Let's Spoil Beyond: Two Souls

did not enjoy Justin's input at all in this discussion. He seemed very pessimistic and close-minded about aspects of a story driven choice based game when talking about Beyond, but was totally open to those ideas when discussing The Wolf Among Us and The Walking Dead. It's like when talking about Beyond he decided that the fact there was a branching storyline was garbage, but liked that his choices mattered when they concerned character relationships in TellTale's games.

I didn't play Beyond and I didn't know any spoilers (before this video).

This was really interesting.

I think it could have been even better. The starting point of the conversation was everyone's general impressions on the game. However, I think it could have worked even better, had someone (probably Patrick) laid out the major plot points of the game to get everyone on the same page, *before* start talking about the general impressions.

The most interesting bits were the ones where people addressed some details or problems of the game, but had a scene or a segment to back up their reasoning.

Good stuff.

Oh, "us". I'd been excited all night about hearing Vinny's thoughts on the game.

Please don't tar Kirk Hamilton with the "Kotaku" brush. That dude has written some of the best articles I've read on videogames, and has brought a lot of his longer-form criticism along to Kotaku with him.

Oh yeah...someone in this video is rocking a pair of Audio-Technica ATH-M50 head phones. Glad to see someone else with absolutely excellent taste in headphones! Best damn headphones I have ever owned.

"She can die, you know.

She can die.

She can die in the game."

Hellos Spoiled Games

great show, interesting conversation. Thanks for the audio podcast version - way easier to deal with on a very spotty 3g connection.

Cool video! I love seeing faces from other sites I frequent on Giant Bomb. :)

Justin's comments about writers possibly not introducing all of the information inside of a story might want to look up Hemingway's "iceberg theory". I'm not comparing Cage's talents with Hemingway's but the idea that you need to be given every shred of evidence is ridiculous. Also, there is a line of dialogue in the hospital where you are told who started the fire outside of even the newspaper...so again, sometimes I am not sure what game people actually play when they complain about certain things.

I will admit the chapter with the native american family felt out of place and almost like some form of extra DLC episode or something that should have been cut. In fact, I am wondering if that episode wasnt largely supposed to something that took place after the end of the game (See her hair, etc). Also, people weren't dying right and left: one person dies.

I think I would have appreciated this more if it didn't feel like the "let's shit on David Cage spoilercast"I can quickly and easily admit the issues his games have but they are far better than the hot garbage everyone on the cast tried to make them out to be. They are also far less pretentious than 95% of the indie games I play and even less emotionally manipulative than something like the recent game Brothers (which everyone is now gushing over).

Great conversation guys. Really enjoyed that. Couple of points I want to address:

-Cage actually did hire two other writers for his next game on PS4, so things are looking up. He said a while ago that he wants to keep having the ideas and the vision, but writing everything alone in one year is just too much work for one person, so he admitted that he needs help. I think most of the writing issues come from that fact, considering his shorts are pretty well written IMO (Sorcerer, Casting). He just can't keep up that level of quality over 2000 pages and a branching narrative with only 1 year available for writing. That's why he builds a team of writers now. He even said something along the lines of "people that are more talented than I am". There is an article on Destructoid and VideoGamer talking about it

-The teaser at the end likely doesn't lead to a sequel. Cage said specifically that he doesn't like making sequels, so I doubt this was intended to hint at a follow-up. I interpret it more as an open ended thing

-The grandma at the end of Navajo is indeed her spirit. They actually always look "alive" and not ghostly (Stan's wife in Homeless looks alive too), so this is consistent in the game. If the father dies he appears in a similar fashion, but he stands in a completely different spot if you save him. So this isn't a bug, it is just their spirits. When they appear Jodie already rode off, so that's why she doesn't react to them

Very cool video but I have to admit it was a little funny seeing the contrast between Justin and everyone else in how nimble they were with their words as well as their overall charisma when being recorded. Justin has understandably got this podcast-style shit down. Not meaning any offence to the other three guys of course.

This could be about anything and I'd still watch it for Justin.

I was expecting this to be Vinny, Drew, and whoever else at GB that played it talking about the game.

Didn't Justin McElroy call Heavy Rain a giant piece of shit? I'm not interested in seeing him talk about Beyond.

"polygon's oldest brother" made me crack up pretty good

More Justin McElroy as a guest in things would be great. Love his sense of humor and taste in video games. @alex Get him on the next powerbombcast! :)

I played Heavy Rain first, and I legitimately enjoyed what it was trying to do. I think that game was good enough to make the faults forgivable at the very least. And then I watched a playthrough of Indigo Prophesy.. and thought David Cage was out of his goddamned mind; what a dishonest, derivative, senseless story.

To hear that Beyond goes into the direction of Indigo Prophesy instead of the direction of Heavy Rain is extremely disappointing; one would think he would have taken the mistakes of Heavy Rain and learn from them rather than build an entire game off of those mistakes.

