Beyond Two Souls thread whatever

[fistfulofmetal]

https://www.facebook.com/GameStop?sk=app_174961479209942


i got one. gonna play later today maybz

[demi]

Junk spam.

> Access to Coupons

- OK

> Wants to post on your behalf

- Skip

> You must Like GameStop

- Fuck this, I'll just wait

[archnemesis]

Post impressions once you've played it. I was planning to pre-order it.

[fistfulofmetal]

It plays like Heavy Rain with better implemented QTE's and real actors instead of whatever French people they could hire. Also sometimes you play as a ghost who can go around and mess with the world.

There are two scenes in the demo.

First is Jodie has a youngster doing tests with the ghost. It's basically a tutorial to show you how to move around and interact with the world. As Jodie you use the left stick to move and push the right stick in the direction of whatever you want to interact with. So if a book is on the floor you press the right stick down. As the ghost you float around the world and can move through walls. L1 locks you on to interactive things and then you move the sticks in a specific manner to interact. In this section I possessed a lab worker, and made things fall around in a room to freak a lady out.

Second is Jodie as Ellen Page trying to escape the cops in a raining night on a train. During QTE sections you're doing things like flicking the right stick in a direction based on the context. Up to push a door open, left to dodge someone, etc. There's combat as well which is the right stick again. The camera will position Jodie on the left or right side of the screen and you have to push the right stick in a direction to "follow" her movement. So if she is about to kick a guy on her left side you push the stick to the left and so on.

The big final set piece is trying to fend off a SWAT team thats trying to capture/kill Jodie. You use the ghost to possess SWAT members to STRAIGHT UP MURDER EACH OTHER, blow up cars, fire hydrants, street lights, etc, to stall them.


Soooo, it seems this is essentially a higher production Heavy Rain with hopefully a better story and far better talent.

[thisismyusername]

Junk spam.

> Access to Coupons

- OK

> Wants to post on your behalf

- Skip

> You must Like GameStop

- Fuck this, I'll just wait

Even then, if you "skip" the posting it won't give you the code.

You basically have to let that app post (I did it "for me only") to get the code.

So you aren't missing anything.

[archnemesis]

Well I liked Heavy Rain so that sounds good to me.

[chronovore]

"Early Access to Beyond demo via Gamestop Facebook"

-- It dawns on me that this entire sentence wouldn't have made any sense 10 years ago. Demos were just demos, they were not offered as prizes. Gamestop would have run the promotion through their own website. Wasn't Facebook just this thing that college kids were doing, then? Limited to students still?

[thisismyusername]

"Early Access to Beyond demo via Gamestop Facebook"

-- It dawns on me that this entire sentence wouldn't have made any sense 10 years ago. Demos were just demos, they were not offered as prizes. Gamestop would have run the promotion through their own website. Wasn't Facebook just this thing that college kids were doing, then? Limited to students still?

It was... Harvard only, or not even made until "next year" for sure.

[fistfulofmetal]

Reading a bit, it seems the events play out pretty differently based on if you pass/fail situations.

[Cerveza mas fina]

"Early Access to Beyond demo via Gamestop Facebook"

-- It dawns on me that this entire sentence wouldn't have made any sense 10 years ago. Demos were just demos, they were not offered as prizes. Gamestop would have run the promotion through their own website. Wasn't Facebook just this thing that college kids were doing, then? Limited to students still?

Early access to this dlc if you retweet this instagram of miley twerking it on netflix.

2003 me

[thisismyusername]

Reading a bit, it seems the events play out pretty differently based on if you pass/fail situations.

It's basically the same as Heavy Rain, but without the fuck awful controls. For instance: No "gas to go!" Use only the stick to move Ellen Page around. The "Aiden"/spirit bits are kinda bad, but the story is somewhat interesting even if it's just "Heavy Rain 2.0 with two 'Big Name' Actor/Actress' in it."

I didn't really like Heavy Rain's demo but this one didn't repulse me enough to go "Yeah, no, I won't try that." In fact, it's kinda retroactively makes me want to hunt down a cheap copy of Heavy Rain to torture myself with the controls to go through the story for.

I certainly wouldn't buy either for $30 OR 60, but for a price of a movie ticket? I'll probably get Beyond in a year at Gamestop, provided they have used copies.

[Himu]

"Early Access to Beyond demo via Gamestop Facebook"

-- It dawns on me that this entire sentence wouldn't have made any sense 10 years ago. Demos were just demos, they were not offered as prizes. Gamestop would have run the promotion through their own website. Wasn't Facebook just this thing that college kids were doing, then? Limited to students still?

Amen.

