Woah (Beyond Two Souls) (Gaming)

by Cody Miller , Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Sunday, November 10, 2013, 19:35 (4030 days ago) @ Cody Miller
edited by Cody Miller, Sunday, November 10, 2013, 19:38

For instance:

In another scene, a homeless Jodie wakes up to find her temporary room in a raging inferno. The fire that burns an abandoned building to the ground and puts her in the coma goes unexplained. Logically, the explanation here is that Jodie's distorted memory can't or won't recall specifics -- after all, if she woke up to a fire and was subsequently knocked out for months, why would she know what started it? Again, Cage commits to the mind's chaotic process as a storytelling device, but does so at the expense of understanding.

This IGN reviewer complains that the fire goes unexplained. Both my friend and I DID discover who started the fire, but by two different ways. He discovered it, because he escaped the building and caught them. I discovered it because I didn't escape the building, but was nice to Stan, so he left me a newspaper article by my hospital bed saying they caught the arsonists.

The arsonists were a group of teenagers who are beating Stan up. They light the building on fire as revenge for you kicking their ass. Which makes me wonder. If I did nothing or DIDN'T kick their asses, would the fire have still been lit? Maybe I'll try that next time.

This guy chose not to explore and press further, so that was closed off to him, just like it would be in real life! But, he just assumed it was crappy writing on the part of David Cage, when in fact, it was his curiosity that was crappy!

Many more examples like this. I think most people bashing the game didn't even realize the narrative was being built by their choices, since it worked so well that they just assumed it was the only path through the game, since it was so seamless. It's not like the walking dead which screams at you: YOU ARE MAKING A CHOICE WITH CONSEQUENCES. In Two Souls, it's completely natural; just how it should be.

Color me Beyond Impressed and proven wrong.