There are some segments in the new trailer for Beyond: Two Souls featuring the lead protagonist played by Ellen Page, encountering some world-ending scenarios. It appears the game may be a heck of a lot bigger than just some pesky ghost following around a young woman.
The trailer is short and sweet and I'm not entirely sure if it works as the game's launch trailer of if it's just the extended TV commercial trailer. Regardless, the game actually looks very different and diverse in this one trailer than it usually does.
In fact, the biggest criticisms facing Beyond: Two Souls is that the game lacks actual gameplay depth; that the majority of the experience is just cinematics and quick-time events. It is true that a large portion of the game isn't even playable as it is just a really big elongated cinematic. However, at the same time there are have been some impressive moments required of gamers to exercise some quick-thinking reaction times.
In fact, just recently IGN released two different video playthroughs of Beyond: Two Souls where they took vastly different routes in the game that led to different outcomes. The fact that there is actually a measure of play-style is somewhat impressive to me. I mean, they could have gone full QTE very much like Heavy Rain where the interactivity felt somewhat limited and almost beyond the control of the player.
For Beyond: Two Souls at least there is a lot more variety interspersed throughout the game and it certainly does open up a nice element of immersion because it's not all just the same thing. Being able to float around as Aiden and troll people is pretty cool and being able to actually play as Jody at times and climb, stealth and fight is also pretty neat.
One of the biggest problems with a lot of games is that quick-time events essentially feel as if you're playing through segments of the game you can't really alter, and in this case you at least have some leeway in altering the outcome of the game based on player decisions.
The one thing from the TV commercial trailer above that really stuck out were the segments that seemed to showcase some end of the world type scenarios. I don't know if the game is going to go the route of Indigo Prophecy and get all Matrix-esque on players, but those giant black holes engulfing the city looks like Jodie will have to do some super-powered, super-hero stuff to fix the world... or maybe not.
Anyway, Beyond: Two Souls is set for release on October 8th, exclusively for the PlayStation 3. You can learn more about the game by paying a visit to the official website.
