{"id":19,"date":"2014-01-02T22:49:00","date_gmt":"2014-01-02T22:49:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2023-09-07T15:43:43","modified_gmt":"2023-09-07T15:43:43","slug":"so-i-watched-beyond-two-souls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/terryplays\/2014\/01\/02\/so-i-watched-beyond-two-souls\/","title":{"rendered":"So I watched Beyond: Two Souls"},"content":{"rendered":"

I say “watched,” you may assume, to suggest that Beyond: Two Souls<\/b> is more of a movie than a game. In reality, that isn’t quite true, either. Beyond: Two Souls<\/b> isn’t really a game or<\/i> a movie. And I don’t say this to suggest that Beyond: Two Souls<\/b> is somehow bolder or more expansive than either a video game or a movie, or that it defies categorization. I refuse to put a label on Beyond: Two Souls <\/b>because, if I were to do so, whatever category I were to put it into would be irrevocably worsened.<\/p>\n

It is not a video game, nor is it a movie. If pressed to define it, I’d say it’s a twelve-hour piece of performance art where some innocent fuck is tricked into spending sixty dollars on a boring, useless item, then is compelled to use it despite a mounting sense of rage of disgust.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

My relationship with David Cage, Beyond: Two Souls<\/b> intrepid W R I T O R and D E R E K T O R, is a complicated one, except that it’s actually very simple, because I hate him and I think he’s a piece of crap (and a racist). I loathed Indigo Prophecy <\/b>with the force of a thousand suns–enough to temporarily blind me to the surprising successes of the later Heavy Rain<\/b>, which I now begrudgingly admit is an innovative and highly enjoyable piece of game-making, for all its wacky Europeanisms.<\/p>\n

So I approached Beyond: Two Souls<\/b> with a skeptical but overall neutral point-of-view. I didn’t want to deprive myself of a fun experience, but it’s hard not to feel twice-shy being once so bitten.  And there was a very specific moment in our playthrough, towards the end of the first act, that made me go cold with incredulity, and erased any charitable feelings I’d allocated for Cage.<\/p>\n

There was a point in which Jodie, our implausibly old-name-having protagonist, has to walk through a ruined medical facility. There is an encounter with an enemy that asks you to follow the on-screen prompts to evade danger and progress. We missed several prompts somewhat clumsily, and I was actually rather surprised that we cleared the challenge, remembering how easy it was for Madison Page to meet any number of context-sensitive grisly deaths in her encounter with the good doctor in Heavy Rain.<\/b><\/p>\n

Anyway, immediately following this sequence, Jodie got stuck in the wall trying to exit the room, frozen and inanimate (but still crying and panting–thanks). Ah. Well. Glitches happen, it’s no Fallout: New Vegas<\/b>–at least not yet. So we restarted the chapter, participating in the QTE fight again, this time never missing a prompt. It was at this point that we realized is that, despite how much better we were at pressing the appropriate buttons this time, the scene played out in exactly the same manner as it had previously. Our suceesses and failures merited no rewards or consequences within the scene.<\/p>\n

What we realized is that were never really truly participating<\/i> at all. We were just along for the ride, humoring Beyond: Two Souls<\/b>.<\/p>\n

What greatly angered us was another realization. Does David Cage know that we’re humoring him, or does he really think he’s<\/i> humoring us?<\/i><\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

There is another point in B:TS<\/b> where Jodie has to run away from something terrible that’s chasing her. Just to see what would happen, I put the controller down on the floor. Would Jodie be captured by this monster and torn limb from limb?

<\/i> No. Some moments later, Jodie, on her own, ran away.<\/p>\n

(Spoilers will get slightly more persistent from here forward, but only slightly. After all, you’ve seen everything that happens in this “game”–the reversals and surprises and betrayals and losses you encounter as Jodie are all rote recitations of the same Hollywood junk you’ve seen crammed into games for the last fifteen years. Even the least savvy of eight year-olds can tell you the most shocking twists to expect in such a formulaic offering. DUDES! Your idealized mentor father-figure is actually MORALLY AMBIGUOUS OMMMMMGGGGAAAAAAADD!?!?!?!?!?!)<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Later, we wanted to find out if it was actually possible to get intimate with one of the other characters in the game during a romantically-charged scene. (And I don’t mean “emotionally close,” I mean “can we get THIS penis in THAT vagina?”) So I Googled “beyond two souls walkthrough”. What a redundant phrase. For the most part, Beyond: Two Souls<\/b> is a walkthrough of itself.<\/p>\n

We discovered that there was, indeed, a way that the chapter could end with sex AND a Playstation Network Trophy. We figured we’d go for it. As long as we’re going through this, we might as well get some gamer cred, or whatever.<\/p>\n

However, there was a disclaimer in the walkthrough for this particular portion of the game:<\/p>\n

NOTE! If in [the chapter] “Like Other Girls”, the protagonist was groped by the bar\u2019s clientele, no closer relationship with Ryan will happen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I know you’re probably reading this sentence because you had already finished the previous sentence, but I want you to go back and read it again.<\/p>\n

In this story about the supposed complexity of a human being’s life and identity over the course of many years, it is suggested that because Jodie was sexually abused several years prior, she is incapable of intimacy in the present.<\/i><\/p>\n

There aren’t many choices you can make in a chapter that actually affects the events of another chapter – just one reason the boneheaded achronological narrative is just a bloody smoking hole in the foot of the story – but Cage made sure to fit in the little moral that if you didn’t have the foresight not to avoid your attempted rape, you are damaged goods.<\/i><\/p>\n

Not only is this thing void of good ideas, whatever ideas it manages to portray are toxic for society and antagonistic to humanity. <\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

While experiencing B:TS<\/b> I was often on Twitter, writing thoughts about it as they occurred to me. Although this form of expression is troubling in several ways, it is appropriate for the works of David Cage. Deep analysis isn’t terribly necessary. All that needs to be done is present without irony exactly what occurs in Beyond: Two Souls<\/b>, and any intelligent person can construe that it is lesser than garbage.<\/p>\n

What follows are more detailed extrapolations of my Tweets as I experienced B:TS<\/b>. These are essentially a list of observations in the order they were made.<\/p>\n