Omikron: The Nomad Soul (1999)
Fahrenheit / Indigo Prophecy (2005)
Heavy Rain (2010) 6.5/10
Beyond: Two Souls (2013) 5.5/10
Detroit: Become Human (2018)
I don't understand how Quantic Dream ever made it as game-designers. Something about them is obvious to me that they don't really like "interactive experiences", they just like films where you decide what happens.
I understand that this film-esque style of "gameplay" is just how David Cage works as an artist, but as shitty as it sounds, I think the guy is being dishonest with himself. Beyond: Two Souls is not even tasteful as a "film" -- scenes didn't attempt to provoke emotion as much as attempt an emotional hijacking. Characters constantly cry on cue and the "epic" plot developments are wildly implausible -- even for a story that involves super-powered ghosts.
But (believe it or not) I didn't make this site to tear apart the stories of games, I made it to tear apart gameplay, and games like Beyond makes that tricky since most of the "game" is just watching the story.
So -- brushing past the story -- the main gameplay concept of Beyond is about the power struggle between the player-character (Ellen Page) and her supernatural twin. Does that sound interesting? A little bit, right? Well, I've got some bad news...
The truth is, a lot of the game has no idea what to do with this conflict, so they distract the player with about ninety sub-plots where different climaxes and resolutions happen. There's war drama! Hobo drama! Several romantic interests! Teen angst! Childhood traumas! The "finding your real family" cliche! The "letting go of your loved ones" cliche! Willem Dafoe! Having the story told out of chronological order to make it seem smarter! And even an entire hour dedicated to a haunted Indian reservation, which ends with a fight against a fucking sandstorm monster... Hence there is obviously no consistent tone or mood to take from this game, just a lot of crazy stuff shoved into one container. That is, the data on the game disk.
The eight percent of the game dedicated to the power struggle between the two characters though? It's there, yeah... It's not all that interesting, but... it's there. There are levels where you can fuck up a lot of stuff to your heart's desire, and while you're having fun with that power, Ellen Page keeps telling you to stop, so you stop... or, you don't. It isn't very profound.
Frankly, I think that Beyond actually would have been interesting had Quantic Dream scrapped the idea of making video games and just made it a film or an HBO mini-series. I am almost certain that the story is so insane and unfocused because David Cage was worried players would lose interest with the personal material that didn't involve explosions or melodramatic acting. With cinema, one could have found an editor to narrow down the story to its most potent bits and elaborated that into something interesting and not so embarrassingly cliche. There would also be creative control in how far the superpowered soul would take his acts of violence on the other characters -- and can you imagine what tension that would create? With the audience not knowing when the ghost will act up, as opposed to the player who is literally guiding how far the ghost will go? In terms of storytelling, the idea just makes more sense to me.