[Stoney Mason]

Not that reviews necessarily matter but still. 



http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/10/08/beyond-two-souls-review

6.0


For reference.

http://www.ign.com/games/heavy-rain/ps3-811232

9.0


They must have really dropped the ball. The reviews are all over the place.


Now if we can stop getting a weekly interview from David Cage about the state of gaming things would be good.

[Rufus]

What the fuck is with that phone friendly design, I didn't click a mobile link. Single column, large type, thumb-friendly button size trash.

[fistfulofmetal]

Keep in mind the reviews for HR and Beyond are by two different people. Not really directly comparable.

[Stoney Mason]

Keep in mind the reviews for HR and Beyond are by two different people. Not really directly comparable.

There are a lot of middling to bad reviews for the game. I'm just too lazy to post them. Eurogamer, Edge, Destructioid, etc.

I just posted the IGN one to show how the worm has seemingly turned on Cage.


Heavy Rain has a metacritic of 87. Beyond is currently at 74 and probably gonna drop more.

[brob]

Given that The Walking Dead is supposedly a well written game of this kind, I'm wondering if maybe people will be less forgiving of Beyond: Two Souls and David Cage's consistently awful writing.

[Stoney Mason]

Given that The Walking Dead is supposedly a well written game of this kind, I'm wondering if maybe people will be less forgiving of Beyond: Two Souls.

Whatever someone thinks about walking dead at least its a relatively simple and straight forward plot (albeit made in a pulp cliffhanger style). Cage generally introduces all sorts of pretentious wankery into his plots which certainly makes them more annoying to consume, at least for me.


The games are whatever though. Whether someone likes Beyond or Heavy Rain is a personal opinion. There are lots of games I like that have bad reviews or other forum people don't like and vice versa. I just get tired of Cage in general when he speaks on how things should be and how the media kept running to him after Heavy Rain was a bigger hit than expected.

[cool breeze]

Given that The Walking Dead is supposedly a well written game of this kind, I'm wondering if maybe people will be less forgiving of Beyond: Two Souls and David Cage's consistently awful writing.

Maybe.  It's not like people thought Heavy Rain was well written either.  It, and judging from the demo, Beyond do interesting stuff within that interactive movie framework.  So I think people like the games despite the writing.  At least there's one blurb in the gaf review thread that says as much:

Beyond: Two Souls is a misstep for Mr. Cage and Quantic Dream, but its failings are not the result of the limitations of Mr. Cage’s preferred medium. That it is interesting at all hinges on its interactive nature. It would be one of the worst movies you’ve ever seen, even though Ms. Page and Mr. Dafoe give fine performances.

[brob]

It's not so much that people needed a well written game to see that Heavy Rain wasn't, but rather that at the time there wasn't much else in that particular space (interactive movie-game/AAA visual novel/whateverthefuck). Of course, there still isn't much beyond Heavy Rain and The Walking Dead, but I get the feeling that for a lot of people the novelty of Heavy Rain was a big factor in what made it enjoyable and I'm not sure that's repeatable.

[bluemax]

The story in Heavy Rain was not worth the price of entry.

[Stoney Mason]

It's not so much that people needed a well written game to see that Heavy Rain wasn't, but rather that at the time there wasn't much else in that particular space (interactive movie-game/AAA visual novel/whateverthefuck). Of course, there still isn't much beyond Heavy Rain and The Walking Dead, but I get the feeling that for a lot of people the novelty of Heavy Rain was a big factor in what made it enjoyable and I'm not sure that's repeatable.

The Eurogamer review hints at that theme.

Heavy Rain worked because it was a police procedural, a genre that's all about narrow horizons and methodical reassurance. The tight confines of Quantic's style suited it well. The same delivery just can't contain Beyond's epic scope, preposterous premise and high-octane action. You're left feeling detached from it, and its component parts have nothing more than a frail spine of story holding them together.

And something else has changed since 2010: it's a lot less lonely on the interactive drama frontier. The indie scene has seen an explosion in narrative games using experimental styles as varied as To the Moon, Gone Home and Thirty Flights of Loving. The Walking Dead has looked toward TV and comics and proved the value of the simple dramatic virtues: strong characters, solid writing, interesting situations. Even dumb action games like Asura's Wrath have got in on the act.

Beyond's approach is no less valid than any of those. But the film stars, the motion capture tech, the black borders, all that expensive striving to look just like a movie, don't make it any more valid either. Perhaps what David Cage and his dream need are limitations - limitations that Sony's blank cheque has singularly failed to impose on this sprawling, over-reaching game.

