David Cage is either a massively pretentious bellend or is so idiotically stupid that he really believes his own moronic hype.   Here’s the the thing – he seems to believe that he is the only person in the games industry who is providing innovation and emotion to video games, when in reality he doesn’t actually seem to notice what has evolved in the industry since the days of Pac-Man.  It seems obvious to me that Cage lacks the writing and directing talent required by the film industry, so has set himself up as a self styled one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind that is video games.  No, David Cage.  Just…  No.

There is a lot to say on the subject of David Cage, but let’s just leave the first paragraph to itself and move on.  Beyond: Two Souls is a game in the same way a telephone conversation is talking to someone.  I mean – it IS a game, but it’s not the best way to conduct a game.

You play Elaine Paige, a girl who has magic powers who will one day play Grizabella the glamour cat in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats.  While this time of her life is mostly – if not completely – skipped over, the random scenes you DO play really focuses on her other skills.  She does the kung fu, the shooting, the sneaking, driving all the motorbikes, doing the horse riding, skiing, delivering a baby, piloting a Korean mini submarine like a pro and being a master of disguise by kidding on to be a Korean.  Elaine Paige is BRILLIANT.  If I was to criticise Elaine Paige, I would have to say that she breathes very loudly.  Other than that, Elaine Paige is ACE.

Anyway, the story sort of follows Elaine Paige’s life as she is brought up by Daniel Defoe and Nice Black Man.  Daniel Defoe does very little writing here (presumably he had already written Robinson Crusoe and was being a science man while being a novelist and economic journalist in the 17th century).  Daniel Defoe IS brilliant because he does child psychology, neurology, but ALSO magic portal science and physics.  If I had one beef with Daniel Defoe it’s that he looks like an evil Rob Brydon in a lot of the scenes.  Nice Black Man, however, is beyond reproach.  He is lovely, patient and really nice.

There are all other characters as well, like Him-Off-Supernatural, A-Handsome-Native-American, Friendly-Homeless-People and Asian-Man-That-Inexplicably-Doesn’t-Go-Undercover-In-The-Korean-Base-Not-Trying-To-Be-Racist-But-He-Would-Have-Been-Less-Conspicuous-Than-A-Canadian-Lady-And-An-American-Male-Model.  All these characters are great, but if I was forced to be negative about them, I’d say that I literally had to Google two of them before choosing an ending that involved them.  

OH!  Of course the whole point is that Elaine Paige has a magic being called Aiden that she sort of controls but not all the time which manifests itself as telekinetic and telepathic powers.  She has a difficult childhood then joins the CIA and is a spy and…  And…

Look, I’m going to level with you here – the story is a complete mess.  Actually, that’s not fair – the narrative is a complete mess.  I played through the game twice – once straight through, and then playing the chapters in chronological order.  I’m not a complete idiot.  I can handle a non-linear narrative, but this genuinely seems random.  The problem is that most of the action takes place near the end of the story (chronologically), so I get the impression that the narrative flow isn’t narrative focused at all, it is instead governed by how engaged David Cage feels his audience will be – as if they wouldn’t sit through a slow 2 or 3 hours.  I actually think he sees gamers as brainless oafs to whom he needs to spoon feed his majestic masterpieces.  I don’t like David Cage.

Sadly, you can see a far better flow and progression by playing the game in chronological order and the game works fantastically when you are watching this girl grow into a powerful psychic.  There is a build up to the mission she goes on that changes the path of her life drastically and you can actually feel how a certain betrayal hits her hard.  The story would then slow down again before gradually ramping up for the finale.  

A major issue with the narrative as it is here is that the player should get into a certain frame of mind, so playing as a child should elicit a certain response.  You should feel that your actions have less weight, that there’s not as much pressure on you.  In the role of a child, you might use your powers to playfully annoy or scare people.  Viewed chronologically, the childhood levels do a great job of showing how people become increasingly unnerved and even hostile toward you because of your powers.  You go along with this girl as she learns the limits of her gift.  It works very well and you find yourself far more empathetic to the character.  It even makes one of the romantic choices carry more weight because the person is aware of the nature of her powers, but accepts them.  As a player you should have seen the fallout of other peoples’ reactions to Elaine Paige’s powers, so this romance would have far greater context.

However, the in-game narrative flow just doesn’t exist.  You’re a 24 year old fugitive.  You’re a six year old.  You’re an 18 year old CIA candidate.  You’re a 16 year old girl.  You’re a four year old.  The scenes themselves aren’t bad, but you are forced to evaluate where you are within the structure of the story and that simply serves to remind you that you ARE in a story.  I personally don’t find flashback an effective framing device for interactive media either, as that hits home just how little impact you have on the story.  It robs the player of agency and casts them in the role of an actor rather than a director.  This is obviously true of most games, but not all of them feel so heavy handed.  There is a ridiculous reason given within the narrative as to why it’s told in a non-linear fashion, but it doesn’t ring true.

