Beyond: Two Souls Review

Caged by Its Creator

A strange child's bedroom. Look how weird it is with its...lamp!

The very first screenshot I included on this blog was of Beyond: Two Souls, a game I was awaiting. Of all the games listed — including Borderlands 2, Dishonored, Assassin's Creed III, and Bioshock Infinite — it is a little odd that I would end up playing the first game last. But so it goes. Although the game is definitely entertaining, I'm not convinced about the footprint it leaves behind in comparison to its predecessor, Heavy Rain. Both games play similarly, and unfortunately, Beyond: Two Souls commits some of the same mistakes, sometimes worse.

Jodie Holmes is the sole focus of Beyond: Two Souls compared to the fractured tale that came before it. The story is also not presented in chronological order, so there are scant few details I could betray without spoiling some of the greater moments. Put simply, Jodie is a girl who has had an "entity" tied to her since she was born. This entity, named Aiden, is invisible but has the ability to interact with the visible realm: flinging objects around, messing around with electronics, possessing people, and choking people to death. Somehow or another, Jodie ends up being studied for the majority of her life by Dr. Nathan Hawkins, who becomes something of a father figure to her, while her unique situation isolates her from others and prevents her from forming healthy relationships. Oh, she ends up in the CIA.

During the course of the game, the player is given the ability to control both Jodie and Aiden under different circumstances. For the most part, players can choose by toggling with the triangle button, but certain specific scenarios force you to control one or the other. It works well, and both have sufficient controls, but Jodie's simple walking ability can often be cumbersome and tank-like. There are a number of circumstances where it would have been useful for Jodie to be able to run, but unless context dictates it, she generally walks casually everywhere. Aiden, on the other hand, has full 3D mobility, using R1 and R2 to move up and down respectively. He can also pass through some walls, which allows players to witness conversations and goings-on that Jodie would otherwise miss, providing some modicum of dramatic irony.

Willem Defoe doesn't think any of this is funny.

As events move along, Jodie uses Aiden in a number of ways, such as possessing a doctor to escape detainment, viewing memories attached to buried items, forming a bulletproof barrier, and even taking down an entire army of soldiers turned against her. As interesting and exciting as these moments can seem, given Aiden's abilities, it can be particularly frustrating when you can't control him or when he can't pass through walls. He does come to help her in numerous ways, so it seems stupid when Jodie's life is put in mortal peril, and she just kind of has to deal with it for a few minutes until he steps in like a prince in invisible armor. As far as moments when he can't pass through walls, there's an annoying scene in a hospital where Aiden has the ability to enter every room and view every patient before Jodie finds the room she's looking for. However, as soon as you enter that room, suddenly the door becomes an impenetrable barrier, preventing the player (and Aiden) from seeing what awaits Jodie before she witnesses it herself.

This plays into the grand issue I have with Beyond: Two Souls, which is the lack of sufficient fail states. David Cage made it well apparent when he made Heavy Rain that he's not interested in "Game Over" and "Continue?" His way of sticking his middle finger up at typical game concepts was to craft a story where characters could die, and the narrative would continue on without them. In both that game and Beyond: Two Souls, though, he asserted too much control on when players could "fail." This problem is exacerbated in the latter game to the point of ridiculousness.

You see, the opening of the game takes place after the majority of the chapters you'll play through. Thus, we know Jodie lives at least up until that point. This is actually not such a huge problem in and of itself. Instead, the cracks really begin to show when the player is either unable or unwilling to do well, the definition of which as dictated by the gameplay. The way Jodie is handled during action scenes is that she or her limbs will move in a certain direction while the action slows down considerably. Then, the player is expected to push the right stick in the direction it looks like Jodie is moving. During a fight, failing to push the stick in the right direction leads to Jodie getting hit or becoming vulnerable.

Channeling her inner Jewel.

During your first playthrough of Beyond: Two Souls, you will, of course, try to do all these sequences correctly, probably making a few mistakes along the way. I implore you, however, to try not doing them at all or to do them entirely wrong on your second or third time around. What you will witness is largely the same exact game. OK, we know Jodie lives up until the Prologue. What I don't understand is why Cage, the auteur that he believes himself to be, couldn't write more fail states: If Jodie doesn't succeed at doing all this crap, how will external events play out to get her to the next scene? The answer is that the same external events play out regardless.

