Just one quick view of any game trailer in this genre is enough to let you quickly conclude that interactive dramas contain everything that makes a videogame ‘boring’. There’s a lack of continuous action, plenty of moving around and clicking, and a lot of what we would call ‘cutscenes’ in any normal videogame — meaning we would rather cut that scene than listen to that probably plot-changing interaction between two characters. But here again, I am trying to convince you for the second week in a row that Interactive games might just be your thing.
Minutes into the game, Beyond: Two Souls looks like the quintessential Emmy winning TV show – the character actors include Ellen Page and Willem Defoe – they lent their voices and motion capture movements. In fact, the game was even premiered at a Film Festival. Beyond: Two Souls also has an exciting sci-fi beginning which strangely mimics the introduction of Eleven from Stranger Things – which undoubtedly means it is going to get exciting because Telekinesis – it happens because of a really cool concept called Spiritual Tethering. The plot covers the whole range of scenes from being an awkward teenager going on a date to a girl busting out baddies in the shadows.
The narrative is non-linear, like an extreme-Nolan movie. Only, the narrative is made more exciting by the choice-based outcomes. But some might of course, find this no more than disjointed cutscenes jumping between different timelines. The two – or is it one? – major characters in the story can be interchangeably used. In scenes where there is close combat, the gameplay freezes into slow motion, allowing us to use the right fighter controls.
Interactive games will work best for a non-gamer who really likes their thriller TV shows to last longer every episode and detective-analyses the environment for clues on what the next episode holds. Although there are elements which I wonder at it being represented accurately in a non-console environment, along with Detroit Become Human and Heavy Rain – the game's release for the wider PC audience in a few months.