melmer

Beyond: Two Souls

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This game has co-op? Whaaaat?

You can play the game with other devices? Using an app? Whaaaat

Already this game has bamboozled me and it's still installing.

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This feels exactly like Heavy Rain in the way it looks, controls and flows from scene to scene. There's some of the cool illusion of «what if I hadn't done that?» potential for branching, but on the occasions I've tried to walk off the invisible path the game pretty abruptly picks me up and sets me straight. There's a lot of cuts of the character stopping, considering how ridiculous it would be to walk around that corner or over to the people hanging out in the background or whatever, and then turn around. I'm not very far in yet, but the best parts so far have been when you

freak people out by throwing chairs and blowing out candles.

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Played about and hour and there's been a couple of thing that have really surprised me. Both instances involving me being a crazy out of control ghost :)

Never experienced anything like this before, it's actually pretty clever. There's no consequences for the player/ghost but everything you do is impacting this girls life, so how far do you take it, will I start to care about here enough to change my behavour and follow her orders? We'll see

At the house party

i took revenge on the bastard kids, which started out as little scares, but then the actions got more and more malicious ending up with me being able to set fire to the house, and against Jodie's wishes I thought I'm going to fucking murder these kids. But they managed to escape in the end which lessened the impact. But that was a real holy shit moment

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TRAINING MONTAGE

This stuff is reminding me of Shen mue

-------

Oh dear oh dear oh dear

Probably about half way through now and it has just jumped the shark or 'gone full indigo prophecy'

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Aaaaand the nude shots are all over the web. Classic David Cage!

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So my current feeling towards this game are that it is complete dog shit

 

I've just goggled that there is 26 chapters so i guess i'm like 60% done, i have no interest in where the story is going or how it will end

 

I saw some promise in the first hour, but it quickly turned in to a super linear story book and now when i think back to that first hour i believe i was just hoodwinked into the illusion of choice and that there was only ever one outcome to each event. i've just read that this game does have multiple endings depending on your "choices", but honestly half the time i can't even tell if what i am doing is a choice

 

The game has practically no fail state. I'm messing up the QTE's quite regularly as there are now no on screen prompts (you just push in the direction Jodie is already moving in, example ducking) and the only difference is you might end up with a bloody nose.

 

I think i'll finish it, unless it does something super obnoxious, as i have nothing else to play until batman next Friday. If this game had more fail states and made me replay whole scenes again i may have quit by now.

 

:tdown:

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I'm finishing it just so I can say it's a huge piece of shit with complete confidence. Heavy Rain was so much better than this garbage.

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I second that. I really enjoyed Heavy Rain and i remember thinking at the time it would be the perfect game for my non game playing girlfriend. Not sure if i would feel differently if i played it for the first time today.

 

But this. Taking so much agency away from the player has left it a shallow husk. There is no challenge, no reward, and ultimately no point. Ironically the game with the least amount of soul this year is the one with two souls in the title.

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I'm not sure if I agree with a lot that's written in that article, but I kinda get where he's coming from I guess. The four bolded "rules" don't have a lot to do with the problems that he's describing after.

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This game is much more like Farenheit/Indigo Prophecy than it is Heavy Rain, both in terms of gameplay and story. I liked Farenheit well enough but I was more forgiving of it because it was a first effort and more unique at the time. Beyond: Two Souls is just too much of a badly written hodgepodge given its production values and structurally is mostly a retread of Farenheit.

 

As for the multiple endings...

 

You just choose what you want at the end. I don't think earlier events can change stuff here. There's even a moment where it makes you think you have a Mass Effect 3 style two-color choice ending which is pretty funny.

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I finished this a couple days ago and loved it. I think there's more agency than people give it credit for as my playthrough went very differently from other people I've spoken with. I also really enjoyed the central story way more than Heavy Rain and some sections of the game, like Homeless, rival anything else I've played this year. Great experience. 

 

I can see how the non-linear structure and lack of obvious player choice can turn people off or lead to frustration, but Beyond does offer a great deal of character roleplaying in scenes that does effect they way they play out in interesting ways. Its frustrating to have to wade through so much negativity about it, while people consistently praise things like Walking Dead and Wolf Among Us which actually offer less player choice in their outcome. People will cite the writing (usually they really only mean dialogue), though I'm beginning to feel increasingly that it's only because Quantic Dream and Cage himself come with a certain amount of baggage. But I love those games a ton too. 

 

I implore everyone to at least try the game. You might hate it, sure...but I think there is a large amount of people who like interactive stories for whom this will really grab. I was pretty invested in it by the end and wish I had more people to talk with this about. C'mon, how can you turn down the opportunity for an engaging QTE of playing with dolls? 

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I'm still going to try it because, shit, I've played Johnny Cage's last two. I'm actually not too bothered by what I've heard about the mechanics because I've never been that turned off by super-linear games. What does concern me is all the criticism about the story though, because Heavy Rain seemed like it was more on track after the absolute train wreck that Fahnreheit's story became during the second half of the game. It still annoys me that a game that started out so well and was literally oozing with atmosphere became such a mess.

It looks like a lot of the hallmark Quantic Dream things are in place, though: walking around apartments, doing mundane shit, and generally just not experiencing a whole lot of action. That's actually something I've found really attractive about their games as those elements build up a lot of atmosphere and sense of place.

I don't want spoilers, but be honest: does Beyond go as batshit crazy to the point of ludicrousness like Fahrenheit? I don't mean in the sense of supernatural elements being used (that's fine), I mean in the sense of being a total splurge of poorly written sci-fi that doesn't really go anywhere.

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Just finished it, and it's a confirmed turd. Whatever interesting parts the game has are completely eclipsed by the really bad stuff, of which there is some, and the plain mediocre, which comprises more than 90 percent of the game. Some of it is the obvious limitations of the technology. There's some fantastic facial animation and some great textures in there, but it never consistently shines. Especially towards the end it almost felt like I was playing a hurriedly thrown together PS2 game – lots of big, empty rooms with a handful of assets copied around. The one-word dialogue choices were often hard to understand, none of the mechanics were any fun, the quality of the textures, acting, animation and pacing fluctuated wildly. Just like Cage's other games, the best parts are the ones where you're in a non-fantastical setting, doing non-fantastical things with non-fantastical characters. Nothing in Beyond comes close to stuffing bloody sheets in cupboards with a police officer pounding on your door in Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy.

 

Highlight: Homelessly sitting on a bench next to a guy reading the paper. The headline says something about the Origami Killer, and I know at least someone is doing something interesting in this city.

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Oof, I was watching the Giant Bomb quicklook today and man those controls looked pretty janky.

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I don't want spoilers, but be honest: does Beyond go as batshit crazy to the point of ludicrousness like Fahrenheit? I don't mean in the sense of supernatural elements being used (that's fine), I mean in the sense of being a total splurge of poorly written sci-fi that doesn't really go anywhere.

 

I think Beyond is maybe more tonally consistent. It introduces the supernatural elements early. So when everything starts going crazy at the end it doesn't come out of left field as much. But yeah, the ending is sci-fi splurge.

 

The best analogy is that I feel like this whole game could easily be a Syfy channel miniseries. That's the level of writing on display.

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