David Cage is a polarizing figure in gaming. Some love his brand of interactive storytelling while others see him as nothing more than a poor writer trying to cover his tracks with spectacular visuals. I for one think he has some great concepts but can never quite execute them properly. Whether its plot holes or confusingly bad dialogue something always holds back his games from greatness.
With Beyond Two Souls he has thrown away the parts that made his previous games enjoyable and doubled down on his weaknesses. The idea is admirable, turning your back on your strengths so you can instead focus on addressing your flaws. Unfortunately what we ended up with is a game that instead of improving upon Quantic Dream’s deficiencies it only highlights them.
At least Beyond Two Souls has an intriguing premise. Well at least it did until near the end of the game when they retroactively introduce a giant plot hole into the mix. You play as Jodie Holmes (possibly related to Sherlock?). Jodie was never like the other children, there’s something special about her. Like many other children she has an imaginary friend. His name is Aiden. The only difference between Jodie and the other kids is that Aiden isn’t as imaginary as you may think. Aiden is as real as you or I. Aiden is a ghost (Boo!).
You get to play through select events in Jodie’s life, jumping back and forth from when she was a child to her as an adult to teenager and none of it makes a lick of sense. There is no reason to why you play the scenes in the order Quantic Dream has chosen. In fact the order sometimes makes you feel disconnected from Jodie and confused by her actions. In one scene we are introduced to a Character named Ryan. Ryan is separating you from the closest thing you have to a father so you can be trained in the military and he’s being a real dick about it. When Jodie begins crying he yells at her to stop being such a baby and suck it up. Next you’re getting ready for a date with Ryan and Jodie keeps talking about how she might be in love with him. The very next scene Ryan is once again acting like a giant dick.
They never bother to show you why Jodie thinks she might be in love. All the player knows is that Ryan is an asshole who Jodie shouldn’t want anything to do with. In this same scene the idea that Aiden is possessive of Jodie and might become violent is introduced but quickly abandoned and never mentioned again. They can set up an interesting scene and tell a good contained story but when viewed within the context of the rest of the game it makes no sense. It feels like every scene was written by a different person with no knowledge of what the other writers were doing.
This feeling is further cemented by just how confounding the pacing is. Some scenes will be just a few minutes whiles others can last an hour and a half. One scene in particular is especially long and has nothing to do with the rest of the game. You spend 90 minutes on a haunted farm and then leave. Nothing that happens there matters. You don’t learn anything new and I can’t help but feel it’s only there so Beyond could have a big action set piece.
At least the game is well-acted. Willem Dafoe and Ellen Page give great performances despite the unintentionally funny dialogue. They really committed to their characters, but it’s hard to buy Jodie and Nathan as real when their actions make no sense. It’s hard to enjoy the actors when the writing is so bad I want to jam a pencil through each of my eardrums so I don’t have to hear it anymore.
I don’t want to spoil anything (not that it would really matter) so I will tread lightly here. At one point in the game there is an extremely disturbing depiction of suicide. It’s not disturbing because it’s too graphic but rather because of the worrying message behind it. Somebody kills themself and immediately their spirit appears. Their spirit is happy and the problems they were facing when they were alive have been solved. I hope it was not intentional but in this moment Quantic Dream is portraying suicide as a positive solution to depression. It made me feel sick.
Unlike Heavy Rain there is no choice in Beyond Two Souls. In Heavy Rain there were consequences to every action and you were forces to live with them. In Beyond the only time you actually have to touch the controller is when to have to move the character. There are maybe three scenes where you get to choose a different outcome but they have no long term effects. The only real choice you get is at the end when it asks you what ending you would like. You’re never in danger because if you fail a combat sequence the game just keeps going.
It might be a good thing though because the combat is terrible. When you need to take action the screen slows down and you have to move the analogue stick in the direction that Jodie is moving. If she’s punching to the left you move the stick to the left. If she’s punching up you move the stick up. If she’s punching up and to the left you…um…guess and hope you picked the right direction. It’s frustrating until you realize that none of it matters and then it’s boring.
It’s hard to say you play this game because you don’t really. You played Heavy Rain because you got to interact with the things around you in a meaningful way, which is what’s sorely missing from Beyond Two Souls. It’s kind of like watching a movie where sometimes the main character just stops moving and you need to push the stick so they will move on to the next scene. I just wish it wasn’t also a bad movie.
Sometime you will get to take control of Aiden and get a break from Jodie but playing as the ghost is nothing more than bothersome. Aiden controls poorly and all you do when you play as him is hold L1 and move the analoges a bit so you can watch something happen. Maybe it shows Jodie a vision of the past or shakes a bookcase either way it’s not interesting.
Beyond Two Souls is a complete disappointment. It’s a complete step back from Heavy Rain which was already a problematic game in its own right. The only good things I can point to are the acting and some of the scenes are cool if taken out of context as their own separate piece of fiction. Maybe this game would have worked better as a series of short stories with no connection between them, but the overarching tale of Jodie Holmes makes each of the scenes more confusing and a lot less enjoyable. This game is a master class in everything that’s wrong with storytelling in video games.