[BLOG] Eurogamer 2013: Beyond: Two Souls Presentation

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CrimsonShade
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[BLOG] Eurogamer 2013: Beyond: Two Souls Presentation

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Fresh off the release of Heavy Rain, Paris-based studio Quantic Dream took to their own developers session at Eurogamer Expo today to show off their next big PS3 title.


Beyond: Two Souls tells the story of the life of a young girl/woman called Jodie, who from birth has been linked with a mysterious entity and doesn’t know why. She doesn't know if it's a ghost, an alien or any other entity, but they cannot be separated. This annoys Jodie, who wants to lead a normal life; however, she ends up living a life less normal, while the entity provides her with powers as well as causing her troubles from its own annoyance at being bound to her. The game sees you play as Jodie and her Entity, experiencing various moments of her life while also influencing events within them. Actors Ellen Page and Willem DaFoe star.




The story takes place over fifteen years, but in a chronological disorder, with scenes jumping between her older and younger life in a non-linear method. Players may interact with characters before the scenes where they first meet them, leading to a potentially confusing but ultimately deeply informative storytelling exercise, where the players will fill in the gaps as well as make the decisions for what happens, influencing events in your own way and making your own gameplay experience different from another player’s. Quantic Dream’s view for Beyond is to not just tell a story, but to get the player involved with it. "Some people say if you’re not involving your readers in the story, they won’t remember it. But Stephen Spielberg and [other major directors] say the second you give control to the players, the story is gone. It's interesting how your perspective changes the better the storyteller you are. … This is what is unique about the Interactive Storytelling medium. It's the only one that can put the player in the shoes of someone. ... But when you separate the story from the gameplay, it doesn't work. When you do [lots of killing] and then the story is cutscenes, it's not working. So we try to find a different way to do things."


To make this possible, Beyond: Two Souls eskews game over sequences except in the most unsalvageable situations, giving players as many opportunities as possible to change the outcome of any occurrence and leading to a non-linearised story. When asleep on a train as the police come to find you, for example, you can make the entity wake Jodie up so she can defend herself; but if you keep her asleep, it’s not game over - you’ll interact with the policemen and new options become available to escape or defend yourself. End up in a police car and it’s still not game over - there’ll be ways to get out. It’s all up to you. All action scenes are different every time.


Players will also have the ability to take control of the Entity instead of Jodie. The Entity is invisible and can fly through matter, going through walls or ceilings and into areas Jodie herself can’t easily reach. It can see people's auras; and interact with matter like throwing cars and breaking stuff. As the Entity you can also choke people or possess and control characters. Meanwhile Jodie can interact with the real world. A new interaction system also exists in Beyond, to make knowing what you can do things with as least distracting as possible, but still show you your options. A white circle tells you when you can interact with something; if you want to try something, you move the right and left sticks towards what you interact with. With context-sensitive controls, every object has a different action - sometimes multiple actions - opening infinite possibilities.


An innovative part of Beyond is while either one or two players can play at the same time, neither need to have gaming experience and may never even have to touch a DualShock controller. As David Cage explains: "We discovered when talking with fans of Heavy Rain, that many people were playing with a second person. We found that interesting - someone who wasn't playing was giving their opinions on what should happen. ... So we asked ourselves, how can we allow the second person to interact with the game rather than just watch? We implemented a two-player mode where a second player could play the entity while the main stays as Jodie. But what about people who aren't gamers? ... So we developed an App called Beyond Touch, which connects to the console via Wi-Fi; and you can play the entire game via a touchscreen device - the app right now is on iPhone and Android - and you can play the entire game without ever touching a Dualshock controller."


The other innovation in Beyond: Two Souls comes in the way every scene is animated. For the first time in videogame history, every animation in Beyond has been recorded using “performance capture” technology, with actors acting out each scene and computers digitally rendering the movements of their body AND their faces, leading to completely natural-looking scenes. "We just wanted the actors to act; nothing should be intuitive. ... This is a real revolution as most games are done in two takes, with audio recorded in a sound booth; then another take where the audio is played and the actor acts out the motions. That worked for Heavy Rain; but when we tried Performance Capture for Beyond, we found it made a complete difference; we were getting emotions and subtle nuances you just don't get otherwise."


"Ellen Page really gave her heart and soul into a character, in a way I've never seen in a videogame before."


When games try to be innovative and do never-before-seen things, there are only ever two likelihoods. Either they succeed and set new ground, taking videogame development to completely new territory; or they flop and it all goes to waste. Time will tell which way Beyond will go, but we at WPS Interactive cross our fingers. Beyond: Two Souls is set for release on 8 October 2013 in North America, 9 October 2013 in Australia, 11 October 2013 in Europe and 17 October 2013 in Japan.
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