Beyond: Two Souls Review (WeeHammy)
Beyond: Two Souls was one of my first ever Narrative, choices matter games. My first was Heavy Rain. Beyond: Two Souls is a game that I loved when I was younger playing on my PS3 back in 2013. I loved the concept of the game - being able to control 2 people. Jodie and Aiden. I thought it was revolutionary back then in storytelling but coming back to it now... I can feel how out of place the story was.
Here I am playing it in 2024 to 100% completion. I do have a few personal... opinions about how Beyond: Two Souls has been handled which I will reflect upon below but first a quick disclaimer!
This review is MY opinion, MY own personal experience and MY thoughts. I am brutally honest when it comes to reviewing games. If you do not like my opinion, my time or respect my personal experience, please move on.
The Story
So Beyond: Two Souls tell's the story of Jodie, a young girl with a special "gift" looking for some sort of answers to her life and Aiden, a paranormal entity (which you find out more about) which is tethered to Jodie and protects her at all costs. However, the story is fragmented. What I mean by that is it tells you the middle of the story, start of the story, end of the story then back to start, then middle e.t.c e.t.c e.t.c. With this way of storytelling it completely undermines how good the story could be.
One moment you can be training in a CIA facility honing your skills to all of a sudden be back playing as a 6 year old girl being "experimented on" by DPA/CIA or government officials. Then you can be in some sort of war torn part of the world sent to assassinate some politician to all of a sudden be in the Mojave desert fighting a big sand entity with the natives. Why is this an issue you might ask? To some, this might be hard to keep up with or in general - understand.
Not only that there are some parts of the story that just made no damn sense whatsoever - The Mojave desert bit where you fight the big SAND entity. Why was this needed? It added NOTHING to the story and just felt like pointless filler. This part (and thing): https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3341622072
Relationships/Choices
So for this part I want to mention 1 thing that got on my nerves - Your choices don't really matter if you think about it and the relationships felt out of place. What I mean by this is you can kiss Ryan and have a relationship with him or NOT kiss Ryan and still have a relationship with him.... what? You can let Ryan have his eye cut out, be mean to him, turn him down over and over again and still... end up with him. So in the end... your choices do not matter at all for this. Yes you can get multiple endings where you can and cannot be with him but that is the END of the game making any choice before hand... pointless.
The way the story is told makes having feelings for any character pointless. At no point did I feel any remorse, sympathy or emotional attachment to anyone in this game. I also feel as if the relationships are forced onto the player which I did not like.
Your choices throughout the story have the same outcome in the end until roughly the end of the game where people could die. The train segment is a prime example of this. On the train you get an achievement for not getting caught by the cops leading to a lengthy police chase on the train and trains roof, then a bike ride, then a scene in a town where Aiden protects Jodie and she escapes. Then you have the other option to get caught 3 times for an achievement called houdini. You get caught on the train, handcuffed. You escape the cuffs on the train to the roof and then the bike ride. Fail the QTE's and your caught again and hand cuffed. Escape again, fail the QTE's and cuffed again. Then you escape for good this time. Why not throw it in here where Jodie could die and it ends the story? No matter what you do, it leads to the same outcome and thus, made choices practically useless.
Graphics
The graphics still hold their own to this date and if you played the original console editions (PS3 mainly) you will notice a direct improvement to the graphics. Beyond: Two Souls on PC comes with a higher resolution, improved graphic textures and so much more. All of these improvements add add an extra layer of immersion onto the game, especially with the facial animations ad character models as you can actually see their subtle body emotions speak for themselves.
The environments are packed with more detail and better textures compared to the original versions also and the dynamic lighting is an excellent addition as it adds a little more... cinematic feel? (for lack of better words). With these improvements on PC, I reckon this will make Beyond: Two Souls last a lot longer before age kicks in again. I mean, just look at this scene here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3341634038
A Sequel?
To this date we have still been waiting for a Beyond: Two Souls 2. The ending of the story heavily implied that there was more to come, here... have a look yourself and you tell me: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3341623939
I have my theories as to WHY we will never get a sequel but I am going to keep that to myself.
A Personal Opinion/Afterthought
I think that the developers changing the description of the game on Steam to state - "A unique psychological action thriller delivered by A-list Hollywood performances by Elliot Page and Willem Dafoe" - Is false because "Elliot Page" did not exist back then when this game was made and to top that off, the credits do not mention an Elliot Page at all. In fact, I will show you who the game mentions - Ellen Page:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3341623711
I feel as if the world is being tilted to one side and all the good things are being ruined one by one by this new generation... this new phase... this new... whatever you want to call it. We need to tiptoe around EVERY single aspect nowadays and seeing ELLEN PAGE's name still in the credits means that ELLEN PAGE was the actor that done this game, not this ELLIOT PAGE.
7/10. A Fantastic accomplishment for Quantic Dream but if you have played more modern games like this, you might get a sour taste playing B:TS