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YMMV / Beyond: Two Souls

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  • Abandon Shipping:
    • Jodie and Aiden. Given that he's the soul of her stillborn twin brother.
    • Ryan and Jodie when you get to see some of his more Jerkass moments during Jodie's memories. There were also those who immediately jumped ship when it was revealed what Ryan tricked Jodie into doing, only feeling remorse later.
  • Anvilicious: The developers didn't leave many doubts as for their opinions regarding US intervention in international politics. Notably, the government is also the only purely evil group in the game. Everyone else falls into Grey-and-Gray Morality (even the entities run on Blue-and-Orange Morality), but the ending is entirely caused by their greed and idiocy.
  • Awesome Music: Jodie's Suite, Jodie's One-Woman Wail Leitmotif, is a beautiful, haunting piece.
  • Captain Obvious Reveal: It doesn't take a genius to figure out that Aiden is Jodie's dead twin brother, considering how violently overprotective he is of her, and the fact that he's been with her all her life.
  • Catharsis Factor:
    • You don't have to torture the Jerkass teens at the party, but giving them a taste of their own medicine by essentially acting like a monster from a horror film is quite satisfying.
    • You are given the opportunity to have Aiden choke Philip, Jodie's adoptive father, after he and his wife abandon Jodie at the Department. It can feel very gratifying after witnessing his overall abusive behavior with Jodie, especially since she was just a little girl.
  • Complete Monster: CIA General McGrath oversees the Infraworld condenser experiments in the hopes of consolidating American power. After a pregnant psychic woman he had institutionalized gives birth, McGrath has her put into a permanent medically-induced coma to avoid her being a liability. Later, McGrath has the president of Somalia assassinated, tricking the psychic woman's daughter, Jodie Holmes, into believing the democratically-elected president was a dictator, uncaring as the country falls to war. Revealing his master plan to be the weaponizing of the demonic entities within the Infraworld, McGrath seeks total military supremacy. Going back on his word to free Jodie after she completes his tasks, McGrath gloats he will place her in a coma like her mother.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • Cole, the friendliest character in the game and Jodie's best friend.
    • The Homeless folk are also well liked for being the only group of people who are kind and sincere to Jodie with no ulterior motives, going as far as to treat her connection with Aiden not as a 'curse' but as a 'miracle', as well as checking up on her in the hospital after Jodie is comatose from either rescuing them from the fire and is attacked by muggers, or if she nearly dies in the burning building and is rescued by Stan . Players would rejoice upon finding out that Jodie has the option to live with them in a home of their own in one of multiple endings of the player's choice.
  • Fan Nickname: Thanks to the way Elliot Page (nee Ellen) was acting in it, Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation had a tendency to call the game The Ellen Page Variety Hour, Ellen Page-apalooza, The Ellen Page-David Cage Rage Gauge, and Despite Ellen Page, I Am Still Just a Rat in a Cage.
  • Fandom Rivalry: With The Last of Us, both PS3 exclusives at the time. Aside from that, the games have little in common, outside of Ellie (one of the main characters in The Last Of Us) looking like Elliot Page in early development. The rivalry began in earnest when Elliot himself brought the issue up, which was a genuine case of shit-stirring on the interviewer's behalf because Page was quizzed as to their thoughts on that one and apparently didn't have it explained to him that the character model had long been changed for Ellie. There are still some people who think Ellie looks like Page even now, but the resemblance isn't as blatant as it once was.
  • He Really Can Act: Elliot Page's performance has been getting this from lots of critics, even ones who don't like the game.
  • Iron Woobie: Jodie goes through many hardships, but she doesn't let it stop her from being badass.
  • Narm:
    • "SHIMASANI!!!"
    • The "Zoey" ending. The recording quality of the voice acting sounds terrible, combined with a heavily French accented girl trying to do an American accent who is fairly bad at acting makes it impossible to take the serious ending... well, seriously.
    • If you've consistently rejected all of Ryan's romantic advances, his behavior during the finale can seem weird.
    • Jodie constantly talking to herself in "The Dinner". It's not too bad when it's in her head, but she does most of it out loud.
    • The sheer stretch to not fail some situations can be ludicrous. Funny moments pop up far too often if the player simply doesn't touch the controller.
