Brilliant acting,
breathtaking graphics, and a good script... But is it fun?
Ellen Page has been my favorite actress for a
while, from her early work on Trailer Park Boys to Juno to Inception. When I heard
that she was taking on the 2,000 page script for Beyond: Two Souls, I was intrigued. Would she play the role
of Jodie, a young woman who is bound to a spirit she cannot understand, from a
"girl power" perspective, or be totally understated and "phone
it in" like so many video game actors do?
Neither. Page smashes through
the glass ceiling of male video game protagonists and shoves the shards up the
"boys only" club asses. This
game is an approximately 12-hour interactive movie where you get to control
certain parts through prompted button pushes.
There are a few high-octane action sequences, and they offer more
control than Cage's two previous efforts, Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain, but
the best parts of Beyond are when you're controlling Jodie in the quieter
moments.
Beyond
covers 15 years of Jodie's life, out of sequence, while delivering a comprehensive
if slightly silly story. She's been
attached to an invisible paranormal being since she was born, and she can't
talk to it or really understand it. Much
of the game is spent figuring out why this paranormal being, called
"Aiden," is both helping and pestering Jodie. The core mechanic of the game is that when
you get stuck in a situation as Jodie, you can switch to Aiden with the press
of a button and search inaccessible areas to have him do your bidding, like open
a locked door from the other side.
The
paranormal activity aspect shouldn't win any awards, but the more subtle themes
of family and personal development while dealing with a strange
"gift" are some of the best moments I've experienced in years. Jodie appreciates the advantages that having
an invisible entity gives her, but hates the fact that Aiden is always there,
messing with everything from her life at school to who she picks as a potential
lover. It's a love-hate relationship
that Paige performs exceptionally at every turn.
Above all, Jodie is trying to figure out how
(or even if) she can live a normal life with this affliction that everyone from
lab scientists to the CIA are interested in using for their own nefarious
reasons. The highlights of the game come
during the second act, when Page gets to use all of her subtlety and body
language in ways that have never been seen in a video game before. I couldn't help cheering for Jodie becuase
while she's trying so damn hard to be human, she comes across as more human
than any character I've played as before, even Joel in The Last of Us.
Is the
game fun? Most of the time. There are some truly tedious sections that
seem to be filler material to justify a $60 price tag. By the third time I found myself wandering
around a dining room, trying to correctly set a table, I was ready for
dreamland. But again and again, Ellen
Page's dynamic performance kept me interested enough to keep going.
This
game is not for everyone: My fellow
hardcore gamers should think of it as Mass Effect where the combat scenes
consist of QTE button presses in place of inventory management, weapons
loadouts, battle strategies, etc.
The
two difficulty settings are "I play games a lot" and "I rarely
(or never) play video games." David
Cage is desperately trying to show movie lovers that video games can be for
them, too. If you're not a gamer, but
want to see an uncompromising performance by Ellen Page, and a slightly
underdeveloped but still effective contribution from Willem Dafoe, this is the
game for you to play.
Beyond: Two Souls crowning achievement is delivering what gamers have
been requesting in letters to the editor, message forums and chat rooms for
twenty five years: a real, human, female
protagonist. Jodie leaves all
stereotypes behind, except for a few very fun moments in her teen years where
they fit her. Despite its moments of
violence and even torture, I recommend this game for any female gamer or parent
of a female gamer out there (over the age of oh, say, fourteen). It's not about girl power or anything that
cheesy: It's just an amazing performance
from a very human protagonist who happens to be female. It's a most welcome breath of fresh air that
deserves to be lauded.
Unless
you're strictly a Call of Duty/Assassin's Creed/Madden type, I recommend
everyone to give Beyond: Two Souls a look.
Try a rental or trade in some old games at your local game shop to give
it a try. Because the decisions you make
in everything from combat to conversation steer the game in different narrative
directions, there are many "endings" to it. One of the accomplishments the game offers is
for you to "See every ending!" If it's anything like Heavy Rain, there'll be
around 11 endings. I don't know if I
love it enough to play through it that many times to see them all, but I'll
give it a few more goes to see just how different things would turn out if I
had drank that beer at a party or accepted a man's invitation to dance.
-Review by Tom McDaniel