8. The Rubbish Story
Playing Beyond: Two Souls, it became apparent that a certain type of story works better in a QTE game than others. To keep you playing in the absence of gameplay, you need the player to be kept wondering about what is going to happen next. In Walking Dead, the pressure was always on from the zombies and the other people in your group. You wanted to see what happens next and you were invested enough in the story to want the main characters get to safety. In Heavy Rain, the crime drama kept you guessing because you didnt know whom the killer was. You were part of the process to uncover the mystery, which got resolved at the end. In both of these examples, you played the game to find out where the story was going because they were thrilling, there was a sense that the story could go anywhere and you had a goal to work towards. Beyond: Two Souls puts you in the shoes of Jodie and you play various events in her life that take place over 15 years. She has a spirit that she is attached to and it is a burden as much as it helps her in times of crisis. You see her struggle to be a normal child, get shunned by her friends in her teenage years, and become a test subject in a lab. And lets not forget the gap year trip to Somalia where she was a lethal CIA operative. But all these events are just things that happen, you play each sequence to its conclusion and then start the next one. There is no overwhelming story arc to give all these events enough of a context for you to care. Apart from finding out who Aiden is, there is not much else to keep you interested. You expect that there will be some sort of conclusion but the game doesnt give you any drive to make you want to find out. For a game like this, you need a mystery to uncover; helping a girl deal with living with a spirit is not that. It just wasnt very interesting.