So a more vital question to ask then “what is the plot?” is “what is the central conflict?” That's what drives the major characters and creates audience investment. This is something Nintendo has been nailing lately with Zelda and Mario games you’re actually controlling and enjoying within the first two minutes. Or if it’s a game, maybe it really was just about being fun and looking pretty. Portal has a story you can summarize on a post-it note, but it’s the development of its villain and world that make it stand out. Or, maybe it was a very simple plot, because the actual appeal of the story was the characters.
Games like Dark Souls and even Five Nights at Freddy’s obfuscate their plot to make picking apart the details part of the experience. Maybe it was hard to follow, intentionally or otherwise.
Obviously stuff *happened* in the game, movie or book you’re talking about.
The word “plot” just refers to the events that happen in a narrative. “Not having a plot” is one of those criticisms that gets thrown around kind of thoughtlessly. It’s the story of… uh… well, that’s our first problem. I’ve never seen a game so dedicated to its story, but one that is so bad and so poorly told. So let’s begin our look at Beyond: Two Souls. Just don’t expect many comparisons right now. Third, I haven’t played Detroit: Become Human yet, so I have nothing to say about it… I want to, and I have a good feeling we’ll meet back here to talk about it. If there’s an award for giving a crap project 100%, he earns it! Dafoe’s character in particular avoids being a complete joke, because he really does sell his more nuanced scenes. I’m going to be saying a lot of bad things about their characters, so let me make it clear: they do damn fine with the garbage script they are given. Second, yes that’s Ellen Page playing and lending her likeness to the leading role, and Willem Dafoe has second billing. We’re still going to talk about the original order because that’s how I played it, it’s an interesting discussion on narrative structure, and most importantly, it’s how the game was originally written. The remaster does have an option to play the scenes chronologically instead. Three more quick notes before we start in earnest: First, In the original release of Beyond, the scenes were presented out of chronological order.
(Although Omikron is so intentionally off-the-wall, that's not really criticism.) The main problem – at least from Heavy Rain onward - is David Cage’s obsession with abject misery, and - pretty much from the get-go with Omikron - not much regard for logic. He *might* have a case if any of his games actually were the story-telling masterpieces he tried to sell with trailers and tech demos. Screw music, am I right? Nobody feels anything listening to that. And it doesn’t just trivialize games, but literally every non-visual art form humanity has conceived. I probably don't need to go into the myriad story-driven games that have evoked emotional reactions from fans *without* realistic graphics, right? If you need the perfect counter-example to that idea, check out Thomas was Alone: a damn smart sci-fi puzzler that might just make you cry over the fate of some colored squares. Primarily, he thinks that games need to be more like movies, and that they can’t truly resonate emotionally with players unless they have photorealistic graphics. So, I’m sure he isn’t to blame for every problem with his games, but there is a pattern with them and a vision for them that he clearly has, and it’s one that I take issue with. QUANTIC DREAMĪ quick note, when I criticize media, I don’t really like to lay the blame of a product’s faults on one person especially in a medium that involves hundreds of peoples’ input, but David Cage is someone who has put himself out there and really tried to establish himself as a personality in the gaming industry, and he’s done so trying to sell people on ideas about games as an art form I really don’t agree with. More specifically, Quantic Dream and David Cage.
Look, it’s a shambling mess of a plot, but before we can really crack that egg open, we gotta talk about the people who brought us this game. It's the story of a young woman who shares a psychic connection with ghost and who… does… a lot of things… none of them smart.
It got hyped to hell, met mediocre-at-best reviews, and then everyone kinda forgot about it, and I don't think it's ever really gotten its due. Today, I want to do a long, deep dive into what I consider to be one of the biggest flops in modern gaming, Beyond: Two Souls.