Not much is known about Beyond: Two Souls besides that it revolves around a philosophical question regarding what happens after death. David Cage stated that players might be able to find out "what lies beyond" after completing the game. This game is similar to Heavy Rain's dark, gritty, and mature tone.
I really enjoyed all Quantic Dream games, they are all masterpieces in my opinions. Played Heavy rain 4 times and going to play it for the 5th as soon as i can
By the way the demo of this has been released on PSN since a couple of days.
Mixed feelings about it. 1. First, from most of what I've seen, there's not even a notion of failing or not. You can just drop the controller and sit down, it doesn't matter if you fail the QTEs (which are really easy anyway), the scene will change but no matter what the player does everything will lead to the same conclusion. Example, the train scene will always end up with Jodie jumping from the train but in one case it will be after a long fighting sequence on the roof and in the other case it will be after being taken into custody in a cabin and mind-controlling a gard to open the door. And some QTE scenes if failed will just loop until the player succeed, or after a finite number of loops it will go to the next scene. Example 1, when in the woods while being pursued, at the very beginning Jodie will look towards the camera and wait for the player to push the stick forward to run across the woods. If you lay down the controller, she will slip a few meters. and resume her stance toward the camera waiting for player inputs. This cycle repeats itself 3 or 4 times and in the end Jodie arrives at destination... by slipping (instead of running as the game would like you to do). Example 2, when in the river, it is asked for the player to run with spamming R1 + L1. If you don't and just wait, the game will just stay there until you do with the cops shooting endlessly.
It would require the full game to know if at least there are at some point some decisions to make that have a large impact on the game (unsure about buying at the moment, maybe I'll consider it if my GF wants to pay half of it). Or if failing/suceeding some scenes ends up having an impact later in the game. But somehow I really doubt that would be the case.
2- My other issue is that while the concept of Aiden is cool, switching between it and Jodie isn't free at all. If you want to progress in a scene you must do it with one or the other, there's no choice there. (Again, in the demo). And the path to success is often limited to only one option. Example, I'm in a cop car, in custody. The only option available is to strangle the cop with Aiden and then open the door. There's just no other option, floating freely outside the cop-car is pointless.
3- Aiden phases lack consistency. There is really a lack of consistency on whether or not you can do something. Why can't you blast this or that, why can't you kill or control every enemies ? Only available options are highlighted by blue dots or halos for peoples. Maybe there's a reason in the story but the problem ends up that it again creates a lack of choice. You switch to Aiden, see door guard, and instead of having the choice to kill him or control him game imposes you to control him which makes the action of the player again feel obsolete.
4- Finally after having done the demo twice (once while succeeding every event, the other while failing most of them), I can say its pretty cool to have different scenes. My complaint however is that to get to those scene it is necessary to fail something that is really easy. In the demo, you do not chose to end up there it is just a result of purposely failing a scene which in my opinion breaks the immersion since what goes through your head is: I'll fail to see what it does. The main problem might be the lack of urgency, you have plenty of time to look around for stuff to do with Aiden to succeed the scene. Failing would really require you to stop looking and activate every possibilities. And I'm not talking about how you just have to fail one QTE in a big succession of those and then it goes into a fail scene, no. It requires you to litteraly fails 10QTE in a row to fail a scene or to wait 30seconds doing nothing instead of running. Example, if you fail on the bike you end up in custody in a Swat van while if you succeed you get to a town, get shot and fight the Swat in a whole different scenario. This divergence is cool even though both conclusion end up the same: you kill the swat and threaten them to try again. However my problem is that the first scene requires failing something that is easy, on purpose rather than by choice.
On the other hand, the game in what it tries to do does it well. It's incredibly beautiful and cinematographic, action sequences where you have to push in a direction rather than push A,B,X or Y feel more natural since they don't have to display an input on screen. This makes the fighting sequence on the train pretty cool since you focus more on the images than on the next big ugly QTE popup we're used to in other games, even though its really easy. The divergences in the scenes are well made also, my problem with it being you must purposely fail to access most of them, or make grandma play. Obviously, and its not a surprise, its more a film than a game in the end so whether its good or not will depend a lot on the quality of its scenario which cannot be rated right now. It's no surprise that the game is even releasing a preview in some theaters.
Edit: The swat scene in the town also had frame rate drops while controlling Aiden for me :/
If every version has cuts it would just end up being the normal version Doubt American version has cuts since I have seen nothing about it and as far as I know the european ones was cut due to a decision of Sony to make the game PEGI16 instead of PEGI18. What got cut out is probably some nudity. No nude Ellen Page for you, or no nude Willem Dafoe... who knows. Or violent stuff I guess.
Might get it with GF, she loved the demo and despite my skepticism I can see myself investing 30$ in it.
I'll just wait for reviews and opinions to come out for obvious reasons (scenario, are there more choices, etc)
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/eO5L6.jpg)
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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/F9ozq.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/xLN7W.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/t1nzD.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/taI0z.jpg)
Doubt American version has cuts since I have seen nothing about it and as far as I know the european ones was cut due to a decision of Sony to make the game PEGI16 instead of PEGI18. What got cut out is probably some nudity. No nude Ellen Page for you, or no nude Willem Dafoe... who knows. Or violent stuff I guess.
