Previews// Beyond: Two Souls

This is probably partly due to the seeming indecision over whether Beyond is a game or a film. For its early hours we're given incomplete knowledge of the situation. The game's 'present' has Jodie as a grown woman, on the run.

The past is gradually filled in through a series of flashbacks. As a filmic device this is fine. In a game, in which we're supposed to project ourselves into the main character – in which they're ideally more an avatar for us to roleplay through than a character, in fact – knowing less than the protagonist doesn't really work.

But then, half the time you're not actually controlling Jodie anyway. And I don't mean that in the sense that you mostly only 'control' her with quicktime prompts.

A lot of the time you control Aiden, which so far we've been led to believe is a separate entity to Jodie that acts (mostly) on her command. With Aiden you can interact with various objects and occasionally possess others in various uninteresting and unchallenging ways (hold R1, push your analog sticks in different directions).

Dividing control between two protagonists is an interesting development route to take that, once again, removes you from the sense that you're really taking on the role of Jodie. I'd like to think, in fact, that this is a little piece of commentary from Quantic Dream on the role of the player in a videogame, never truly being one with the protagonist and always acting to help them at a distance. That would probably be pretty obnoxious of them, though.*

It's a shame that we're removed from the action in this way. There are occasional moments where the gameplay is almost exciting, and I found myself wishing I was playing that exact scenario but in a game designed by Naughty Dog.

I can only speculate as to why we're not given more control in these action sections. My guess would be that Quantic Dream wants the emphasis to be on narrative over mechanics, but this feels like an unnecessary choice to make.

If nothing else, The Last of Us has recently shown that it's possible to provide a believable, engaging narrative without sacrificing compelling gameplay mechanics. If anything, the feeling of agency deepens the player's involvement to the point where occasional moments of weird player-driven behaviour can be overlooked. And... you know, it was actually fun rather than just being interesting.

Now, we could have pages and pages of debate as to whether a game has to be 'fun' or whether, like many a good film/book/play it can be satisfying in other ways. Beyond is certainly interesting. It's a big budget attempt to tell a mature, layered story through the medium of games and that is, let's face it, still a rare thing. It looks great.

The narrative is intriguing if not, up to the point to which I played (around a third of the way through, I'm told) utterly compelling. There is, of course, two thirds of the game left for things to improve. So far, though, it's not a lot of fun.

Maybe you're fine with that. It looks suspiciously, however, like you're going to have to decide whether you want to pay 40 or so quid for an interactive movie that's OK, if not startlingly brilliant.

From where I'm stood, though, here's hoping that somewhere past that one third mark it just starts being a bit more fun...


*As a QUITE SPOILERY aside, there's a bit later on where numerous 'entities' escape from the 'other side' and cause havoc. Extending the metaphor, that would be a parallel for more 'players' getting into the world and creating chaos for the poor, unprepared NPCs and disrupting their carefully designed world. The perils of multiplayer, kids.