That's not entirely true; occasionally there are sections where you get to walk!
The Jodie sections are occasionally broken up by moments controlling her supernatural co-lead Aiden. These sections give you limited range where you solve some very light puzzles by flying to the dot located on the other side of walls and then holding L1 while pulling apart or pushing together the control sticks. That's the entire depth of Aiden's gameplay.
The problem is that none of this ever has any impact on the story or is any fun. QTEs don't determine success, merely how smooth a scene plays out. Things essentially pause or look hilariously silly if you botch the QTEs but you will never fail any portion of the game as far as I can tell. And botch them you will as the right stick prompts are never explicitly stated on screen and the player is asked to move the stick in the direction thought to be the best logical direction. And by logical, I mean either completely random at best or just as likely the exact opposite direction you assume you must push the stick. You'll watch Jodie get beat the hell up or repeatedly smack her head straight into tree limbs like five times in the span of 35 seconds only to still progress to the next scene.
There are quiet moments in the gameplay where it actually succeeds. Most of these moments come from the game giving you controls over Jodie doing completely mundane tasks and letting you tackle them in the order you please. Moments like the first half of the party vignette, or a later sequence that has you preparing for a dinner date. This may seem counterintuitive, but the enjoyment of these unspectacular moments actually derive from giving the player the most control they have in the entire game. Other moments which are supposed to be the most exciting fail because excitement is lost to one button prompts and player disconnect from the action taking place on screen.
A majority of Beyond's gameplay problems could have honestly been fixed by replacing QTE's with a fighting system and a stealth combat system. The game actually has a fair number of moments where you're fighting essentially one on one. These moments are all predetermined scenes but would have greatly benefitted by giving the player a fighting system similar to Fight Night or possibly Batman Arkham titles. Similarly, there are stealth shooter sequences where button prompts replace gameplay just begging to be played in a real game like Splinter Cell, Metal Gear Solid 4, Uncharted or The Last of Us.
The story is well acted, but the scifi plot goes off the rails and downright dumb and silly in several portions. While certainly starting very strong and full of promise thanks to a couple of early moments that are simply fantastic, the game eventually falls apart into utter incoherence under the lofty potential of the first third or fourth of the game. And though the story is told straight-faced with no winks or self awareness there are vignettes that dispel any intellectual legitimacy to the story being told ("The Condenser") and others that feel completely inconsequential and would have been better suited as a side-story bonus stage or as side-story DLC ("Navajo"). Actually, by the credits the overall plot is complete nonsense, but the gripes about it and what it leads to are forgivable thanks to some fantastic acting by Ellen Page. And mostly Ellen Page alone as all but three or four other characters are often instigators of eye rolling deliveries of the script. And believe me when I say Willem Dafoe is far from the second best actor in this game. It's still a touching story that thankfully doesn't take too long to get through and worth seeing through to the end. And that epilogue! As stupid as the central MacGuffin is, the epilogue brings along sheer insanity that I'm all for. If you're going to go dumb, as the story did, play it straight and go all in. That's exactly what the epilogue brings with it. I'd love to play that sequel if developed by another Sony team.
People will complain that David Cage needs an editor and that as big an importance he puts on the story, the story is amateurish half-wit nonsense. I certainly won't disagree with any sentiments to that effect, but I will say that if that's the story he wanted to tell, it's still fine by me. David Cage did need an editor though. An editor that looked at his script and said "If that's what you want to do then fine." Then that editor would immediately have quantic use some of Sony's shared middleware towards making a competent fighting engine and stealth shooter engine and the game would have been literally five times better and an easy five star and GoTY contender on those two changes alone. And by fighting engine and stealth shooter engine, I mean the most rudimentary systems that would take Unity garage devs less than two months to get up and running. Nothing special by any means, just something that lets the player actually play the game. That's all it would have taken to propel this game into greatness.
I don't recommend any ten-twelve hour game with no inherent replay value at $60. With that said, if you own a PS3, you should rent this game and play it through to the end. It is a unique experience with some great acting and story-telling that deserves to be experienced even if it's not actually played especially by scifi fans.
And that epilogue!
