14 DAY TRIAL // Beyond: Two Souls does not have a lot of gameplay and that which Quantic Dream has created is rather mediocre, because it focuses on QTE’s, simple prompts and slowdowns that make failure pretty much impossible.
There are quiet moments where the mechanics work well and stay out of the way, but during the action set pieces, they feel alien and often decrease the immersion level.
The decisions are not a result of poor work, but clear requirements, given that the title is focused more on the narrative that it is delivering and the way its main characters, young woman Jodie and supernatural entity Aiden, interact.
In my full Softpedia review of Beyond: Two Souls, I acknowledge the rather limited appeal of the gameplay mechanics and suggest that most players will still enjoy the experience because they will have more time and attention resources to track the narrative and characters.
Gamers have limited resources and the developers at Quantic Dream are smart to understand that they need to focus on the most important aspect of their game while doing just the bare minimum for the rest.
Yes, I would have preferred to see the team led by David Cage come up with a new controller and a new way of interacting with games that would be perfectly suited for the title they had created.
But I understand that this is impossible given how the industry works and I am happy that they found a way of launching Beyond to the public.
The title lies on the edge between actual video game and interactive story and a lot of people might dismiss it because it never asks players to push more than one button to shoot a weapon.
But this very simplicity is a choice that more games should make to get players to focus on stories and characters.