I personally think it comes down more to the execution. When you play one of these essentially interactive novels, the pacing, the characters, the immersion, and the connection has to be a lot stronger than it typically is. Otherwise it just starts to become boring and the non-interaction becomes annoying rather than just a fact.

[Mr. Gundam]

I still haven't played my copy of Heavy Rain, so I see no reason to play this.

[Joe Molotov]

Can't wait to pick this up on Black Friday for $20.

[Stoney Mason]

For what its worth I liked Heavy Rain. Not as much as some crazy people did but I respected that Cage was finally able to make a game that didn't just utterly fall apart as you played it like the earlier ones did.

Also Ben Kuchera is absolutely brutal on the game.

Beyond: Two Souls is a mixture of a game that’s not fun and a story that’s not interesting


There is a single thought that ran through my head while I was trying to get through Beyond: Two Souls. I’ve had a number of fascinating discussions about games and writing with David Cage, the man behind Heavy Rain, Indigo Prophecy, and Omikron, and I was a fan of each one, for different reasons. I couldn’t wait to get started on Quantic Dream’s latest game, and I made myself a cup of tea, put the kids to bed, and got to work.

But a thought popped up a few hours into the game, and never went away. “Why am I playing this?”

Beyond the problems of narrative

The problem is that I never came up with a good answer, and so I walked away in disgust about halfway through. There was nothing there to hold my interest. At all.

I dislike the argument that some things are games and others aren’t. I had a fine time with Dear Esther, and I don’t mind the interactivity being used as a tool to tell a story without offering mechanical challenges to overcome. It’s just another approach at using the art form of video games to get to the player, to make them think and feel certain things.

Beyond: Two Souls certainly suffers from the fact that it’s a series of quick-time events that pretend to be something more profound. Combat consists of moving the analog stick in the direction of the character’s movements, and it’s hard to fail. You’ll often be asked to mash buttons or hold a combination of controls in order to do even simple tasks, such as ducking under or over broken glass.

There is just enough interaction to keep things annoying, but never enough that you feel as if you have any real control over what’s going on in the game. I often felt like I was tapping the controller in different ways just to prove to the game that I was still there, paying attention.

This wouldn’t matter, or at least it would matter less, if the characters and story were enough to pull the player in and make them care about what was going on. You play as Jodie, a young girl who is haunted by a sort of ghost named Aiden. Aiden is attached to Jodie through a sort of psychic umbilical cord, and the spirit can attack her enemies, interact with the world by knocking things off of tables, or even take over the bodies of other characters in the game.

“He’s a tiger in a cage,” Jodie says, trying to explain their connection. It’s an apt description, but it becomes even scarier when you realize that she’s the cage.

Aiden has made Jodie’s life a living hell. She always feels different, alienated from other people. Her parents fear her, and Aiden allows her to eavesdrop on their conversations about her powers. At points in her life she’s cared for by an organization that studies her and Aiden, and later becomes a CIA agent so she can put her abilities to use. She does this through, and I wish this was a joke, a training montage.


It gets worse. Nearly every cliché from bad movies is on display here, complete with silly action sequences, overwrought dialog, and predictable moments of danger and fear. Everything is played deadly serious, but the situations are so comically overdone that it becomes hard to take anything seriously. Jodie is often a caricature of teenage girls, and her interactions with others just operate as giant neon fingers pointing to the fact that she’s different.

Let me set up damn near everything in this game: She goes somewhere, bad things happen, Aiden helps her, but it’s likely that he crosses the line. Cue the sad music while Jodie looks mournfully at the camera. Each scene happens out of order, and they rarely seem like parts of a cohesive game. Instead I kept expecting to see Jodie hitchhike from place to place, with the same music from the TV version of The Incredible Hulk playing in the background.


There is a scene where you help a character give birth that is so nonsensical I was just glad it didn’t happen in an elevator. Of course moments later you have to save said baby from a fire, because of course you do. This is what happens when someone completely runs out of ideas for how to put characters in danger. Aiden can wrap Jodie in a kind of force field, taking away any risk from the game and removing what little sense of drama was there to begin with.

This is the worst of all worlds: You have a game that’s not fun to play, matched with a story that’s filled mawkish sentimentality and ridiculous moments. All of the characters are cartoons: the scene where Jodie, complete in teenaged goth attire, shreds a bitchin’ guitar solo to show she’s mad at not being let out of her room made me roll my eyes more than feel empathy.

I’m about halfway through the game, and I only got that far because of the fact I’m getting paid to play. I finally gave up about halfway through, and I no longer cared about Jodie, Aiden, or the game that didn’t seem interested in testing the player in any interesting ways. I couldn’t point to a single memorable moment or meaningful choice I was asked to make.

