Beyond: two souls

The game focuses on questions about what happens after death. In the center of events is a young girl, Jodie Holmes (Ellen Page), possessing supernatural abilities , she can communicate with the other world . The game shows 16 years (8-24) of Jodi's life.

Announce

The game was announced by David Cage at E³ . The first trailer and video from the game were also shown there.

On April 27, 2013, a new trailer and a 35-minute video from the game were released, which were shown at the Tribeca Film Festival with Ellen Page and David Cage . This is the second video game taking part in the film festival (the first was LA Noire ) ^[10] .

PC version

At GDC 2019 , Quantic Dream , Sony and Epic Games officially announced the release in 2019 of Beyond: Two Souls, as well as Heavy Rain and Detroit: Become Human , on PC . After entering the PC, the first 12 months will be distributed exclusively in the Epic Games Store . ^[eleven]

The game is told in a torn narrative, jumping back and forth to three main age points from the life of Jody Holmes ( Ellen Page ), covering her period of life from 8 to 24 years.

Until the age of 8, Jody lived with foster parents Philip and Susan, who adopted her in infancy because their previous daughter died. From the moment of birth, Jody had a strange psychic connection with a mysterious creature named Aiden, through which she can perform many telepathic actions, such as possessing people's consciousness, the ability to strangle them and telekinesis. At the same time, Jody is sometimes attacked by strange dark energy substances. After Aiden nearly killed one of the neighbors' children when Jodie played snowballs with them, Jodi's adoptive parents seek psychiatric help. They give Jody the doctors Nathan Dawkins ( Willem Dafoe ) and Cole Freeman ( Kadim Hardison ) from the Department of Paranormal Phenomenon ( English Department of Paranormal Activity ), after which they leave their daughter forever because they are very scared for their lives. Under the supervision of two doctors, Jody gradually learns to control Aiden’s abilities and tries to live in harmony with him. One day, Nathan discovers that his wife and daughter died in a car accident, and this drives him into a depressed state. Trying to console him, Jody discovers that he can guide the souls of the dead to help them talk to the living through a psychic connection. Having managed to help the ghosts of the dead to talk with Nathan, she reassures him. Years pass, Jody wants to be independent of both doctors and Aiden, and tries to live like other girls of her age and once even runs away. Each attempt ends in disaster and forces Aiden to save Jody.

One day, Nathan’s authorities informed him that the condenser of the portal connecting the world of the living with the world of the dead (Inframyr) had failed, and they were asking for help from Jody. Having passed through hordes of enraged spirits, Jody manages to close the condenser and she asks Nathan that he will not allow scientists to build another. This gets the attention of the Central Intelligence Agency , and they send agent Ryan Clayton ( Eric Winter ) to recruit Jody. Although she first says she will not go, she is not given a choice and she is reluctant to go with him. After several years of preparation, she passes the tests and becomes a CIA agent. Together with Ryan, she goes through several missions and soon begins to feel for him. Depending on the player’s choice, Jody can have a romantic relationship with Ryan.

During one of the missions, Jodi goes to an African country to kill a military commander who prevents the troops from entering to help in the war. With the help of Aiden and her rescued boy named Salim, she succeeds. One of the victims of the attack by Jody and Aiden is Salim's father, and Salim, seeing Jody near his father’s corpse, starts shooting at Jody. She runs away, the whole city chases after her, they shoot her leg, but, in the end, Ryan picks her up with a group of special forces in a helicopter. On the way back to the CIA, Jody is furious when he heard on the news that the man she killed was not a military commander, but was the lawfully elected president, who was supposed to end the civil war. Despite Ryan’s excuses, she jumps from a helicopter and runs. She contacts Nathan and asks him to warn the CIA not to chase after her, as she promises to kill them all if they snoop on her again. Hiding, after a while she becomes homeless. She meets a group of homeless people, one member of which (a girl named Saturday, named after the day she left home) she helps to give birth to a child, a girl named Zoe. Later, she helps save everyone from the fire that the hooligans set up, but, having received a blow from them on the head, gets to the hospital.

After lying in a coma for several months, Jody wakes up at the very moment when CIA agents come for her, but successfully runs away from them through the window. An ordinary policeman picks her up on the road and tries to find out who she is. A special forces detachment rushes into the station, which it completely exterminates, as promised. After she finds herself in the desert, where she meets the Indians who live on a farm, and becomes an attack by an evil spirit. Jody helps the family drive the spirit back to Inframir, using an ancient Native American ritual. She becomes like their own for them, and the Indians say that if she wants to, she can return to them at any time, since now her house is here. After that, Jody leaves from them back to the city.

After some time, she contacts Cole, whom she asks to find her real parents. He tells her that her mother’s name is Nora Gray and she is in the psychiatric hospital where she has been since Jody’s birth. Jody enters the hospital and successfully gets to his mother’s room. Having managed to establish a psychic connection between unconscious Nora and Aiden, she finds out from Nora that the CIA was afraid that Nora was a threat to herself, Jody and other people, because she also had a gift, almost like Jody. She was given a neurotoxin that injected her into a coma. Frustrated by this, Jody may allow Aiden to kill Nora in order to end her torment. After leaving her mother’s room, she is captured by a group of CIA agents.

Waking up, Jody meets Nathan, who is currently the DPA Executive Director. He says that the CIA is ready to let her go and let her live her life if she performs another task. After the briefing, he says that in one Asian country, a military facility built by scientists has its own condenser. Desperate to preserve condenser technology exclusively for the CIA and its allies, the CIA sends Jody to destroy the condenser. Together with Jody, her old colleagues from the CIA and Ryan, with whom she still has a tense relationship, go into business. Through the huge snowdrifts of snow, their group goes to the hangar, where Jody and Ryan change into the uniforms of two neutralized soldiers and steal a submarine to get to the military base.

