Having been responsible for "Heavy Rain," quite possibly the greatest piece of interactive storytelling in the videogame industry, Quantic Dream writer and director David Cage had some big shoes to fill with his new story, "Beyond: Two Souls." Part of what made Heavy Rain such a huge success was the fact that it played into Cage's biggest storytelling strengths. Cage is most in his element when he is telling beautiful introspective stories of human nature and willpower. That is why Beyond: Two Souls isn't very good. Cage really shouldn't have done so much experimenting with his talent here.
--------------------- ---------------------
Ellen Page as Jodie Holmes, the protagonist (1)
By far, this game's biggest strength lies in its protagonist, Jodie Holmes, brought to life by Ellen Page. We are with Jodie from when she was a child up until she is an adult. Since she was born, she has been linked to a spirit named Aiden, who is incredibly protective of her, but sometimes doesn't know how to protect her without getting her in trouble or hurting people. Sometimes he is helpful, fending off attackers or shielding Jodie from bullets, but other times he causes trouble. And it is Jodie's struggle with life with Aiden that makes this game good. We see Jodie at her weakest throughout this game, and multiple times we are given a choice: life or death. I chose life each time, so I don't know what happens if you let Jodie slit her wrists or shoot herself. But these moments are powerful. You see Ellen Page cringing and sobbing as she holds a knife to her wrists and contemplates ending it all. Jodie is an incredibly strong protagonist in that she is a believable character who has been dealt a horrible hand. We see her adopted father stop loving her and drop her off with researchers, and we decide whether or not Aiden strangles him. If we constrict him a little bit to let him know how horrible he is, we see Jodie silently break as her adopted father tells her that she is a monster. Jodie Holmes is a protagonist that we come to care dearly for, especially when she does something that, perhaps we don't want her to do, so we take up Aiden's mantle and change things up. I will talk more about the Jodie/Aiden gameplay dynamic in a minute, but first...
--------------------- ---------------------
"What a lovely home you have," "Oh, thank you, my husband gave it to me for my birthday!" (2)
Another thing that David Cage is truly great at is creating solid, believable relationships between characters, and in Beyond, the strongest relationship exists between Jodie and the researcher in charge of her that becomes a father figure as time passes, Nathan Dawkins. Nathan is brought to life by Willem Dafoe in what I believe is one of his better acting jobs. It starts off strictly professional, but with a tad bit more care attached since the subject is a child. And as Jodie grows up, he becomes the father in her life. In such scenes as Nathan driving Jodie up to a house for a birthday party, and Jodie becoming really nervous, this relationship really shines through. Jodie sits in the car blubbering about how she doesn't think she should go through with the party, but Nathan encourages her to go and make some friends. Later in life, when Jodie tries to sneak out and go to...somewhere (I was working the entire time to get her caught, so I don't know where she would wind up), Nathan is angry, but only because he believes that it would have been dangerous for her. Unfortunately, though, in the last few hours of the game, Nathan's character utterly dissolves, and when his part in the story conflict is over, he just sort of disappears. And it is just such a shame, because I really enjoyed the part that his character played in Jodie's life, but I guess David Cage got rushed near the end.
--------------------- ---------------------
I simply cannot fathom why they thought this was a good storytelling mechanic (4)
Unfortunately, despite the fact that the story is ok, it is not safe from flaws of other kinds. The narrative structure is the second weakest thing about this game. I simply cannot fathom why David Cage thought it would be a good idea to tell this story out of chronological order. I mean, come on, David! You're better than that! You are too good a storyteller to do something that takes away that much dramatic power. Essentially, if the story were told in chronological order, we would start with Jodie's childhood, go through her problems in adulthood, and go to the resolution. Instead, we are constantly jutted back and forth between childhood and adulthood and near the end. We are thrown into tear-jerking scenes...without much of a reason why we should care. This story could be incredibly powerful if Cage hadn't gone all artsy with the timeline. I despised this narrative structure decision from the moment I realized that it was being used. I cannot stretch how much this decision boggles my mind. I understand that Cage might have wanted to sprinkle the childhood scenes throughout the campaign, but it takes away from the power. I would rather have experienced the entirety of those precious scenes that Cage writes in order, and then have Jodie's adolescent years and adulthood brought to me so I can see how my particular Jodie is developing. Thats the thing, you get to make choices about the kind of person Jodie is throughout the game. But when you make a personality choice one minute and go back in time the next, the purpose is lost. I would have loved to see how Jodie's life is impacted by choices I made in the past.