Beyond: Two Souls is a disappointment. Willem Dafoe is in it.

 

[brob]

Just read the Eurogamer review Stoney quoted. The only compliment that wasn't backhanded was directed at Page's voice performance.

 

[MCD]

[Himu]

THE WALKING DEAD PREVAILS.

[Bebpo]

What's sad about this is I actually bought this because I liked Heavy Rain and Indigo/Farenheit was so fucking stupid it was enjoyable for the lolz flying matrix LSD Tarantulas shit.  Pre-ordered it and everything and it shipped before these reviews hit.

Now after reading the reviews it sounds like even if you really liked Heavy Rain, Beyond is godawful.  Like half the reviews are by fans of Heavy Rain and they still say it's shit.  Heavy Rain had dumb writing yeah, but it had good tension since the characters could actually DIE and effect the direction of the plot, the story was interesting since it was a serial killer mystery thriller, and the way you could change how the plot played out was pretty neat.  It had flaws but it was an interesting movie-game if you're into those things (and I do enjoy them if they have things going for them).

Apparently Beyond gets rid of all those elements that made Heavy Rain good.  There's no tension because there's only 1 lead who can't die, this is no mystery killer thriller but a boring slice of life anime, and apparently there's even LESS interaction and none of the choices you make amount to much.  It went from the halfway choose-your-own-adventure meets interactive movie-game that HR was to "watch a boring 20 hour movie and press up occasionally".  Sounds like FFXIII but 30 hours shorter  :'(


I'll give it a try, but after AC3 I've played enough miserable game experiences for 2013 so not gonna stick with it if it sucks.

[Stoney Mason]

Heavy Rain had dumb writing yeah, but it had good tension since the characters could actually DIE and affect the direction of the plot, the story was interesting since it was a serial killer mystery thriller, and the way you could change how the plot played out was pretty neat.  It had flaws but it was an interesting movie-game if you're into those things (and I do enjoy them if they have things going for them).

I felt roughly this way also. I'm not sure why they would pursue a course of less interaction and less choice impacting the game.

[Rufus]

Same as Brendan McNamara (LA Noire). Although in his case it's a TV show.

[Great Rumbler]

Same as Brendan McNamara (LA Noire). Although in his case it's a TV show.

LA Noire was kinda cool, though, as long as you grabbed a strategy guide first.

[Rufus]

Yeah, going "off-script" for failing to read the designers minds sucked, but I liked it well enough too. Lots of wasted resources though for an ultimately just so-so adventure game.

[ferrarimanf355]

Jim Sterling's review of this game was more than worth the read.

[pilonv1]

link?

[ferrarimanf355]

http://www.destructoid.com/review-beyond-two-souls-263180.phtml

[Bebpo]

Well, it's not that bad at the start.  Not great either, but if you're into this things it's got an interesting premise and moves decently for the first couple of sections.

[Smooth Groove]

Does it at least look good?  Heavy Rain had some nice visuals for its time though the framerate was pretty rough.

[Himu]

I am mixed on games like these. I dunno, Shenmue was hardly a movie game. There's barely any cutscenes, and practically the entirety of the games are just gameplay. The Walking Dead, I find, is a big exception. I watched some demos of Beyond, and I liked the idea, but it was practically nothing but cutscenes. The Walking Dead has a nice mix of cutscene and actual gameplay, even if that gameplay is streamlined. Shenmue, however, melds interaction with its gameplay in a way these other games just don't manage to do. When you're looking for sailors, you have to actually look for sailors. When you're looking for Ren of the Heavens, you are actually looking for Ren of the Heavens and scouting out information on how to find him. It's not like, you get a cutscene and then wipe.

I'm not saying games like Beyond don't have a right to exist; they do. But even old adventure games pre-dating Shenmue still contain a semblance of adventure (heh), exploration, and gameplay to them. I wouldn't mind it if the actual writing was good and I was fully planning on buying Beyond just to support an esoteric take on interactive storytelling until I read the reviews which express even that's not good.

As a fan of Shenmue, would I like Heavy Rain? I really liked what I played of the demo.

[Stoney Mason]

I guess it depends on why you liked Shenmue. Heavy Rain has none of the proto-open world elements Shenmue had. It's a much more straight adventure game mixed with interactive novel experience.

[Himu]

Shenmue's emphasis on the mundane is why it is special. When you're airing books every day, for a kung fu master, it feels like a chore - because it is. But the master tells you to clear your mind, and let the anger subside. Ryo doesn't want to air the books - neither do you - but you have to in order to continue the story. Eventually, you're calmed, and accept that you're going to have to carry out the books, as the game asks. Right around the same time Ryo starts to calm down as well. It creates a link between player and pc that few - if any games - have rivaled. It's an interesting methodology of story-telling, one that rarely ever is presented within the confines of gaming.