Having penetrated the underwater base, they are captured, where they begin to brutally torture them, trying to find out who they are. Even worse, Aiden was separated from Jody, stuck in a protective field that shields spirits from the living. Fortunately, he managed to turn off the protective field, releasing other spirits, who began to attack the soldiers, and freed Jody and Ryan. Jody destroys the condenser and they make their escape.

After returning to the CIA, Jody is released and issued her a passport with a new name and a check for 500 thousand dollars. However, before she leaves, Nathan shows her a miniature condenser that he built to communicate with his deceased wife and daughter, but even this technology does not allow him to hear their voices. When he asks Jody to help talk with the souls of his family, Jody realizes that his condenser makes them very painful, and they suffer. Nathan does not believe her, and begins to scream that she does not understand him. Jody leaves upset. However, when she tries to call the elevator, a CIA detachment runs out and grabs it. CIA Commander-in-Chief McGrath tells her that it would be too dangerous to let her go, and they are going to do with her what they did to her mother. Nathan appears and informs Jody that he decided to turn off the protective field of the condenser, which will subsequently provoke the merger of the world of the living and Inframir, while the world of the living will be completely absorbed. Aden, weakened, unable to free Jody, tries to establish contact with Cole and Ryan, and leads them to her. After that, Nathan seeks to close the containment field and Jody, Cole and Ryan run to the control panel, trying to turn off the Condenser. But the remote does not work. Cole replies that there is another way: go down to the very heart of the condenser - the Black Sun, and turn it off manually. The three of them put on belts with protective field technology and go down.

During a trip to the Black Sun, Cole is injured, Jody and Ryan, sacrificing their own safety, pick up Cole and drag him to a safe place. In the end, Jody finds Nathan next to the Black Sun, resulting in three possible outcomes. Either Jody will convince Nathan that he is wrong in forcing him to commit suicide, or piss him off, forcing Nathan to point a gun at her, which makes it possible to kill him with Aiden, or Ryan and Nathan will kill each other. In any case, Nathan reunites with his family and asks Jody to finish the job for him. As soon as Jody turns off the condenser control panel, she has a series of visions, and she finds out that Aiden is the spirit of her stillborn twin brother. After turning off the car, Jody finds himself in the corridor, where she (and the player) has a choice: return to the world of the living and live on or enter Inframir to forever be reunited with Aiden and loved ones, who may die during the game.

If the player decides to return to the living world, Jody survives, the explosion condenses and she loses her mental connection with Aiden. Depending on the choices before, Cole and Ryan can survive the explosion. Jody decides to start a new life. At this point, the player chooses whether Jody’s new life will be alone, in the circle of her homeless friends (who are no longer homeless), with the Indians or with Ryan. Choosing to stay alone, with the Indians or Ryan, we are shown that Aiden is still watching Jody, although their connection was broken. After discovering Aiden’s presence, the creators of the game reveal Jody’s dreams about the inevitable future, where she stands in the middle of the post-apocalyptic world that Inframir has invaded. Having chosen her former homeless friends, against the background of the post-apocalyptic world with Jody, Zoe, the daughter of Saturday, will be standing next to her.

Inframir’s choice leads Ryan, Cole (supposed to be if they survived) or a military unit to Jody’s corpse. Jody guards her loved ones from Inframir, living by maintaining a psychic connection with Zoe (fading memories here are the result of Zoe having difficulty understanding what she sees in her dreams) which she is preparing to confront the upcoming post-apocalyptic future alone.

There is also another ending option. If the black sun does not resist the attack of enemies, then they will eat Jody. After this, the world will collapse, and Jody will remain forever alone.

The game Beyond: Two Souls received mixed reviews from critics. Its rating is 72.04% on the GameRankings website ^[12] and 70/100 on the Metacritic website. ^[13] Reviewers praised actress Ellen Page for portraying Jody Holmes as well as playing other actors. The number of technical details in the animation and graphics of the game was positively noted. Interactive narrative mechanics, an emotional soundtrack, and motion capture of the actors also received positive feedback. ^{[37] [38]}

Reviewer Sergey Tsilyurik from the IGN website criticizes the game for a large number of plot holes, contradictions and absurdities, which is why it is impossible to believe what is happening. He also noted serious problems with interactivity and drama, because of which the decisions made are for the most part missed or affect small details. ^[39] Joystiq also criticizes the game for an unintentionally stupid plot. ^[40] The Destructoid site criticized the game for its frequent plot deadlocks, as well as for the lack of meaningful interactivity. ^[41] Reviewer Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw from Zero Punctuation strongly criticizes the game for its overly quick change of temporary events and the inadequate use of stealth elements in the game, which negatively affects the atmosphere. ^[42]

At the Spike Video Game Awards , Beyond: Two Souls participated in two categories: Best Acting Voice Actress ( Ellen Page ) ^[43] and Best Voice Actor ( Willem Dafoe ). ^[44]

The British Academy of Motion Picture and Television Arts ( BAFTA ) has named the game: "Best Artistic Achievement", "Best Original Soundtrack" ( Lorne Balfe , Hans Zimmer ) and "Best Actress" ( Ellen Page ). ^[45]

A few months before the release of the game, in July 2013 , Beyond: Two Souls was among the twenty most pre-ordered games of 2013 . ^[46] VGChartz estimates that 580,000 copies worldwide were sold 5 weeks after the game was released, compared with sales of the Heavy Rain game over the same period of time, sales amounted to 974,000 copies worldwide.

Quantic Dream announced that sales of the game exceeded one million copies worldwide on December 20, 2013 . On April 16, 2016, sales of the game worldwide amounted to 1,778,704 copies. ^[47]

• - Beyond: Two Souls official website