Beyond Two Souls

Beyond two souls is a PS3 exclusive interactive movie by Quantic Dreams, staring Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe. Beyond two souls was the second game to be screened at the Tribeca Film Festival.

The non-linear story of Two Souls features a girl called Jodie, who has a psychic connection to an entity has called Aiden. This entity, bound to Jodie, has a mind of its own as it manipulates objects and people. The narrative zooms back and forth through Jodie’s life as she learns how to control Aiden through the care of two doctors, then when she becomes independent and working for the CIA. Details of the game can be different dependant on which options you choose throughout the game and can cause branches to form; as like Heavy rain – another game made by Quantic Dreams.

The gameplay is beyond the norm as the game lets you control both Aiden and Jodie throughout Jodie’s life. The game has no HUD and object interaction is done through manipulation of the analogue sticks instead of a button. The closest thing to a HUD is a tiny white dot highlighting anything you can interact with. I think this is great as it helps immerse you into Jodie’s world without face-clutter acting as a distraction.

Due to the multiple options to change the branches of story line, replay ability will be very high. This is without mentioning how much fun it is to mess with people using the entity; which alone is worthy of a play-through again.

Beyond Two Souls prides itself on its e-motion capture details and the use of famous actors Ellen Page and Willem Defoe. The graphics to show these details are amazing for current gen (soon to be next gen also). Cut scenes are movie master pieces through direction by David Cage and game play is fluently blended in as if you never lost control. I haven’t seen this dynamic since Hideo Kojima’s fourth instalment of the Metal Gear Solid Series in 2008, and Beyond Two Souls advances this exponentially.

As a conclusion, this game is very refreshing. As games become more and more realistic and a bigger medium of entertainment through movie like stories, we need games like this to dig us out of the current rut of: Cut scene, kill, kill, kill, irrelevant cut scene, kill, kill and linear walkways. This game will sure have its critics who would also dislike Metal Gear Solid for its long, yet not elongated, cut scenes but you can only make so many run ‘n’ guns before the modding community starts making their own retexture packs.

 

This game should be on PC too:

9.4