It's very clear that (at the very least) he should never touch the paranormal. I definitely agree that Heavy Rain just being a murder mystery made the story "small" enough that his attempts at creating some actual emotional connection in a narrative worked to some extent. Heavy Rain was actually supposed to have some paranormal stuff, but they made the smartest decision to cut it out of the story entirely, and it was much better off for it (despite the plot holes that decision created).

I'm still curious as to what he will do after this game. Despite his failings, I'm glad we have people like Cage in the industry. I think we only really "hate" his games because of how close they get to actually being amazing (and how easy it would be to correct some of those mistakes), in contrast to countless other game stories that pratfall right out of the gate.

justin on that STICKIEST OF ICKY DAT DANK PURP BRAHH-AH-AH

Great. Kotaku.

I completely forgot about the underwater base. haha wow.

I had no idea Justin and Kirk singlehandedly assumed all those identities and ran Polygon and Kotaku all by themselves. That's crazy! You guys are crazy! And this commenter I'm replying to hates everything! That's crazy too! NEW CONSOLE NEXT WEEK? I'M LOSING MY MIND HERE!!

I love it. Hopefully we will see more Let's Spoil conversations in the future!

I support this crime.

The image for this video is pretty much why I've not played Beyond. Those models are just creepy. Not close to reality creepy, just bad creepy. Page should sue them just for making her look so bad.

More spoilercast like this, always fun!

How so? Polygon is pretty good, Kotaku is well, Kotaku, and Patrick rocks. :)

I really liked the game and can understand why maybe some didn't like the whole jumping around the time line and that it didn't make the story flow ect and I did feel that way until I saw the "Live" choice ending.

i'm not saying that is how David cage wrote it to be, maybe it was, all i'm saying is it made more sense at least to me having seen that ending and i kind of liked the game more for that.

i love Justin McElroy so much that im literally thinking of buying this game just to watch this piece of content.

If he says 'like' again, I'll shoot myself...

haven't finished the game yet so won't watch this until I have...

also.... Justin McElroy is a legend. Have him involved with as much as giant bomb stuff as possible please!

Really great conversation, by the way. I hope you do more of these! You guys had an ease of conversation that seems like you'd been doing these spoiler videos for ages.

I just finished this game in the morning. Good timing. :D

I wish GB would just kidnap Justin and force him to be part of it all.

(by all I mean GB obviously)

My personal GOTY of 2013. Thanks for putting this up.

Hasn't "the ghost is your twin!" been a twist in quite a few prominent horror films? I know at least, and I think that was a remake of another one. I want to say it was "The Uninvited", but I'm not sure. I just remember thinking it was kind of clever at the time, which made me think it's use in Beyond was a cheap ripoff.

Edit: Found it! It was The Unborn.

... I don't know how to frame my response to this video (similar to how I feel about the game). I love that you, Patrick, corralled the Wolf and others and put it together - difficult often, to get a cohesive, generous discussion without people in the same room. It did feel more critique than spoilercast though.

Semantic nomenclature aside, I enjoyed hearing what most of the parties had to say (I did feel that some spoke much while saying very little). Out of what was said, I tend to fall somewhere around Alex's opinion on the game, my feelings probably more favorable than his overall though.

My distaste for certain parties aside, I'm glad I listened - it refreshed my feelings on the game a bit, solidified some opinions, made me rethink others. A lot of time was devoted to ripping on David Cage, but then again, you kind of have to a little, with such auteurship at work in his projects. Would like to see more content in this vein going forward!

Beyond was worse than Heavy Rain, honestly. It felt really tame compared to the insane shit that happened in HR, but the ending was great.

Alex looks good though.

If you think the story was dumb in Heavy Rain it's NOTHING compared to Indigo Prophecy (Fahrenheit) holy shit that story was dumb.

Second opinion: Do you care enough to have it spoiled? In the same boat; not having a PS3, doubt it'll come out on PC and probably won't buy it if it did, but the fact that Patrick wrangled some interesting folk to discuss it makes it interesting. Half-listened to this while playing some Deathspank: ToV and I thought it sounded interesting enough that I should listen to it without the distractions.

@patrickklepek: Thanks for putting this up! Hope more like it eventually happens on whatever games that get covered.

Justin, Kirk, Patrick, Alex! Some of my favorite games writing personalities in one video. This is like when Amy Poehler or Will Ferrell come back for a skit on SNL. Awesome. Thanks for wrangling this together @patrickklepek

Also, nice to see how many others in the GB community listen to MBMBAM. That podcast is freaking hilarious.

ohh guess i should beat this before watching.

Yep, it's an interesting listen because of the different personalities and thoughts flying around. Worked really well imo, better then a lot of other talks of this spoiler format do.

I'm kinda surprised (but not really) that the Witcher series was never brought up, as imo it's the current pinnacle of narrative choice.

Never plan on playing this game, so yea I will watch this.