Quantic Dream’s Beyond: Two Souls implies at least one thing: there will be more than one soul in this game. Maybe not so many as three, but more than one. During Sony’s press briefing on Monday, the trailer there showed but one of the souls. Now we get a chance to see the other in this twenty-four minute gameplay video.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=UHYUL_gA7pw&w=620]
The start of this video shows the player controlling a spirit on a bus. Ellen Page’s character Jodie is asleep in a seat, apparently having been up for days on end. Floating around the cabin, the ghost character – named Aidan – interacts with various objects and people, surely scaring the poop out of them. When he returns to Jodie, he tries to waken her from her sleep by ghost-lobbing a water bottle towards her. She wakes briefly but shoos him away.
The train comes to a stop at what looks like a small station, and the ghost – being a ghost – flies out of the window to take a look at the scene. The station has several police officers crawling around, and some board the train. The ghost heads back to Jodie and wakes her up again. Knowing that they are looking for her, she runs and the police give chase, ultimately finding their way onto the top of the train in a rainy deluge (these guys sure do like rain).
And that’s about the first seven minutes. There is much more than that, so I would suggest watching. What we have learned, though, is that soul number two is definitely a playable entity in the game, enabling the player to roam where Jodie cannot and learn things she would otherwise be in the dark about. We also see that the same system for interaction from Heavy Rain makes a return while playing Jodie. Icons pop up with different buttons showing a time limit during the action, and if you miss the button or run out of time, bad things happen. When you the ghost-face, it seems you are mostly relegating to certain items you can interact with by charging up your ghost spirit (or something), but you CAN possess dudes, allowing you to create diversions for Jodie. So that’s cool.
Although the video is just footage shot on the floor, the game looks great. I can’t wait to ghost it up with my ghost friend and avoid the law. TAKE THAT JOHNNY LAW.
Beyond: Two Souls will give you a ghost pal in 2013.