I've finished the game.
Beyond is the most engaging story I've seen in a video game (more than
The Walking Dead or
Deadly Premonition, which are two of my favorite games ever) and it has a lot to do with the main character.
While the secondary characters aren't very fleshed out, I could relate to Jodie in many ways. The fact that you follow her through 15 years of her life, jumping back and forth in the timeline, gives you a sense of vertigo but it does make sense. Life isn't just one continuous line. It's made of smaller 'lives' and every now and then you become like a different person. You put on new clothes, change your hairstyle, you meet new people and your personality changes. Yet, in the end, you're still the same individual, with the same soul, thanks to your memory (an individual with no memory - such as a corpse- would have no identity).
But
Beyond isn't solely about one person's life - it's about death itself, and I think David Cage's goal has been met.
Beyond is how an atheist writer (Cage) re-imagines what happens after life. That's an ambitious goal but he tackled it with taste, emotion and poetry. The big choice in the last chapter is one of the most beautiful scenes I've seen in a video game, thanks to the concept artists, the musical score, Cage's direction and the spectacular events and climaxes that lead up to that point.
While
Beyond felt slow (the
Navajo and
Mission chapters could have been shorter) and even tedious (the gameplay, while an improvement upon
Heavy Rain's, still feels artificial and not
mature yet), I was ultimately won over by the ending, which wrapped up the story in a satisfying fashion. The final choice may look trite to some people but in my opinion it's a good summary of the game's intention - it took that many years and tragedies for Jodie to decide whether life was worth living or not.
I suspect a majority of people would choose Life and so was my choice for the first playthrough. That part of the game was very interesting (as were many other) because the decision I took was based on my life and my personality. It wasn't just an 'A or B' choice just to see the 'X' or 'Y' cutscene. It actually made me think of what I would do if faced with such an alternative. I think that's one of David Cage's greatest achievements. I didn't buy
Heavy Rain's slogan (
'How far would you go to save someone you love?') because the story wasn't good enough in my opinion. Yet, somehow,
Beyond hit the spot for me.
The last chapter isn't the sole example of choices resonating with my (and possibly other players') personal life. Since I identified with Jodie from the beginning (I like to picture her as a misunderstood, introverted girl or even an
ISTP, aka the Silent Badass personality type,
just like me) and I'm pretty much a lonely individual (few acquaintances, no true friends, no relationships) I made the choices that seemed logical to me (i.e. Jodie had to be an eternal loner). I made Aiden scare Ryan away, made Jodie tell Ryan she didn't love him and chose the ending where Jodie lived alone. It made sense to me because it felt like Jodie finally accepted the fact that she's different (instead of fighting her own nature, causing awkwardness and disaster in the process, as in the
Anniversary chapter) and that's what I'm trying to do at this point in my life - trying to appreciate the freedom of being alone, accepting the fact I'm an introvert instead of being ashamed and forcing myself into social situations (if I had embraced my personality sooner I wouldn't have spent years feeling 'anormal' and ashamed of myself, even thinking of suicide more than once).
For my second playthrough I intend to play Jodie as a totally depressed, self-destructive nihilist. I intend to take revenge on the teenagers at the
Anniversary, sleeping with Ryan out of madness and desperation (and forgiving him because who cares about Somalia), helping Nathan with his research because why the hell not, and eventually choosing the Infraworld.
I won't give a grade to
Beyond: Two Souls because I'm not sure I can review it on the typical criteria people apply to video games. One can certainly pinpoint many technical flaws or plot holes in it. People may even say it isn't a game (yet there were many sequences that were almost pure gameplay, especially in that long underwater chapter near the end of the game) but to me it was a special experience which I happened to take personally. Had I not been able to relate to Jodie, I don't know if I would have appreciated the game as much. But it did hit close to home and the main philosophical theme was very ambitious (it's about life and death, no less). As a result, I don't know if
Beyond is my favorite game ever, but it certainly is the most important to me. It makes the zombies in
The Last of Us and
The Walking Dead or the time-travelling shenanigans in
Bioshock Infinite feel like pointless exercises in escapism. Those games are held in high regard (
The Walking Dead being the only one I consider good) but not life-changing.
Beyond: Two Souls touches life itself in a way no other game has - well,
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, (which creatures look similar to
Beyond's 'monsters') sort of had interesting ideas about the afterlife, and so did
Final Fantasy X, but they're not all that convincing.
Finally, I would like to thank David Cage and the main actors for the incredible amount of work they have put into that game - I can only imagine how much. There was a lot of dialogue, a lot of scenes and the acting as well as the animation were always convincing. Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe are incredibly talented and they carry the whole game on their shoulders. Fortunately, Cage was competent enough to make good use of that talent.
Congratulations, Quantic Dream. See you on Playstation 4.
called the twist!
