It’s rather apt that a game from Quantic Dream was showcased at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival over the weekend. While the appearance of a video game isn’t unprecedented at the event – L.A. Noire was a participant two years ago – it still conveys the type of experience that the studio has created. Quantic Dream have an esteemed background in creating cinematic games that challenge the medium’s conventions and their latest title, Beyond Two Souls, looks set to carry that torch on its October release. At the festival, David Cage, who plays a key role at the company, also revealed that the game’s narrative will span approximately 10 hours.
It’s worth keeping in mind that this video contains a horde of spoilers for the opening segment of the game. So, if you want to keep the story under wraps for yourself, avert your eyes!
As you can immediately tell, Beyond Two Souls is much, much more than what its action-adventure label would have you believe. When you consider that this is from the same creative mind that brought us games such as Indigo Prophecy (Fahrenheit) and Heavy Rain, it qualifies the level of excitement building for Quantic Dream’s latest. Charting the mysterious story of a young girl called Jodie, Beyond Two Souls centres around her supernatural relationship with an ethereal being named Aiden and her peculiar journey of reconciliation.
But what elevates the game above its comparable competition in the genre, and also blurs the line between video game and movie experience, is the intrinsic level of quality. Beyond Two Souls stars Ellen Page as the troubled Jodie alongside William Dafoe, who will play her long-term psychiatrist/surrogate father Nathan Dawkins. The fact that the studio was able to attract two Oscar nominees into the arena of performance capture conveys the calibre behind the game’s production. Plus, if the above footage is anything to go by, Beyond Two Souls looks to ask serious existential questions about life and death while concurrently pushing the narrative boundaries for video games as a medium.
Beyond Two Souls will debut exclusively on PS3 October 8th. In order to whet your appetite, though, check out the latest trailer below and be sure to let us know whether this qualifies as a day one purchase in the comments.
