Beyond: Two Souls (2013), directed and written by David Cage, starring Ellen Page, Willem Dafoe, Caroline Wolfson, Kadeem Hardison, developed by Quantic Dreams, published by Sony Computer Entertainment
I'll just slap this here, before anything else: I don't think Beyond: Two Souls is a game. It's an interactive movie, or better yet, an interactive series, as there definitely is a series worth of story in it. All you do is basically try to get win states in quick time events. But as the story is multiple-choice, it doesn't really matter if you win or lose, as you get into some point of the narrative in any case. At times there is a pretence of gameplay, but in reality, there's none, just moving through a narrow path from one state to another until you finish into one of the 20 or so endings the at tines long-winded narrative has.
From her childhood, Jodie Holmes (Wolfson, as older Page) was special. Like many children, she had an imaginary friend, but unlike most other kids, hers is an actual spirit latched to her, manifesting his powers through her. Aiden, as she calls the spirit, can manipulate items and control people, even kill them. After these manifestations become stronger, Jodie is taken to see doctors Nathan Dawkins (Dafoe) and Cole Freeman (Hardison)
Jodie ends up spending her childhood in a secure facility until she finally caught the attention of the CIA as she grows older. She is now trained to be an agent, who is sent to dangerous missions because of the abilities Aiden gives to her. It doesn't take long for her to notice, that the CIA was only using her to do their dirty work. She deserts the agency and is hunted down by the CIA.
During her escape, Jodie ends up living with a group of homeless people, then spends some time at a Navajo ranch and is finally caught again, when she visits her birth mother, who was locked up in a mental asylum. The CIA uses her again to take care of another portal to the world beyond found by the Chinese. After a successful mission, she is again doublecrossed.
In the end, Nathan Dawkins collapses the containment field around the American portal to beyond, as he has lost his mind. Jodie has to save the world by collapsing the portal once and for all. And in the final chapter, you get to choose between multiple endings based on what decision you made during the story.
Like I said, I don't think Beyond is a game. It does have a pretence of one, but more than anything else, it is a multiple-choice animated story, where the only true element is trying to achieve a win state when it's not really even required most of the time. A lose-state, which is basically doing nothing, will get you somewhere. I don't know if there is a genuine fatal fail state anywhere, by which I mean a moment where you are killed and forced to play the chapter again. There might be, but I didn't really get that impression. Mostly you are just pressing the right buttons at the right time. In some places, you even get multiple tries, so there are moments where the only option is to succeed.
The story is divided into several chapters, told in nonsequential order. But basically, you get to see the story from the several stages of Jodie's life, starting from childhood and ending in her adulthood. As such, there seems to be no genuine rhyme nor reason beyond gimmicky narrative for why there isn't a chronological order for the story. If there is one, it might be to hide the fact that some chapters are pretty dull. During these chapters, you get to see such important events, and even affect them, like Jodie's date night preparations, a night at a party with other teens and begging for money when she is on the lam from the CIA. Often Aiden can help, be it breaking a parking meter for coins or seeing what there is on the other side of a door. Riveting stuff to be sure.
As a side note, it is possible to play Beyond in sequential order at least on PC. I didn't try it that way, so if that would make the experience better, I can't say.
Now, all truth be told, there are elements for an actual game in Beyond. In fact, had Cage been interested in making an actual game, it could have turned out to be a pretty solid action/adventure/mystery game. But making games is not what Cage wants to do. No, what he is interested in is making interactive stories littered with quick-time events.
Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with making interactive stories, but what it boils down to is, that Beyond can, at times, overstay its welcome. It's simply overly long and the way every little thing is littered with QTE's really turn it into a chore rather than an enjoyable experience. And that is actually a shame, as the story is pretty decent. Not amazingly great, but entertaining at its best and the motion capture for the main actors is really good as is their acting. The story gets overly convoluted despite being pretty simple and towards the end, it begins to feel almost like a parody, as it just doesn't quite know when to stop. Nor does it always seem to know where it is trying to go.
I haven't really played that many games by Quantic Dreams. Beyond is really the only I've completed, as I stopped Fahrenheit somewhere around the bug attack and couldn't really get in Omikron. But what I've seen of Cager's games, he doesn't seem to know how to walk on a very fine line of which can turn stories a bit too silly for their own good. It doesn't really help that the narratives seem to hang on very heavy cliches as well. Beyond especially is chock full of them, as those are what the dramatic scenes of the story are made of. And there is a lot of dramatic sequences.
Beyond: Two Souls is something that would probably work better if it actually was a movie or a TV series. That would at least leave out the unnecessary QTE's. Then again, as Cage is obsessed with making interactive narratives, maybe something like Netflix' choose your own adventure Bandersnatch would be the right medium for him.
Do I recommend Beyond? I guess that really depends on where you stand in terms of what entertains you. It's definitely a story filled with hammy writing. I mean, a story about a woman with a spirit, where she even visits Navajos who have spirit problems of their own. That bit even feels a bit tacked on. It relies on cliches and at times it goes a bit overboard. But on the other hand, it does look very nice, the acting is solid and the music is good as well. The only drawback really is the over-reliance on QTE's.
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