I doubt Heavy Rain will offer the same experience. No, I know it won't. I'm sure it'll be the typical game format of cutscene -> game -> examine body -> solve puzzles.

[Stoney Mason]

Heavy Rain has a slow and deliberate pace to it and you can extend that slow pace to it if you want by examining everything but no, it's not as slow paced as I remember Shenmue being. And if it is, that more involves watching a lengthy cutscene rather than being forced to move boxes on a crate to make a work day pass. Heavy Rain is a far less ambitious game than Shenmue. That has its pros and cons. But to me not having the glacial pacing and padding of Shenmue is a pro. I have a feeling it would be a con for you though.

[DCharlieJP]

Shenmue was "life in Japan, the simulator!" - i played it with a near zero level of Japanese as well

spoiler (click to show/hide)

i started playing last week 

[close]

But yeah, lols aside - i finished the game not knowing what the hell was going on - basically just click on everything but basically just absorbing the "DAT JAPAN!" thing....

truth is it's only partly based on fact - fer instance, fork lift races tend to be 8 lap races and there's a ton of sailors.

[Himu]

Shenmue II CHINA

[Bebpo]

Maybe it's been a while since I played Shenmue (it has) but I thought it was basically an action adventure game set in a sandbox world?  Basically like Yakuza.  You can explore around or follow the story and punch dudes in the face.

Heavy Rain is like a point & click adventure game with direct control and some things mainstreamed like dialogue choices.  Sorta like Dreamfall-ish. 


Very different genres.  You don't have to play Shenmue for the story.  You can play it for the kicking dudes in the face, or exploring the world.  Heavy Rain is like a P&C game; story is everything and there's not much underneath besides some puzzles and dialogue choices.

[benjipwns]

it's almost like cage really wants to make a movie and not a game or something

http://www.gamespot.com/news/david-cage-no-one-should-be-allowed-to-define-what-a-game-is-6415457

"Some people can be very conservative about this medium and this is sometimes frustrating," Cage said. "Some people wish that games would always stay what they were in the past 30 years, just with more polygons. No one should be allowed to define what a video game is or should be; no one has this power."

[Howard Alan Treesong]

[Great Rumbler]

[cool breeze]

at that moment she learned to appreciate the writing in Juno and Inception

[Howard Alan Treesong]

(Image removed from quote.)

please add as :beyond or :hugemistake

[Howard Alan Treesong]

Ellen Page looks like she's realizing she's only gonna be young and marketable for, what, another 5 years? And she spent HOW many of them on a mo-cap rig for a third-tier interactive Matrix ripoff? Can she even GET work again after Beyond: Two Souls? Fuck.

[Sho Nuff]

Ellen Page looks like she's realizing she's only gonna be young and marketable for, what, another 5 years? And she spent HOW many of them on a mo-cap rig for a third-tier interactive Matrix ripoff? Can she even GET work again after Beyond: Two Souls? Fuck.

[Steve Contra]

(Image removed from quote.)

You know, Willem Dafoe has always struck me as a dude who just likes to act. He's done crap, fun stuff, challenging stuff, whatever. He just like it. So for him to look so depressed about BEYOND: THERE IS SERIOUSLY A GHOST OR SOMETHING NAMED AIDEN is telling about the game.

[MyNameIsMethodis]

no thats just how he always is

[thisismyusername]

It's kinda sad the writing is worse than Heavy Rain if the reviews are right. I kinda liked the concept of the ghost following a girl around bit that the demo showed. I was kinda hoping that would redeem the rest of the movie, but sadly it seems it doesn't.

Shame, because there could be a good story to tell there if they dropped like the CIA bit and just had it be the CIA trying to get their lab rat back or something.

[Joe Molotov]

If I liked Plan 9 From Outer Space, will I like this game?

[Tasty]

Ellen Page looks like she's realizing she's only gonna be young and marketable for, what, another 5 years? And she spent HOW many of them on a mo-cap rig for a third-tier interactive Matrix ripoff? Can she even GET work again after Beyond: Two Souls? Fuck.

Best cutscene ever.

[radioheadrule83]

Just seen this on 4chan, lol at the Sony QA screenshot... pervs at Sony Liverpool turning freecam on to see her fully modelled front:

 

spoiler (click to show/hide)

http://i.imgur.com/b9EG4jq.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/q8baQc0.jpg

[close]

[Joe Molotov]

GOTY

[Great Rumbler]

David Cage redeemed.