Developers Quantic Dream have never quite done things the same way everyone else has. Back in 2005 the released Fahrenheit, their first venture into multiple possibilities in narrative, set against an apocalyptic backdrop, great motion capture graphics and one of the first games to fully utilize the QTE (Quick Time Events) approach to set-pieces. Then in 2010 they released Heavy Rain, which was another game that could lead down multiple paths of alternative plots, depending on how you played it. On average, most games are only completed by approximately 25% of their players. Heavy Rain maintains the highest completion rate to date, with 75% of all players having seen it through to the end thanks to the mix of fantastic story-telling and cutting edge technology.
Now it looks like they're set to do it again with Beyond: Two Souls.
Featuring performances from Hollywood stars Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe, the trailer for the game shows Page's character Jodie Holmes recruited by the government for a specific assignment in a war-torn country. But what the trailer doesn't reveal is that the game takes place over the course of fifteen years, starting off with Jodie as an 8-year old girl, and communicating with a character called Aiden, a supernatural entity that only Jodie can see. Over the one-and-a-half decades, the game developers promise that it will be a psychological, spiritual and thrilling experience, asking questions about what happens to us after we die.
35 minutes of the game was screened at the 2013 TriBeCa Film Festival, to resounding praise, and represents only the second time a video-game was recognized by the festival, after 2011's L.A. Noire.
Available to buy on October 11th, check back in on entertainment.ie for further previews and the eventual review of this sure-to-be groundbreaking game.