For example, during a fight with an enemy agent while she's trying to escape a crumbling facility, she is saved at the last moment by an attacking entity. But despite the fact that this man uses a machete, a chain, and a crane hook to kill Jodie, failing to interact during this fight still results in his impalement and her mild injury. Thus, trying and not trying have the same consequence, and some scenes would absolutely not continue until I did exactly what the game expected me to do. My efforts to play as Jodie Holmes: Worst CIA Operative Ever only exposed the lack of fail states to account for poor player performance. And no, an extra bloody nose or bullet wound is not what I'm looking for. Throughout the entire game, I only encountered three chapters that adequately accounted for Jodie being a total failure at life.

Ironically, and I don't know if David Cage did this on purpose at all, Jodie complains in one chapter about how she just wants to die but just can't. In the context of the narrative, this is in light of Aiden's efforts to keep her alive, but in the context of gaming, it just ends up being a fourth wall-breaking moment of commentary on Beyond: Two Souls itself. Later, when another character, who has asserted pure and utter dominance over her, comments, "We can't kill you," I found myself rather resigned. After all, it wasn't for lack of trying.

It's a fair fight because you have to win. Get it?

Heavy Rain actually committed the same sin. The four characters (technically, only three of them) can only die in prescribed scenes. In other dangerous scenes, "failing" typically left a more damaged character. But the vast difference between it and Beyond: Two Souls is that the former had more failure effects. Characters wouldn't get information out of someone, entirely new scenes would play out when a character was successfully captured by police, or a new interaction would take place later on to make up for previous failures. Heavy Rain appeared much more adaptable in that regard, even when it became plainly obvious that I couldn't kill off a character who was in mortal peril.

All that being said, and it was six paragraphs of saying it, Beyond: Two Souls is certainly entertaining when you are actually trying to play it. I tend to harp on the negative, but I was thoroughly interested in how most chapters played out. While being out of chronological order can seem like a pain, Cage actually crafted it in such a way where the next scene has much to do with the previous scene, regardless of how they are related in time. Slowly, the answers to many questions trickle out in small doses until the resolution, which answers the biggest question of all. (Not spoiling it.) Unfortunately, there are a few chapters that seem a little too distant from all the others in terms of narrative, and motivations behind the events of the final chapter are weak and slightly out of left field. The final chapter itself, though, is a thrilling resolution to the story.

One thing I have to hand to Quantic Dream and Cage is their ability to stretch the graphical capabilities of the PS3, whose relevance is ending soon as the next generation approaches next week. The game is often really beautiful. Whereas Heavy Rain before it demonstrated lifelike character faces and models (for the most part), Beyond: Two Souls performs many feats with light that are often astounding. Even the face game has been upped. Many games stumble when showing wet, dirty, or otherwise affected faces, but this one actually makes them so much more realistic.

Stan, the (homeless) man.

The only common issue this game exemplifies like so many others is in the sterility of many environments. When the camera focuses on characters, or when the action is high, everything looks smooth and interesting, but in slower-paced scenes, such as in a house, walls and objects tends to look very clean. I'll admit that I'm really reaching with this complaint, since most of the graphics are really immersive.

I like to rip on Lorne Balfe as a composer because of the beyond uninteresting tracks he composed for Assassin's Creed: Revelations, but I have to hand it to him on this game. The music, which ventures occasionally into science-fiction territory, is often appropriate and interesting. As for the acting, not just voices, it is mostly done really well. Jodie is played by Ellen Page, and Nathan is played by Willem Defoe. If you like them as actors, you will like them as characters; that's really what it boils down to. Other supporting characters are also very well-done, not suffering from the Canada-in-America idiocy that plagued Heavy Rain.

So this isn't quite Heavy Rain II: The Moistening. Beyond: Two Souls definitely stands on its own and is a worthwhile interactive experience both in its technical capabilities and in its narrative, that is, when you are trying to play it like you would any other game. Unlike its predecessor, I just don't recommend trying to fail. Just take the cards handed to you unless you enjoy seeing a game flounder in embarrassment.