(Spoiler
Alert for Beyond: Two Souls. I wanted to keep this post spoiler-free.
However, as I was typing it I realized that my points are stronger in
the presence of clear examples from the game.)
As those
of you who follow me on Twitter know, I purchased and played through
Beyond: Two Souls: Starring Ellen Page and Willam Dafoe, developed by
David Cage and Quantic Dream, when it came out a while back. Despite
the similarities between Beyond and Quantic Dream's previous opus,
Heavy Rain, Beyond has been much more negatively received than its
predecessor. On Metacritic, for example, Two Souls received a 71 on
Metacritic, whereas Heavy Rain received an 87. That is a grand total
of a 16 point difference between the games, which is fairly
significant. What is it about Beyond that makes people dislike it so
much more? This week, I propose a possible answer.
One of
the biggest reasons I feel that Beyond received a more lukewarm
reception was that, unlike Heavy Rain, came out amongst stiff
competition in the space of the “interactive fiction” genre. At
the time of Heavy Rain's release, Quantic Dream was the only company
who made games of that type. Aside from Heavy Rain, the only notable
“interactive fiction” game was Indigo Prophecy/Fahrenheit, also
developed by the same company. Fast forward to the time of Beyond:
Two Soul's release, and this is now no longer the case. Now, there
are quite a few competitors in this space. Chief among them is
Telltale Games, famous for both the spectacular release of The
Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us. To The Moon is another great
example, developed by Firebird Games in the indie space. Though these
games lack the budget of the works of Quantic Dream, they command
very strong followings in their own right.
Fans of
the genre previously had only one place to go to get their fix. As a
direct result, they were less likely to criticize games from David
Cage. Since there are more points of comparison for “interactive
fiction” than there were even 5 years ago, we see more of the flaws
in games of that genre than we used to. Cage no longer has the
defense of being the only developer in the field. He needs to do much
more to impress audiences. Beyond really does not do much to move the
goal post at all. In fact, it is much worse in many respects.
Therefore, it is natural to expect it to have a lower score than its
predecessors.
Another
reason that Beyond might not have been as well received as well as
other Quantic Dream games is that the control scheme is a much more
ambiguous than in those games. Presumably in order to to avoid the
common criticism that David Cage's games are nothing more than a
series of Quick Time Events, the systems used during action sequences
have been revised. Instead of displaying the button prompts on
screen, the game uses a new mechanic. All action sequences are
handled using the right analog stick. When the action goes into
slow-motion, players are supposed to move the stick in the same
direction Ellen Page as Jodie Holmes is whatever action she is
performing in. The problem with this is twofold. First, many
movements can be ambiguous with regards to which direction they are
going towards. Since the game expects players to perform them with
relative haste, this leads to unnecessary failures. The other issue
is that the game has an annoying tendency to have action sequences in
dimly or poorly lit areas.
As a
result, it is often hard to see exactly what Ellen Page as Jodie
Holmes is doing, let alone which direction she is doing it in.
Compared to the discreet button prompts present in Heavy Rain, Beyond
makes it much more difficult to correctly input the proper commands.
As an example, there is a scene that takes place “early on” in
the game (I'll explain later) where Ellen Page as Jodie Holmes is on
the run from the CIA. She is on a train and seen by police officers,
creating a chase scene. When she makes it off the train, she has to
jump over and/or duck under tree branches as she is running into a
forest in order to avoid capture. As Ellen Page approaches a branch,
the game slows-down, indicating that it is time to move the right
stick. Unfortunately, it is very hard to make out if Ellen Page is
ducking or preparing to jump in the darkness of the night. This gives
players a 50/50 chance of guessing whether to move the right stick up
or down. It results in confusion, irritation, and anger on the
player's part, which are not the emotions David Cage wants to instill
in audiences.
The
final problem that Beyond: Two Souls had was its completely
disjointed narrative. For the unaware, the game's story is not told
in chronological order. Instead, the game flashes forward and
backward in time. One moment, players can be playing as child Jodie.
Then, the very next scene can involve Jodie as a homeless, young
adult. This happens up until the last 2-3 scenes, where the finale
suddenly presents itself in a linear fashion. The effect is that
otherwise tense or dramatic scenes are undermined by either a lack of
narrative context or knowledge of what occurs in scenes that
chronologically take place later on.
A case
of the first can be easily demonstrated by a sequence of two scenes
from the middle of the game. In the first scene, Ellen Page as Jodie
Holmes is drafted into the CIA by high-level government officials,
thanks to her powers. The man who takes her is extremely cold and
unfeeling towards her, and she leaves in tears. The very next scene
has her in an apartment, preparing for a date with the very same man,
which she has apparently fallen in love with. It is up to the player
to prepare food, get washed and dressed, and clean up the apartment
in time for the date. All the while, the player has no idea what
happened in the time between these two scenes to so radically change
the relationship between Ellen Page as Jodie Holmes and CIA Jerkwad.
While it is plausible that they have grown close in the time between,
the relationship feels like a hallow one without the prerequisite
context. Any emotional connections the scene could invoke is
undermined by that.
However,
the reverse of this phenomenon is also true. Sometimes, knowledge of
what goes on in Ellen Page as Jodie Holmes's future undermines all
the tension a given scene has in the present. For example, one scene
in the game involves Ellen Page as Jodie Holmes escaping a burning
building, rescuing her fellow homeless friends along the way. There
are a few different ways this scene can play out, but all of them end
with her on the ground, unconscious and possibly bleeding out. In
most works of fiction, this would be a tense moment where we do not
know if the protagonist survives. However, Beyond: Two Souls has the
problem where players know that Ellen Page as Jodie Holmes survives
because they just finished playing scene which chronologically takes
place after the current one. Since we know Ellen Page as Jodie Holmes
is alive in a future scene, she cannot die in the scene the player is
watching, making the tense buildup utterly pointless. Ultimately, the
story's structure undermines the vast majority of it in very similar
ways.
On some
level, I respect David Cage and Quantic Dream. Those guys are doing
something truly unique in the video game industry. Few developers do
make games like the ones he makes. However, in light of what we see
from other developers and obvious flaws in his own design, Cage is
not good enough to justify all the copious resources and talent put
his games. His largest problem seems to be that no one is willing to
tell him when his scripts need work. Though he clearly subscribes to
auteur theory, he is not skilled enough of a writer to be a auteur.
Maybe in future projects, Cage will find an editor to improve the
overall product. However, I wonder in Quantic Dream might start to
crack after another few releases. It will be interesting to watch
either way.