--------------------- ---------------------
"Aiden, I need you, now!" (5)
Now, to discuss the weakest aspect of this game: the actual gameplay. It is as if David Cage really wanted to make an action game with depth to it, but instead made a deep game with mediocre action sequences that take away from the depth. Both the action gameplay and the interaction gameplay were not incredible. Aiden can do a few things in combat: Choke, possess, and distract. He can only do one of these things depending on the aura that the enemy has around them....um? what? So, you're telling me that he can knock anything around a room, but can only choke someone if they have a red aura around them? It. Makes. No. Sense. It isn't justified, it isn't clever, all it does is take away. I can understand that maybe it was made this way to make you think...but it doesn't. Not even remotely. As much as the Call of Duty fanatics complained and complained and complained about the fact that Heavy Rain's action sequences were entirely quicktime events, it worked in Heavy Rain! It was justified, it kept you on your toes, and it just flipping worked! I would have preferred the quicktime events to this half-stealth, half-puzzle solving, half-assed gameplay. Even Bioshock: Infinite's gameplay was better. Yes. I said it. Bioshock: Infinite, one of the worst games I've ever played, had better gameplay, but only because it at least had some concept of what it was trying to be. No matter what kind of gameplay you were in, stealth or shooting, it felt halfhearted. The slow motion sequences are ok, but confusing at times. Essentially, when it goes to slow motion, you need to push the right thumbstick in the direction that Jodie's body is headed. But it isn't always clear where Jodie's body is headed in the time you have to figure it out, and this is frustrating. Even the non-action gameplay was kind of stale. For one thing, the fixed camera angle thing is horrible. In Heavy Rain, with a push of a button you could change the angle on the fixed camera, so it worked. But here you will constantly walk in circles because the camera will suddenly change and you will try to compensate. And even if that weren't the case, objectives are almost never clear. I'm not saying we need a call of duty "follow" icon, but not walking around a room for twenty minutes before finally realizing "oh, I need to call Aiden" (because it is in no way clear at point like this) would be nice. This was not the interactive storytelling that I was promised, either. You essentially just push on the right thumbstick once in a while, and occasionally you'll use other buttons to interact with things. But the world is flat and dead, essentially, because you have no interaction with anything other than what you need to interact with. The conversations that Jodie has as an adult are pretty stale also. There were very few dialogue options that I felt any love for. In short, David Cage didn't really know what he was doing when he was choosing gameplay options here.
--------------------- ---------------------
Oh. Yeah. This is the real deal. Be amazed. (6)
Really, despite these gripes, I was kind of enjoying Beyond: Two Souls. That is, until the last two hours or so. In the last two hours, everything is dropped. There is literally not a single good thing about the last two hours. Nothing but fictional Asian snowy villages with sinister underwater bases and cheap "feerthee Amelllikan" villains followed by slowly walking through uninteresting areas. All the character development that Cage spent the whole game building up got dropped. Character arcs were resolved in the least satisfying, most rushed ways possible. All the characters suddenly fit different molds needed to make the ending work. You make a choice at the end that makes no sense at all and is not justified by anything in the immediate plot. And in the choice I made, the ending was a cliffhanger that wasn't even any good. It implied that there would be a second game...and that the second game would be action based.
Please, for the love of everything good in the world, David Cage, DON'T DO IT! Don't make an action-based sequel. If you're going to do a sequel, do what you are good at doing! Don't make the same mistake twice.
Ultimately, I walked away from Beyond: Two Souls dissatisfied with the ending and feeling a little bit bummed, despite how much I actually liked the game up until that point.
--------------------- ---------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thoughts? Questions? Think I'm full of it?