Beyond Two Souls; edit: now discussing the game (Spoilers)

[[Kira Must Die]]

The best I could give the game is that each chapter would make a fine short film, but when put together, they make a complete mess, especially tonally, given the structure of the story. One minute you're homeless, and then the next minute, sometimes literally, you're fighting Navajo demons in a desert. One minute you're sad and angry that you have to go work for the CIA and leave, and then the next scene is her in a big apartment, getting ready for a date with the guy who forced her to join the CIA and acted like a complete asshole. On their own, though, they'd make pretty good short films, especially the homeless chapter (the Navajo and Chinese base chapters were stupid, but could've been a fun kind of stupid on their own,) but when put into a cohesive narrative, they fail.

And with a lot of David Cage games, you can tell that he simply "wants a scene like this" in a game, without thinking of how the story would play out as a whole. "I want a scene where she goes Carrie on some kids at a party!" "I want a scene with her fighting on a train!" "I want a scene with an underwater Chinese military base!" You know, some of these don't quite mesh in with a story where you want me to feel for a poor girl with an entity following her around. And speaking of which, it's hard to feel for Jodie when one minute she regrets killing a bunch of African soldiers and runs off for being lied to by the CIA, but then later, chronologically in the story, she murders several innocent police officers and SWAT members without even a second thought or remorse. That doesn't really make her very likable in my eyes.

Yeah, I really don't like the game, and I'm not a David Cage fan.

Also, that "sentimental" message at the end of the credits was unintentionally fucked up and kinda disgusting (by the way, the suffex "Infra-" means under, or below. Just putting it out there.)

 

[TP Potato]

I think the difficulty many people had with Ryan is due to the way the game jumps around the timeline. The first time you meet Ryan he is as an antagonistic government agent who is unsympathetic and trying to rip you away from the only family you've ever known. This is immediately followed up with a time jump to Jodie and Ryan casually hanging out and having feelings for each other, regardless of player input. Had there been a few bits in between to show these two bonding and getting to know each other it may have gone over better, but all the appearances outside of his arrival/dinner are missions and training montages, so you never really get to see that bonding time the relationship needed to resonate with players.

That stuff certainly didn't help either. I know when it came to "The Dinner", I went at it with the mindset to ruin the dinner because my last experience with him was him being a complete asshat and Aiden knew he was a jerk. Turns out I probably am "supposed" to ruin the dinner but not because I think Ryan is a giant toolbox but because Aiden has a childish jealousy about her being in a relationship.

Not to keep harping on the same point but again, this feels like something that would have been better had the game been in chronological order instead of bouncing all over the place. It makes my decisions cold and calculating as a player rather than using my empathy to decide "What would Jodie/Aiden do?".

Hell, the more I thought about it, the more I realized the perfect example of this; how this was botched in "Not like other girls" (Where Jodie almost gets raped at the bar) versus Season 1 of Telltale's The Walking Dead (I will have a spoiler for Walking Dead here FYI)

Spoiler

In The Walking Dead, you have finally escaped a farmhouse where these guys are cannibals. You get into fistacuffs with one of the men and you have the option to unleash the killing blow when he's down or leave it be. In the heat of the moment, I killed that sum'*****.

Two Souls on the other hand, I'm not in the moment at all because all I see is a bratty teen throwing a giant fit. While that obviously does not mean she deserves to be raped, when it came time to exact my vigilante justice and gun down the bad guys, I was the cold and calculating tippy2k2 rather than uber pissed Aiden. "This is going to cause a mess that the agency is going to have to figure out how to fix" was my thought when it SHOULD have been "Those motherfuckers just tried to rape me...I will make sure they'll never do that again and dead men can't rape"

Yeah, I agree the game would probably be better in chronological order. I understand that hopping around works well for some games/movies/etc. but I'm not sure what the benefit is supposed to be here. Then again, they would probably need to do something about Jodie's childhood sections, as I think having to play all of those back to back might get boring.

 

[tippy2k2]

]The best I could give the game is that each chapter would make a fine short film, but when put together, they make a complete mess, especially tonally, given the structure of the story.

snips

And speaking of which, it's hard to feel for Jodie when one minute she regrets killing a bunch of African soldiers and runs off for being lied to by the CIA, but then later, chronologically in the story, she murders several innocent police officers and SWAT members without even a second thought or remorse. That doesn't really make her very likable in my eyes.

And to continue just whaling the hell out of that horse carcass, that's where I think chronological would have saved it. It does seem hypocritical that she is so torn up about the little kids father getting killed when she then goes about slaughtering the SWAT team but chronologically at that point, she's been manipulated by these people after her and so she's very....VERY angry about it. Sure, those individual SWAT team members might be good people but they are there as part of the CIA organization coming to force her to do their bidding; they are storm troopers and her choice would be to go with them or kill them. They might be under orders but they leave her no choice.

