First Impressions — Beyond: Two Souls
Video game reviews are tough. They require you to do three things: 1) get an advance review copy of a game 2) play through the entire game 3) write an opinion of the various qualities of said game. Since I can only do one of those things, I’m going to try something different. Starting with this post, I’d like to introduce a new series: First Impressions.
First Impressions offers you a glimpse of upcoming video games. This series will bring you a preview and an assessment of the gameplay and other aspects of a new game in each article. They are, however, NOT reviews as they are based on publicly available demos, which do not offer a complete look at the game in question. This series simply offers you an opportunity to get one person’s opinion and a basic understanding of a game before you download the demo or make a purchase.
So, without further delay, here’s the very first “First Impressions” featuring Beyond: Two Souls. Enjoy!
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I was lucky to get an advance demo of Playstation’s upcoming and highly anticipated exclusive Beyond: Two Souls. I say lucky because playing that short 20 minutes of gameplay was enough to convince me that developer Quantic Dream and director/writer David Cage have got another blockbuster on their hands.
Beyond: Two Souls is notable for a few reasons, but one of the most hyped is the cast. A-list stars Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe are the two big names lending their talents to the game. Anyone who’s played Quantic Dream’s last game, Heavy Rain, knows that voice acting was a very big complaint against that artistic and storytelling masterpiece. With Beyond: Two Souls, the developer was able to take a weakness and turn it into a very big strength. But voice acting only takes a video game so far. The real reason to play games, of course, is the gameplay.
Unfortunately, the gameplay had some issues. Action sequences are performed by using a combination of motion controls, timed button presses, and analog stick movements. When this unique control scheme works, it’s frantic, tense and fluid. When it doesn’t, however, it can be confusing and cumbersome. Sometimes, it was completely unclear of what was required of me. Yet, the biggest problem I personally encountered was character movement.
I became lost at one point because of an unholy combination of unwieldy controls, lack of directions, and my own ignorance. Perhaps more aware gamers will take note of the tiny white dots in the environment that denote interactive objects, but I easily missed them on a few occasions. In addition, I wouldn’t realize something was interactive until I was right on top of it, however, navigating the character near that object was somewhat difficult.
The game uses a stationary camera, which sometimes obstructs the view, and the controls felt less responsive than I would’ve liked. The best analogy I can come up with is that characters walk like they’re moving through a vat of really thick mashed potatoes. Maybe I’m exaggerating a little, however, everything felt heavy, stiff, and slow, which means fine control and adjustments can be difficult. The game also tends to push the character in certain directions, either by preventing them from walking into corners or by forcing you to give a wide berth of some objects. This only becomes worse with the lack of fine control of you character. Although the controls are troublesome at times, it’s not enough to really take away from the game. Anyone who’s played Heavy Rain knows exactly what this feels like. Furthermore, anyone who’s played Heavy Rain also knows that it really doesn’t matter how drunkenly uncontrollable and tank-like the characters move, because the story is why they’re playing.
Now, I only played for about 20 minutes, but I could tell how much effort went into the story. Just in the first part I could see how the developers took great care with the writing and directing. Much like Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls offers many different options to the player. I watched my brother play the same demo and he found his way to completely different action set pieces, reactions, and story content. It was amazing to watch how drastically different our playthroughs were and that is the real beauty of this game (and this was only a 20 minute demo!). Other games that offer different experiences and “choices,” like Mass Effect, really just pretend to give you options that all lead you to the same action or consequences. Not this game. My brother and I played COMPLETELY different sections that both stemmed from different paths we took in just one small section of the demo. The story, or what little I could judge of it, was enough to get me hooked. It was mysterious, ominous, exciting, and sad all at once. All this coupled with a unique narrative that follows the life story of Jodie and her supernatural companion, while focusing on the theme of death, seem to give this game a great opportunity to become a truly incredible experience similar to Heavy Rain.
Even more astounding is the emotion felt while playing one short section of the demo. I don’t want to give away too much, because you need to experience this yourself, but this segment made me feel for characters in a way that few games can. In this particular section, you play Jodie as a little girl and occasionally switch to the supernatural entity tethered to her. As I controlled the entity through its portion of the demo, I got wrapped up in what I was doing and forgot how my actions might affect Jodie. So, it wasn’t until I switched back to her, that I understood the impact of what I did. It gave me chills, it made me sad, it made me upset, it made me feel uneasy, but not toward the game or the characters, but at myself. Wow. And my brother felt the same way. After he played that section he turned to me with a somber, pleading look on his face and said, “I didn’t mean to do that. I feel terrible.” I asked him what he thought of the game after playing that. He said, “It’s amazing.” These powerful emotions are accentuated because you control both characters and, through clever gameplay, are made slightly unaware of the extent of your actions in this particular section. Very rarely can games make a player feel raw emotion, the kind that you feel in the pit of your stomach, yet that section of the demo accomplished that for two different players, which is a great testament to the game.
Control issues aside, this game is looking like a great adventure with a powerful story. I know I can’t wait to pick up this game and give it a full playthrough. I highly suggest you all do the same.
Beyond: Two Souls is a Playstation 3 exclusive developed by Quantic Dream. It releases in North America on Tuesday, October 8th. The demo is out today (October 1st).