The story itself is good in enough in relation to other games, but the presentation ruins it.  Well, the writing itself ruins it.  Everything holds up well enough, but some of the most hideously cliched lines here are delivered (and written) with absolutely no sense of irony.  Such gems as “Consider this my resignation!” and “I’m running…  I guess I’m running from…  Myself…” would be funny lines in a satirical piece, but there is no satire here.  I imagine David Cage writing the dialogue, smugly tittering to himself, shaking his head and saying, “Oh, David.  You’ve done it again!” before stripping naked, slowly walking up to a full length mirror and tongue kissing his reflection for a solid hour.

One of the most damning things in Beyond is that it does nothing to explain the rules of its universe.  In the latter part of the game, and out of nowhere, everyone starts talking about the Infraworld, which is a parallel world from which Elaine Paige’s link to Aiden stems.  The importance of this plot device isn’t mentioned at all until late on in the game and Elaine Paige is said to be an expert in it, but it’s never actually introduced.  Early in the game, teenage Elaine Paige is called in to close down a rift to the Infraworld that has killed a bunch of soldiers and scientists and it introduces the idea of entities from another realm pouring through.  Fair enough, but it isn’t mentioned again until much later where it is all of a sudden something that other countries are pursuing as a source of energy and military importance.  It really feels like the game pulls the idea of the Infraworld being an all encompassing threat out of thin air and you are just expected to go along with it.

A more palpable feeling of confusion comes from how you (as a player) use Aiden.  It seems completely arbitrary what he can and can’t do.  It is explained early on that he is tied to Elaine Paige with a sort magical string that only allows him to move a certain distance from her.  However, when you press Triangle to directly control Aiden, your range is wildly inconsistent.  At one point, I couldn’t move about 15 feet in one direction, but I could travel down the street and into another building moving the other direction.  A similar thing happened when using Aiden to incapacitate an enemy – I had choked one enemy miles away previously, but this particular enemy required me to be 6 feet away from the guy with Elaine Paige before it let me perform the action.

This also raises another point – Aiden can either possess or choke enemies using his magic think energy or whatever, but only a certain few enemies.  It’s never explained why.  I can understand that maybe some people are maybe mentally stronger, but only being able to choke some enemies makes no sense, especially as it is strongly implied that she can choke anyone.  It could have turned into an interesting mechanic commenting on over-reliance on a power over personal strength or the willingness to directly harm someone over allowing it to be done at a distance.  I don’t know.  Just something… better.  Maybe even just explain WHY he can’t do certain things.

A very strange component to Elaine Paige’s character is that when she is sent in to assassinate a character in a fictional analogue of Mogadishu, she is violently sick and appalled at this character’s death.  She’s not remotely concerned, however, by using Aiden to gut stab one man, plunge a knife into another, choke 3 men to death, shoot 4 men and causing 3 to shoot themselves. That’s just who she kills in cold-blood!  While in danger, she shoots 2 guys, forces one to kill his friend, then himself and then throws numerous men to their deaths from a moving vehicle – and all this is minutes before the murder that David Cage has decided you will sympathise with her over.  Nonsense.

I wasn’t even going to mention how ludicrous the mission is in the first place, but I will – she has to assassinate an African warlord who is stopping aid getting to people.  They need her, as a CIA spy, to get close enough to use Aiden to kill this fellow.  It is stressed that she can’t be spotted, America cannot be implicated in this at all and she can’t directly engage the enemy.  It’s a Muslim country, so she disguises herself in a niqab and takes in no weapons so she can move around the city freely (as you see other women doing at one point).  OH NO!  WAIT!  No.  No.  She wears an American uniform with combat webbing laden with grenades and ammo, and decides to use the game’s terrible stealth mechanic to run from cover to cover through the city punching the daylights out of unsuspecting guards!  I mean, come on.  She even tells a character she meets her name!  She’s worse than James Bond!

So what about the actual game then?  Your job through most of this is to push the left stick forward, the right stick in the direction the game tells you to and sometimes press a button to show that you’re not asleep.  The game is essentially one big Quick Time Event, but this actually isn’t a bad thing.  The aforementioned stealth action bits are somehow worse than Alpha Protocol, but the fights actually feel very satisfying when you turn on the directional prompts, otherwise you are left guessing as to how to move the stick.  I know you were supposed to watch which way Elaine Paige was moving and move the stick in that direction, but I found myself confused by a few moves where, for example, someone is pointing a gun at her and she moves her hands up.  I assumed she was going to bring her hands down to push the gun away, so I would naturally pull the stick down to complete the move.  This would fail, as you were expected to push up.  OK, that’s my mistake, but she would then perform the exact move I would have expected.  In addition, sometimes successfully pulling off a move would result in Elaine Paige being hit or in some way injured anyway, so it all seemed a little pointless.