Unfortunately that aspect falls completely flat as we go from training with these people (The CIA that is) to murdering the shit out of everyone. We're having our own little "CARRIE" moment without seeing all the torment that pushed Carrie over the edge so all we see is a person going crazy and murdering the shit out of everyone...

Yeah, I agree the game would probably be better in chronological order. I understand that hopping around works well for some games/movies/etc. but I'm not sure what the benefit is supposed to be here. Then again, they would probably need to do something about Jodie's childhood sections, as I think having to play all of those back to back might get boring.

I might be in the minority on this one but I eat that stuff up so I'd be happy. Then again, I'm one of those weirdos that thought the best scenes in Heavy Rain was sitting with your child just doing a lot of nothing so take my opinions on what's fun with a grain of salt

 

[Raggedstar]

I wasn't keen on it either. At reveal, I was mildly interested because of the concept. But on release, I think it could've been handled much better.

Regarding the timeline, I understand the concern was that they didn't want to bog down the game with the kid scenes at the beginning. It's just...what's the reason narratively? We see in the beginning Jodie is talking about how her memories are jumbled, but why? The prologue, despite being at the end of the timeline, has no context or reason (especially if you choose "Life"). Perhaps they could've done something with the jumbled plot, like try to make connections or build up to a theme or meaning (which they do sometimes, but not well). As it is, most of the game is randomly selected events/set-pieces and then FINALLY reveals the true plot to be somewhat disconnected from what we've seen so far (though even in the military base they jump timelines...for some reason). And I second that the Super Best Friends playthrough is the quintessential LP to watch on this game. It's entertaining, sure, but I feel they make a good point in the Homeless chapter. Somewhat paraphrased (in the time she attempts to jump), Woolie said "I'm having emotions in this scene because I don't know why she's running, so the emotions have no place to go. I don't know what to feel" and Matt said "I want to get invested in what's going on, but I don't know what the story is". Also, don't compare it to Pulp Fiction. Pulp Fiction is also less than half the length of Beyond, so it's not like plot threads will be dangling without context for 4 hours. I don't think the writing is strong enough to hold itself up even chronologically, but it's the breaking point for sure.

Regarding the "making choices", they seem a bit too hidden. I remember the bar scene making drastic changes to the future, but there is a catch to it. The choice here is to leave or stay, however, I heard on this forum it will only let you leave if you stay around for a little while (if I walked into a rapey-looking dive bar, damn straight I would leave immediately). And if you stay, Jodie will get nearly raped and will have problems in bed with Ryan when she invites him for dinner. Considering the framing was like a linear plot (like most of the chapters) and the game tells you not to leave if you do try to, why would you think there's a choice? Props for making them not completely menu based and more organic, but it kind of led to the idea that everything was pre-determined or didn't matter.

Also, fuck Ryan (not literally. Please not literally). We see Ryan threatening to kill her if she didn't comply, and next chapter we see her wanting to get in his pants. I just...what? There's a reason why he's such a hated character. Putting those two scenes next to each other (even if there's good chemistry behind the scenes. Playing chronologically doesn't give you much either), of course people will instantly think he's a douchenozzle. That's all we know about him, and it doesn't look good on Jodie either. And the fact that the story keeps trying to get them together I found obnoxious. I know TWD WANTS you to like Clementine, but the kicker is that most people ended up liking her anyways because she's a good character (and downright adorable).

The game itself had a lot of potential, but I feel it was somewhat squandered with poor writing and narrative style. Some good chapters (Navajo, Homeless, and The Party are my favourites. That "revenge" option was so sweet, even if the kids were so cartoonishly evil that it shattered any immersion I had), the acting is the best of any Quantic Dream game, and it certainly looks good. It just falls apart at the story/timeline front (which it unfortunately heavily relies on). I don't want Quantic Dream to go away, but someone needs to roll up a newspaper and whack David Cage sometimes, or maybe a good editot.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

There are a total of 3 good scenes in Beyond Two Souls, and the rest is utter crap. Cage doesn't even do anything interesting with Aiden (without spoiling anything for the OP, Aiden turns out to be exactly what you think he is and spent the entire game really hoping he isn't).

Wait, which three are those? The only one I can think of is at the start of the Hobo arc where you can choose to jump to your death, which the game then doesn't even allow you to do.

The three shower scenes obviously!

Haha, no I kid, those are all actually kind of creepy.

