June 2018 Playthrough - Beyond: Two Souls

[singlebanana]

**THIS CONTAIN SPOILERS OMG!!!! - DO NOT READ FURTHER!**

Alright, so today was set as the first day to discuss the story with spoilers. I am curious to hear about how everyone played the game, what decisions you made that you felt impacted your ending, and of course, what ending you got/chose.

If you listen to our podcast, you probably know the manner in which I role play these type of decision-based games. For whatever reason, I'm the type of player who becomes immersed in a story and takes the "what would I do?" approach.  I played this game fairly similar as to how I usually play them, except that with the second controlled character, Aiden, I was a bit rambunctious and chaotic. Yeah, I choked the hell out of that woman in the other room during the psych eval........ I don't know what this really says about me as a person or a gamer, but I guess I feel differently playing as a non-human character in these types of situations.

Shawn and I typically text back and forth while we are playing these games and I think one thing that was especially off-putting to both of us was the way the game continually pushes the romantic narrative (especially with Ryan) on your character.  It seems that no matter what your feelings are toward him throughout the earlier segments of the game, you keep being force-fed these decisions to have a relationship with him. I don't know if this was particularly annoying to anyone else, but I felt like I was being pushed toward this "happy" fairy tale (maybe?) ending even though I felt that I had done enough to cut it off.  Are we dudes really this push and annoying to women?  Man, I hope not.

The game offers other romantic advances (boy at the party and the oldest Navajo son), but I felt that I was more in control of these situations and that the game respected my responses quite a bit more.  Even at the very end of the game, I had four choices in terms of what direction to live out the remainder of my life: alone, with the formerly homeless group, with the oldest Navajo son, and of course with Ryan...  The option to be alone was a bit too sad and I never felt that any of the one-on-one relationships in the game were ever that strong. Instead, I opted to be with the formerly homeless group and I was pretty satisfied with this ending (even with the nice little twist at the end of training Tuesday's daughter for the inevitable rift apocalypse).  I guess this ending kind of opened things up for a sequel, but honestly, I'd be happier if they didn't go that route.

Speaking of the homeless group, I'd like to know how everyone felt about these side storylines.  The two that stuck out to me the most were your homelessness and the Navajo section.  Do you feel that these added to the story, or were they unnecessary and added to give the game more bulk?

So the ending...and what I would like to discuss most is the big twist where you discover who Aiden is.  I'm not sure about the rest of you, and maybe some of you who have played this before may have to think back, but I was really shocked by this twist.  I did not put together the possibility that they might have been twins, but looking back it all makes sense and I believe it was pulled off very well.  Aiden's tie to Jodie, the purple trail that you can use to get back to her, is not only a personification of their link, but also has a very umbilical and symbiotic feel to it. I think we get an even better perspective of this at the end after the "cord has been cut" and Jodie is all alone. Anyway, I thought that this revelation was pulled off very well and curious as to what others think.

Final thought:  I was able to save Cole and that's all that really mattered to me.  Now patiently waiting on my "A Different World" reboot on Netflix.

[douglie007]

I finally finished today, I was surprised that only 16% chose to be with Zoey.

[singlebanana]

I finally finished today, I was surprised that only 16% chose to be with Zoey.

I honestly think that it's the nature of the Beast. Jodie goes through such harsh trials and tribulations throughout her life that I think the majority of people want to see her happy and living a "normal" life. For most, I think that means getting married and maybe having the opportunity at starting a family.

[Crabmaster2000]

The first time I played through this game I played Jodie as very forgiving and understanding. Happy to give people second (and third and beyond in some cases) chances and look for opportunities to do good. For this play I played her as very jaded and untrusting of nearly everyone, and Aiden was very aggressive, chaotic and possessive. I think this playthrough felt more in line with how Jodie would actually be since she's had a pretty unique and terrible life right from birth onward. Getting ripped from your mom and placed with a a step-family who at best tolerates her and at worst is abusive and neglectful. So where my first play was pacifist whenever possible this time I was taking over anyone with a gun and having them kill their friends and then themselves. It was very unsettling at times. Particularly that scene in the small town when she's fleeing the CIA and gets trapped in the theater. The carnage left behind after that scene was crazy. Bodies, burning cars/buildings and helicopters crashing down was a lot to take in.

I totally agree with Rich and Shawn that the relationship with Ryan does seem forced a few times. On one hand she has led a super sheltered life and hasn't interacted with many men, and in particular in a romantic capacity, so perhaps she'd be infatuated with him both as a handsome dude as well as his position of authority over her. But after she finds out he purposefully lied to her about the assassination I couldn't take him serious as a partner in either of my playthroughs. That's a pretty crazy betrayal of trust to have you kill a person to keep an unstable government in power to benefit your Country's secret military/economic goals.

