14 DAY TRIAL // Beyond: Two Souls is a great experience even if it is not actually a great game and I am happy that developer Quantic Dream has managed to convince publisher Sony to put up the resources required for its creation and launch.
Early on (minor spoilers from now on), gamers access a sequence of Jodie’s life, which focuses on her first important and meaningful interaction with her peers, other adolescents.
The Ellen Page voiced protagonist tries to play it cool, create some relationships with the others present and she can actually awkwardly try to dance with a boy and even kiss him.
Everything turns ugly pretty quickly after her present, a 50-year-old poetry book, is deemed moldy and after she fails to demonstrate her supernatural powers, because I, as the player, decided that they were not appropriate for the occasion.
The children, demonstrating their cruelty a little too quickly, decide to label her a witch and lock her in a cupboard, from where Aiden, the supernatural entity, can quickly help her escape.
Then a decision pops-up on screen that initially baffles me: should I exact revenge from the kids or should I leave them alone?
In a traditional game, I would never hesitate before choosing revenge and jumping in to teach my tormentors a lesson.
In Beyond: Two Souls, given what I know about Jodie, it seems natural to leave the kids alone and keep my abilities secret from them.
But the gamer inside me wants to see what kind of havoc Aiden can create in a living room filled with somewhat unlikable adolescents, so I choose to use his powers to scare them by throwing some furniture around and bashing them against walls.
The lesson seems learned and Jodie calls for me as the entity to stop, but I go one step further and actually start a fire that gets all the kids outside pretty quickly, scared of my powers.
I cannot wait to see what consequences my acts will have.