The three good scenes are the scene where she attempts suicide and Aiden stops her, the scene where she's being held captive and Aiden has to lead "what's his face" and "token black guy" to save her using the environment (the first time the Aiden mechanic is actually used in an interesting way) and the last good scene is at the end of the game where there's a flashback to how Willem Defoe's family died and Jodie channeled them so that he could see them again (because Willem Defoe's acting is actually good in this game).

 

[Padwolf]

Honestly, I agree with a few people here, the ending was a complete cop-out. I'm going to quote a reviewer (hoenstly I can't remember who the reviewer was) but I completely agreed with it. The quote is not 100% accurate, but hey, at least I'm trying to give someone credit!

"It's like they created this character and just thought of situations they could dump them in."

And it felt a lot like that. Alright it had a timeline you had to piece together, but honestly it did just feel like a jumbled mess of things. It felt a lot like an angsty fanfiction. In the sense of "chapter 1: this bad thing happened." "chapter 2: ANOTHER bad thing happened." "chapter 3: lets keep the misery chain coming".

It was too damn predictable. I spent that entire game thinking "oh I know how this is gonna turn out but I hope to god it doesn't" But no, lo and behold, it did.

 

[[Kira Must Die]]

]The best I could give the game is that each chapter would make a fine short film, but when put together, they make a complete mess, especially tonally, given the structure of the story.

snips

And speaking of which, it's hard to feel for Jodie when one minute she regrets killing a bunch of African soldiers and runs off for being lied to by the CIA, but then later, chronologically in the story, she murders several innocent police officers and SWAT members without even a second thought or remorse. That doesn't really make her very likable in my eyes.

And to continue just whaling the hell out of that horse carcass, that's where I think chronological would have saved it. It does seem hypocritical that she is so torn up about the little kids father getting killed when she then goes about slaughtering the SWAT team but chronologically at that point, she's been manipulated by these people after her and so she's very....VERY angry about it. Sure, those individual SWAT team members might be good people but they are there as part of the CIA organization coming to force her to do their bidding; they are storm troopers and her choice would be to go with them or kill them. They might be under orders but they leave her no choice.

Unfortunately that aspect falls completely flat as we go from training with these people (The CIA that is) to murdering the shit out of everyone. We're having our own little "CARRIE" moment without seeing all the torment that pushed Carrie over the edge so all we see is a person going crazy and murdering the shit out of everyone...

But even if it was chronological, the story and the direction still wants you to side with Jodie during and after that scene, and they could've at least given us the choice to incapacitate them without killing them (You'd think someone who trained in the CIA could find ways around killing people.) If they depicted her actions there as wrong or if maybe later she regrets those actions, I might've accepted it, but she never does, and it just comes across as another scene of "Hey! Those bad men are trying to hurt poor Jodie! You better kill them and show off how big of a badass you are!"

And to add to the frustration, she kills all those officers yet later in the homeless chapter she doesn't kill the muggers outside the store nor the rapist in the alleyway. You know, actually dangerous people.

 

[murrow]

I don't suppose you'd have a guess for about what I've got left time-wise? I'm about halfway through Najavo and if it's the last of the good ones, I don't know if I would want to keep going...

Such potential wasted on such a dumb mistake. I have a feeling that if this was in chronological order, it would be FAR better. In it's condition, it's a bunch of disjointed events that mean nothing to me without the context of Jodie's experiences Homeless only worked so well because it was long enough to give me some context and meaning to latch onto...

One thing is certain. David Cage has no idea how to handle non-chronological storytelling. But don't kid yourself. The conclusion is terrible, and no amount of fiddling with narrative order would improve it. I'll drop you a hint: the game turns into Call of Duty.

No it doesn't. Call of Duty is less predictable and makes a hell of a lot more sense.

I didn't mean that the chaotic storyline resembles Call of Duty's, only that it seemed, for no specific reason, to have forgotten the brooding teenage angle and jumped straight into CoD territory for its last arc. And yes, I'm taking about the evil Chinese base.

For all its shortcomings, Call of Duty has good pacing, thematic consistence and (more importantly) non-token gameplay. That alone makes it less facepalm-able.

I stand by what I said. Putting the scenes in order would improve a lot, but it wouldn't make that particular "twist" (for lack of a better word) any less misplaced. Or, to put it differently: if a Call of Duty game would make you dregde through 6h of coming-of-age clichés before throwing you into action... well, it wouldn't be a game I'd want to play.

As for Aiden, maybe everyone else is smarter then I am because I sure didn't see that coming...

Nah, your brain probably had a case of "it's so obvious I'm not betting on that." Happens to me a lot. I always ignore the most obvious explanations.

 

[Azure23]

Just watch a LP. Preferably Super Best Friends Play one.

"Suicide solves everything, doesn't matter if you unleash ghost Armageddon on the world!" Good times, terrible, terrible game.