Things like that felt needlessly frustrating, as did many of the QTEs.  I think they could have worked if there were some consistency to them, but there were QTEs for odd actions, like sitting up in one instance.  It required you to hold R1 for 5 seconds, then keep holding it while holding L2.  To sit up!  Later in the game, the same combo was used to stay hidden – holding buttons to perform inaction feels strange.  Even worse than this is the hideously crowbarred in movement controls which were described by David Cage as “Immersive”.  Yes, because flicking the controller downward feels just like jumping down from a ledge AND like striking a match!  You can’t use the same motion for two very different actions and call it immersion!

I’d have to say that control was probably this game’s worst point.  I would love to grab David Cage by the ears and scream in his stupid big face that using the Right Stick is not a natural way to interact with an environment.  Or you know what, if you insist on using it – in the name of mercy, don’t also bind the camera to Right Stick as well!  I mean, for god’s sake, there’s a D-Pad there with NOTHING mapped to it in this game! To make it worse, there are parts of the game that have a very strange camera that is fixed on Elaine Paige, which has her taking up a third of the screen and she’s centred, rather than slightly off centre, making it obnoxious trying to see things in front of her.

Speaking of seeing things, David Cage’s obsession with needlessly dragging cinema into games gels disappointingly well with a technical trick designed to cut down the amount of the world being rendered, namely massive black bars at the top and bottom of the screen to simulate a 2.35:1 aspect ratio.  This leads to two problems: 1) you are losing 33% (disclaimer: this is hyperbole, not actual maths) of the screen space when using a standard 16:9 TV and; 2) I spent quite a while in some scenes not realising it wasn’t a cutscene!  The black bars for me are synonymous with cutscenes, so there were times I was was stood stock still waiting for the scene to continue.  In order to not bore the player, the camera angle often changes when you are idling, so I would assume that something else was about to happen.

There are other technical issues as well, like very muddy background textures, the screen resolution seems positively archaic, but also feels artificially dated due to the impressive motion capture and texturing of the characters.  I’m well aware we’re talking about a last-gen title, but the 720p resolution and a frame rate far closer to 20 than 30 is flat out ugly, yet not without artistry and (dare I say it) charm.  The game makes me feel a strange nostalgia for 1999 and my first DVD player, and I don’t mean that in a snide or uncomplimentary way.

One final technical issue I would mention as well, is that just before the end of some camera shots, the characters’ faces suddenly return to the resting position.  You can see it for the tiniest fraction of a second, but once you notice, you can’t unsee it!

The game world itself feels strangely empty and hollow, but with some bizarre interactions that add nothing to the story.  There are parts where you can just make Elaine Paige sit and cry, or drink coffee, stand at a fireplace – they add no depth, no characterisation or anything, they just serve to waste time or make you feel like the world is more interactive than it is.  And it isn’t.  Movement around the game is frustratingly slow.  There is no run button and Elaine Paige is horrifically over animated.  Walking forward sees her wave her arms like a 1930’s cartoon and glance around furtively like a shoplifter (even in scenarios when she shouldn’t be acting like that), and getting her to turn around is a chore.  That same over animation, however, adds a great deal of life to the young Elaine Paige, especially when she is bored and stomping around her house.

All in all, is the game worth the time?  Well, yes.  It actually is.

The ending is reminiscent of “Return of the King” in that it fades out on what would be an acceptable ending and then fades up onto a new scene a number of times, but by no means is Beyond: Two Souls as bad as I had been led to believe.  Neither is it as bad as I may have led you to believe.  It’s pretentious yet stupid, po-faced yet melodramatic, and not very good on a mechanical level.  Yet it still has a bit of something about it.  There are games that do things better – Heavy Rain is the most directly comparable and is miles ahead of this, but even the more action based Murdered: Soul Suspect tells a more cohesive, entertaining story.  The indie game The Novelist shares some mechanics and themes, but despite its simplicity and narrowed scope is vastly superior.  I probably don’t need to state that Telltale Games’ formula is hard to beat, and Beyond doesn’t even come close.

That being said, an entertaining game doesn’t have to be the best game, or even a very good game.  Beyond: Two Souls would be a 5 out of 10 game for me, but not tarred with the brush of mediocrity.  The artistry, performance and effort are laudable, but are scuppered by pacing, mechanical issues and poor writing.  It is a game of highs and lows rather than one of flatlining blandness.

 

ADDENDUM:
I should point out that I am well aware that it is the actor Ellen Page playing Jodie and Willem Dafoe as Rob Brydon in the game, but it kept me amused through the slower parts of the game to shout, “A turn of speed, Elaine Paige!”.  In many ways this review is very much like a David Cage production.  Long-winded, confused, confusing, self absorbed and the writer has such a low opinion of the end user that he feels he needs to over explain his intentions.