On the one hand, this review went from reasoned to sudden screaming ragequit like that. On the other hand... I agree that sounds like a sudden screaming ragequit offense on the game\'s part, so fair enough!
^Eh, I wouldn\'t say so. I do appreciate that David Cage\'s have heart, as clumsy as they are.
David Cage\'s games, that is.
I don't think David Cage is a bad person exactly, but his ego easily surpasses his tact. As a different review pointed out, his depiction of women is normally lurid (BTS is a bit better) and he frequently puts woman in compromising violating scenarios which the other review described as almost fetishistic.
Creating a gameplay moment where a child soldier, with a comically oversized assault rifle, fires at enemy combatants whilst you fight along side them is gross and insensitive, to a level you almost never see these days. It's also entirely within David Cage's wheelhouse. Whilst I doubt he will ever manage to do worse than this, there has been a lot of commentary about Detroit being equally tone death towards subjects of racism and inequality.
In my eyes, Cage is to gaming what M. Night Shyamalan and Tarsem Singh are to film (there are a lot of parallels between Heavy Rain and The Cell, come to think of it).
That\'s not meant as an insult to anyone. Shyamalan\'s had Unbreakable and Split, and I genuinely enjoyed Tarsem\'s Self/less. They all have their faults and their signature styles are often wonky, but there\'s still pathos and creativity to each of them. Even Cage\'s attempts at romance would probably be successful if he knew how to pair up the right characters (like if say, Jodie had hooked up with Stan, and not Ryan, or if Ethan had gotten together with Lauren and not Madison).
So I guess I can see where your offense comes from, but I just don\'t feel you. Leaving aside that I don\'t think Salim was meant to be an actual child soldier in the first place (just an otherwise fairly normal kid who had no choice but to carry a weapon for his safety), BTS was neither the first nor the last game to approach the subject. The Metal Gear series has a hell of a lot of them, and whatever his strengths, I personally wouldn\'t call Kojima Hideo that good a writer, either.
Leave a Comment:
A Proportionate Opinion
Beyond: Two Souls tries to innovate it's genre of interactive fiction and makes two core mistakes straight from the outset.
The first is that Beyond Two Souls is told non-linearly. By itself, it doesn't affect the story too much. The non-linearity isn't too hard to follow, it adds some mild meaning to scenes by placing two different incidents in Jodie's life next to each other. I think it's meant to create a sense of mystery, but the timeline quickly became familiar and mundane enough that I didn't really feel it.
The big problem with non-linearity is the game comes from a genre which is makes you ask "What I hadn't done that thing?" In this game you know the answer is nothing, you've already played the scenes in the future, your choices can't affect them. If Beyond Two Souls has a branching narrative, it actively makes you believe that it doesn't.
The second thing this genre does is helping you empathise with the characters by making you simulate their actions. Heavy Rain, the previous game by this developer, was a world leader at this. You are pressing buttons to mime drinking orange juice and crawling over barbed wire and they help you feel that characters world.
In Beyond Two Souls all actions are handled by flicking a analogue stick at an "interaction point" in the game world, and the game does the rest. You're not inhabiting the character, you're pressing an "animation select" button on the remote as you press the film.
The whole game reflects these limitations. The story is okay and well-acted, but there are very few levels that give you space to explore a situation and place you in the situation. One of the rare good levels places you on a street and asks you to beg for money. Another level has you follow A FUCKING CHILD SOLDIER AROUND AS A NPC COMPANION.
FUCK YOU DAVID CAGE, YOU'RE NOT A GOOD ENOUGH WRITER TO EARN THIS.