Ok, Iäm at it again. Let's do this.
Thursday October 10th: Thursday in Swedish? Torsdag. As in Thor's day. You know, that God of Thunder with the hammer and... That doesn't really have a brother named Loki. In Norse mythology, Thor is the son of Oden and "the earth" (the debate is still going if this is supposed to be Frigg) and Loki is the son of two giants named Farbaute (his father) and Laufey (his mother). There, now I've gotten to correct something out of the Marvel Universe, too =). Anywho.... Here's the reason why I stopped my last post. Thursday I play video games. What video game came out Thursday? Beyond: Two Souls. And I got to play it. So I thought I'd give you my opinion on the game. Here goes:
Beyond; Two Souls is a game about a girl and her.... ghost.... spirit... whatever. We get to follow her, in flashbacks, along an non-chronological narrative. We get to see her as a CIA trainee, as a bum, as an active agent, as a little girl, as a teenager... as a lab rat.... First of all, i have to say, this game looks GORGEOUS. It is as gorgeous today as Heavy Rain looked when it came, if you take my meaning. It's well-acted, Ellen Page as Jodie is good, the girl doing the voice-acting (and mo-cap? don't know...) for little Jodie is GREAT. Willem Dafoe is always good. The others are good. It's all goood.... The story segments are mostly good as well, some of them drag a little, some are.... weird.... some are highly emotional, some feels kinda... throw-away, but not many. Then there are the game mechanics, and the story segments and how they are structured are part of that, and this is where my big beef with this game come in. The controls, just to start with the not-so-negative, are fine. They're not what the avid gamer is used to, sometimes they are a little counter-intuitive, sometimes they are not so clear, but these are things you get used to, mostly. Thinking about it, this game feels a little... point-and-click-y... and sometimes you cant see where you're supposed to click because the thing you're supposed to click isn't marked well, or the marker is white against a white/bright background, or it's out of view. I also have this little thing about Aiden, the ghost-spirit-thingy. He's used far to little. That would have been a great, interesting game-mechanic if only one remembered to use him more. They could have played around far more with that and given us gamers a far more interesting set-up. And then, there is that THING that bothers me about this game. And that game is the lack of suspense. This is the problem of a non-linear game like this. The game starts at the END. We KNOW that whatever we do to Jodie, whatever life throws at her, she'll make it. We KNOW this because if she hadn't, the game wouldn't have started. Granted, you could make the point that it's not supposed to be that kind of game, that it's not about the goal and all that. And it isn't as much the prologue that bothers me (being at the far end of the time axis), it more the decision of it being non-linear after that. You can start with the end. There are other games (and movies) that do, but if you're going to show it as a flashback, start at the beginning and follow it back to the prologue chronologically. Otherwise it just gets confusing and annoying. I kept asking myself "where am i in the story now? Is this before or after event X? Why are we here?" Sure, that might be the point. But at the same time, that makes me feel disconnected to Jodie. Why should I care about event Y when I don't know about event X? And why should I care about event X when I've already gone through event Y? In the end, what drove me to go on was curiosity about Aiden and little girl Jodie, who sometimes shone through in adult Jodie as well. I'm glad I did finish the game in the end, but still felt a sense of disconnect to Jodie. Other loose ends got tied up neatly, and i guess Jodie's loose ends got tied up to, I just didn't care as much as I wanted to. And that kind-of sums up this whole game; not as much as I WANTED TO, I wanted to love this game, and i did, just not as much as I wanted to. I wanted to love and care about Jodie and what happened to her, and i did, just not as much as i wanted to. I wanted to care about and be interested in Aiden, and I did. Just not as much as I wanted to. And the events and characters around her, too..... Don't take me wrong, this is still a really good game. The graphics are gorgeous, the acting is good, the game mechanics are ok, and when the writing, graphics, voice-acting, music and mood come together in the right way, it's fantastic. And for the most part, it does. Just not as much a as I WANTED IT TO.......
Next time Onee-chan comes visiting, I'll have her play the game in chronological order, and see if it gets even better....
I'm going to stop this weeks Project Backlog here, with ha little shout out to one of my fav internet celebrities about this game: Fraser, you stopped playing this on VideoGamesAwsome just short of some of the best segments in the game. Please, if only for yourself, play it through....
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