Beyond: Two Souls

Beyond: Two Souls is an action-adventure game, requiring the player to move and guide the character into interactions with objects and other non-player characters in the scene to progress the story. The player primarily controls Jodie through the in-game environments. At almost any time, however, the player (or second player during a two-player game) can switch to control Aiden instead. Aiden, as an incorporeal entity, exists permanently in noclip mode and can move through walls, ceilings, and other obstacles; however, he is limited to moving only within a certain radius around Jodie due to their spiritual tethering.

While playing as Jodie, the game includes interactive objects marked with a white dot, which can be interacted with by tilting the controller stick in its direction. If Jodie must perform a specific action, icons pop up on the screen to prompt the player to press and/or hold certain controller buttons. Conversation prompts float in the air, defaulting to a certain choice if too much time passes before selection. During action sequences, like chases or hand-to-hand combat, the cinematography moves into slow motion whilst Jodie performs the physical manoeuvre; during this time, the player must determine the direction Jodie is moving and push the controller stick in that direction to complete the action.

Young Jodie Holmes (Caroline Wolfson) lives with her foster parents in a suburban home. Since birth, Jodie has had a psychic connection with a mysterious entity named Aiden, with whom she can communicate and perform telepathic acts, such as possessing people's minds and manipulating certain objects. After an incident with some neighbourhood kids results in Aiden almost killing one of them, Jodie's foster parents seek help to care for her condition, permanently leaving her under the custody of doctors Nathan Dawkins (Willem Dafoe) and Cole Freeman (Kadeem Hardison) of the United States Department of Paranormal Activity.

Under the two doctors' care, Jodie slowly learns to control Aiden and the powers they share. During this time, Nathan and Cole are building the condenser, a portal that connects the world of the living with the world of the dead—the Infraworld. One night, Nathan learns that his wife and daughter were killed in a car accident. While trying to comfort him, Jodie discovers that she can channel spirits of the dead from the Infraworld; she helps the spirits speak to the living through a psychic link created by her physical contact.

David Cage, founder and CEO of Quantic Dream, announced Beyond: Two Souls at Sony's press conference during E3 2012. He showed the crowd a debut trailer featuring the game's in-game graphics. Cage described Beyond as a "more action-driven experience" that offers "much more direct control" and "much more spectacular action" than Quantic Dream's previous game Heavy Rain. Cage has called his games "fully controllable" while admitting "when there is an action sequence, yes we integrate these quick time event sequences ...

in a new way." Unlike Heavy Rain, Beyond is not PlayStation Move compatible. Earlier games created by Cage, which have been called "wrought psychological thrillers", demonstrate that emotional narrative is a critical element in a Quantic Dream game's development. The script for the game was around 2,000 pages long (an average screenplay is between 95 and 125 pages long; each page is approximately one minute of screen time).

Beyond: Two Souls received polarised reviews upon release. Review aggregator Metacritic described its reception as "mixed". Critics praised Page's character portrayal of Jodie Holmes and Dafoe's performance as Nathan Dawkins, as well as the amount of technical details in the game's animations and graphics. Praise was also generally given toward the elaborate motion capture, interactive storytelling mechanics, emotional soundtrack, and ability to appeal to non-gamers.

PlayStation Official Magazine (UK) spoke frankly of a game using quick time events over a more acceptable solution: "you lose explicit control", yet believing Beyond ultimately wins in ways such as its imagery: "PS3's graphical high point" and Page's performance: "Astonishing ... [they're] the lynchpin that holds all the madness together with a painfully human presence." Polygon was less impressed with the game's writing, but was exhilarated about Quantic Dream's ability to "perfect a new way of telling stories" with "staggeringly great" motion capture. GameSpot called the game a "gripping adventure", observing that the gameplay's choices give the player an ability to shape what kind of person Jodie becomes, making us "care dearly for her ...