  • Never Live It Down: David Cage's assertion that game overs are a failure of the game designer (hence the reason that you're unable to get a game over at any point) has been mercilessly mocked by plenty of people, mostly because it's not only an extremely stupid thing to say (the lengths that the game goes to to avoid giving you a game over can verge on Deus ex Machina) but also because some of his previous games, like Fahrenheit, had game overs. It's often forgotten that he said that this was the case only in "story-driven" games, not in action games.
  • Overshadowed by Controversy: Many people's knowledge about this game centers around Elliot Page's allegations of poor treatment from David Cage, to the point where the former considered a lawsuit, after he found out that Cage had made a scrapbook of nearly two thousand photos of Page going back to when he was eight years old, and before Cage even approached Page about working with him for the game. Page was also furious to learn that, in spite of his contract containing a no-nudity clause, the developers made a fully rendered 3D nude model of him, and included it with the game as Dummied Out content, which dataminers were able to easily find soon after the game launched.
  • Platonic Writing, Romantic Reading: At least on Aiden’s side toward Jodie, which is part of the reason why players shipped them in the first place. Aiden seems extremely possessive of Jodie, to the point of becoming jealous when Jodie goes on a date with Ryan, allowing the player to potentially sabotage their date with his power. When it’s revealed that he’s her stillborn twin brother, it becomes a bit strange for some players considering this aspect of their dynamic.
  • Player Punch: The ending of "Homeless". So you feed a group of really nice homeless folks, fend off some jerkasses abusing those homeless, heal their physical and psychological wounds, help a woman give birth, save the homeless guys, the woman, and the baby from a fire, then Aiden spends all his power saving Jodie, and what do you get for your trouble? Two baseball bat blows to the head from those same jerkasses (who also put the building on fire to get back at you) and three months in a coma.
  • Random Events Plot: A criticism some people level against the game is that many scenes don't contribute to the main plot or character arc and are essentially self-contained with no long-term effects. The fact the game is non-linear also means what links there are between events may not be apparent.
  • The Scrappy: Ryan, due to his being an manipulative Jerkass who winds up being Strangled by the Red String. Even worse, if Jodie lives and turns him down, he'll act like she's just doing so temporarily unless she winds up with Jay.
  • Strangled by the Red String: No matter what you do, Jodie will end up at least trying a relationship with Ryan, and even if you reject him during the finale, the two will kiss, with Ryan saying he will wait for her.
  • Take That, Scrappy!:
    • While playing as Aiden, you can deliberately sabotage Ryan's date with Jodie. She will make you feel guilty for this, though.
    • For those who are still feeling sore about Ryan's manipulating Jodie into killing a democratically elected president by outing him as a warlord, during the torture scene you can choose not to talk when prompted and watch as their captives cut out Ryan's left eye for staying silent. Taking the Beyond Ending where Ryan lives also feels like this since you could interpret it as Jodie hating Ryan so much she'd rather die than stay with him. It is also possible for Nathan to shoot and kill Ryan during the finale.
  • The Woobie:
    • Jodie, Jodie, Jodie. Haunted by demonic spirits since she was a little girl and tied to a psychic entity that is actually her dead twin brother, abandoned by her adopted parents, isolated from other kids and trained to be a weapon of war by the government, betrayed and then hunted by her superiors, living on the streets for years, forced to give her mother a Mercy Kill after finally meeting her, and seeing her father figure lose his mind over his family's death and attempt to cause The End Of World As We Know It out of grief. At many points during her story, you just want to hug Jodie.
    • Norah Gray, Jodie and Aiden's mother. She was a psychic who was put through experiments similar to Jodie, except she didn't have anyone as kind as Nathan or Cole to look out for her, she was made to get pregnant by another psychic, and to top it all off, her son was stillborn and her daughter was taken away from her. She's then put into a permanent coma by the CIA, and spends the next twenty odd years being tormented by dark spirits she can't get away from. Depending on the player, she can either be Mercy Killed by Aiden or left alone to be in a comatose state forever.
    • Susan Holmes, Jodie's foster mother. Unlike her Jerkass husband, she cares deeply for Jodie and does her best to look after her in spite of Aiden causing trouble for the family due to his overprotective nature. An optional scene from a photograph in her shoebox reveals a memory that her biological child had passed away shortly after birth, before she had adopted Jodie. Later on, Susan is forced to give Jodie up to the DPA under the care of Nathan and Cole, losing yet another child in the process.

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