Beyond: Two Souls: You’re Never Alone.

Before Heavy Rain you’d struggle to find anyone who knew about Quantic Dream and the types of games they create. They were a little ahead of themselves with the concept when they released Fahrenheit back in 2005 being largely ignored by the gamer populace even though it received wide critical acclaim. Since then however they have developed a solid reputation for developing games that dispense with game play in favour of creating a deep, rich story whilst also teasing everyone endlessly with their technology demonstrations. Beyond: Two Souls is their latest release which goes back to their roots in paranormal thrillers done in their signature cinematic style.

On the surface Jodie appears to be just like anyone else but ever since she was born she has been tied to another entity that she only knows as Aiden. For a long time that’s all he was, just a presence that was always there watching over her. However over time he developed the ability to interact with the real world and, like the caged animal he was, he began to lash out at every opportunity. This had caught the attention of the CIA who, of course, were looking to exploit this potential power for their own ends. Like anyone else all Jodie wanted was to be part of the regular world but her attachment to Aiden made sure that would never happen.

Quantic Dream have really outdone themselves with Beyond: Two Souls as it aptly demonstrates what the PlayStation3 is capable of. The graphics are simply phenomenal showing that the 3 years since their previous release have been spent pushing the hardware to its limits. The biggest improvements come from the small things that add on exceptional bits of realism like the way skin looks and moves or the way tears roll down the character’s face. It all runs smoothly as well although that’s mostly due to the restricted nature of most of the environments. It allows for a lot of detail  but you’re not going to be play in wide expansive environments that are teaming with NPCs.

Beyond: Two Souls retains Quantic Dream’s signature interactive film style with you spending quite a lot of time being in the back seat to the action that’s happening on screen. The dialogue choice system hasn’t changed dramatically, offering up a variety of options which you can choose from and that will influence how the story progresses. The combat sections have been reworked slightly and puts a little more guesswork into completing the interactions successfully. The addition of the Aiden mechanic adds a completely different perspective to the game and also allows for some pretty novel and interesting game play.

From what I can remember of Heavy Rain you, for the most part, got unlimited time in which to make the decision about which dialogue option you chose. Beyond: Two Souls on the other hand will often begin to fade the choices out after a small period of time, leaving you with only a single option which will be automatically selected for you. I will admit that this helps with pacing as you can sometimes be paralysed by choice but you can sometimes end up regretting taking to long to think about what you wanted to say. Of course this also means that subsequent play throughs could be quite rewarding as even when you get to choose the  options you want there are still many others that you’d potentially want to see.

The combat/quick time event system  has been changed significantly with the the visual cues being almost completely removed. For combat sequences you’re now instructed to follow Jodie’s motion on screen using the right analogue stick. This does eliminate the majority of the rather immersion breaking pop-ups that alert you to what button you need to press however it also adds a layer of ambiguity to what action you need to perform. It’s relatively forgiving as I often found myself getting things right when I was pretty sure I just mashed the stick in a random direction however I just as often found myself getting it wrong when I was sure I got it right.

There are still times when you’ll be pressing buttons, holding down combinations of them or doing things with the controller that the prompts on screen are telling you to do although they’re usually regulated to the non-action sequences. Its also during these sequences that you’ll go hunting around for white dots which detail something you can interact with which also suffer from the not-so-precise detection method of pointing with the right analogue stick. Whilst I don’t have a better system in mind it does feel like it’s somewhat pointless for some sections.

The biggest deviation away from Quantic Dream’s traditional style is the inclusion of the Aiden mechanic, a disembodied spirit that has the ability to go through walls, throw things around and even kill or possess people should the need arise. For the most part he functions as another puzzle mechanic, allowing the developers to create rather intricate puzzles that require some lateral thinking in order to complete. You’re also given a little bit of choice as to how you play Aiden as you can either make him out to be the benevolent watcher or the dick that attempts to screw with every aspect of Jodie’s life. For the most part the game seems to encourage you to be a dick, making abstaining a torturous exercise.

Aiden also functions as the writer’s get out of jail free card as whilst his powers are initially limited to throwing things around it becomes evident that he’s really some kind of all powerful demi-god who can do pretty much anything he wants. Whilst this allows them to put Jodie in a whole host of situations that would otherwise be somewhat unbelievable it does make you question why some things happen to her and some don’t. Thankfully though Aiden isn’t a complete deus ex machina but it remove a good chunk of believability to the game, even for someone like me who’s able suspend disbelief in aid of a good story.

From a story perspective Quantic Dream has done an amazing job of bringing these characters to life; no small part of which is due to the amazing acting by the Ellen Page and William Dafoe. It says a lot that all the emotions I felt whilst playing came rushing back while I was reviewing my footage for screenshots, my heart aching for the pain they endured. Even though I was satisfied with my initial play through I still feel like there’s another side to this game that I’ve yet to experience due to the wide range of dialogue options available. This means that just like Heavy Rain before it Beyond: Two Souls is a game that will reward subsequent playthroughs. even if the overall story is known.

PLOT SPOILERS BELOW 

However I feel like Quantic dream kind of screwed up the relationships in Beyond: Two Souls, specifically with Ryan. Whilst Joide makes it clear that she thinks she might be falling for him initially it appears that he’s not completely interested in her, especially considering how he left after she had a flashback to when she was almost raped. The confession then of how he loves her, and indeed in the final scenes when he continues to say he loves her, seem tacked on and hollow. The other relationships by comparison have deep and rich back stories to them that develop over the course of the game and I actually felt something for them, even if some of them were a little shallow. Its possible that I might have felt more if I had pursued the relationship further and its definitely one of the reasons that I’m considering a second play through.

SPOILERS OVER

Beyond: Two Souls reaffirms Quantic Dream’s domination of the cinmeatic game genre, pushing highly interactive gameplay aside in favour of deep and engrossing story that comes alive thanks to the brilliant acting of all the characters. It’s also a return to their roots in fantasy, almost feeling like a spiritual successor to Fahrenheit, and whilst it does suffer a little bit because of this I still find it hard to find fault with it. If you’ve ever played a Quantic Dream game and enjoyed it then you simply can not go past Beyond: Two Souls as it aptly demonstrates just how good they are at building titles like this.

Rating: 9.25/10

Beyond: Two Souls is available exclusively on PlayStation 3 right now for $78. Total game time was approximately 8 hours with 46% of the achievements unlocked.