In addition to the Homeless and Navajo sections as being big ones I'd also say the Assassination Mission and the first Condenser felt pretty bit and important, although you don't meet important new story characters like in the two you mentioned. I always felt the Navajo section in particular lagged a lot for me. I find it to be the slowest and least interesting area of the game, which is kind of sad since it's one of the extremely few times Jodie is shown kindness and it's from strangers. From the farm work to riding the horse to unearthing the old artifacts it just doesn't grasp me as much as most of this game does. The homeless section is among my favorites though. You get to spend time with other broken people and bond with them. The fight with the "camera bros" went well for me so it was a lot of fun to have Stan brag about the encounter later on. The burning building was so intense and not successfully making it out was pretty crazy.

The first condenser I thought had kind of a cool horror movie vibe to it while you get these glimpses of each victims death as you make your way down eventually leading to the entities becoming hostile towards you. And the Mission seemed like a great escalation of all of your stealth and combat training to that point. It was a pretty huge and daunting level and the twist of Ryan tricking you into killing someone you would not have if you had known their real identity was awesome resulting in you jumping out of a freaking Helicopter. And to go back to an earlier point Rich brought up about tripping over branches because of the controls and lack of visibility. The mission is one of the reasons I like those two things. When I was fighting with dudes from the back of a truck I was getting cut up and punched a bunch, as I'd expect I would have. If I was able to Batman my way out of that I don't think that would have felt right. It was appropriate that I was bleeding and limping my way out of encounters like those.

The Aiden is your Twin twist I expected late into the game a bit before the reveal when they kept flashing back to the delivery room with your real mother. It's cool and makes sense, but it's not super impactful and I don't think it was as surprising as it was meant to be. I was far more interested in what they had done to her mother and unraveling that mystery.

As for the ending this time I chose to be alone. After being betrayed so often, particularly by Nathan after he went off the deep end, and by feeling Jodie had very little control over her life to this point it felt very natural to want to be off the grid for a bit. And after losing the connection to Aiden I thought she'd want time to adjust to that before interacting with people again. The tease with Aiden still being there though at the end of that was a bit lame I felt.

I checked out the Zoey ending just now to see what you meant about her showing up for the apocalypse part and that is great. In my ending it's Jodie facing it alone. Having another ghostbuster at your side is far better.

All in all I really enjoy this game, but it's probably my least favorite of the Quantic Dream games. The mystery and characters in the other titles I think are quite a bit stronger than they are in Beyond.

PS - The anyone that has played Detroit. Doesn't one of the attackers from the Bar look exactly like the abusive father from the start of Detroit? These games in the same universe? Could we see an Androids vs Entities crossover?!?!?!

[MaterialHandlerMike]

I played this some more, last night. Almost done. It's an interesting game to be sure, but as my first Quantic game, so far I much prefer Until Dawn and its style, over this one.

[Raidou]

I definitely agree that the game was really trying to push the romance with Ryan, and it bugged me because he came across as a slimy jerkwad up until the final chapter.  When you refuse him in the arctic, he just says that you're being "stubborn" and that felt like David Cage himself was rebuking me for not going along with his ideal romance.  Especially when the choose-your-own ending allowed you to hook up with Ryan even after rebuking him constantly.

I chose the loner ending, largely because the other endings options didn't feel natural.  I hated Ryan, barely knew Jay, and choosing to have Jodie impose herself on an infant Zoey as her mind was turning to mush made no sense.  There was no connection to Zoey outside of her birth, and she was only a small child by the end of the game.  Actually, the writing behind secondary characters is probably my biggest criticism of the game.  Jodie's character was done well for the most part, and some of the supporting cast who served a simple role were decent (such as Cole).  Ryan I've criticised enough, but Dawkins was another character whose character flipped in the last couple of chapters and not very convincingly.  Dawkins as the father figure was done really well, and Willem DeFoe was a perfect choice. However, his motivation for becoming the mad villain stems from his family's death and Jodie acting as a conduit for them when she was 8.  This means that for most of the game, Dawkins' insanity/scheming was growing, but you never saw signs of it until you entered his giant office with a scenic view of The Void.

The game had some interesting set pieces, and I wished they were explored more. The spying mission, black ops mission and condenser scenes were great action levels, even though the game mechanics weren't built with these in mind.  Each of these could have been made into its own game.  I didn't mind the slower paced scenes, such as Homeless and Navajo as it did give a cooldown between the more erratic scenes.  What did annoy me were the short scenes that didn't really add much to the story beyond characterisation.  The load times for this game were quite long and my PS3 sounded like it was dying every time I loaded a new scene, so the vignettes were annoying.

[MaterialHandlerMike]

Squeaked in my ending today.

[singlebanana]

Thanks for playing with us guys! Just wanted to note that a newer part of our podcast involves including the
"final thoughts" of our participants from the forum posts. Unfortunately, we recorded on the 29th and I just noticed Raidou's comments the next morning, so they didn't make it into the show.......   Perhaps in the future we will do a final call for comments a day or two before the recording.