Emotion! Beyond: Two Souls has Willem Dafoe in it!

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

With the casting of Willem Dafoe and the deadpan delivery of Ellen Page, David Cage and Quantic Dream will finally deliver us true emotions in games unlike garbage like Telltale's The Walking Dead. This will be PS3's swan song for sure!

Nevermind - not enough polygons for there to be real emotion here.

[Malacite]

Re: Emotion! Beyond: Two Souls has Willem Dafoe in it!

Well, seeing as I loved Heavy Rain (despite its flaws) and I was planning on getting this game at some point, this is just icing on the cake.

[Firewind]

Re: Emotion! Beyond: Two Souls has Willem Dafoe in it!

Despite its flaws I had a lot of fun with Heavy Rain. Looking forward to this.

[Armando]

Re: Emotion! Beyond: Two Souls has Willem Dafoe in it!

Nevermind - not enough polygons for there to be real emotion here.

Are you referencing this article?

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Emotion! Beyond: Two Souls has Willem Dafoe in it!

Nah, there were plenty of pieces written in response to Cage's comments, based of variants of this video

Emotion has been done and done well in gaming for decades. Its never been a matter of graphics or technical prowess using them, but good writing and good game design communicating it to the player. Link has been fairly emotive since Wind Waker, enough to give us a sense of how he feels without robbing our agency over him by making him speak. Portal does it by injecting little bits of melancholy when you see the scawlings of broken minds on the walls, which serves to give some weight to the world amidst the snark. Persona 4 does it by making Inaba feel like a small rural town you've always known, filled with friends and relatives you want to be around.

It goes even further back, but these things are lost on David Cage because he's an aspiring film writer and director that went into video games because he knew he couldn't hack it in film.

Also any time someone says they liked Heavy Raid "despite its flaws," I've started to enjoy posting the QTE-driven sex scene.

NSFW, obviously.

Yes, I've killed a man, my son is missing, my other son's killer is on the loose and I just recently lost part of my pinky - let's have sex, that will show people my priorities. And we'll just do it around the bed because bedsheet technology has not advanced far enough yet.

As awkward as ME sex scenes can be, they have the dignity to be short and sweet.

Cage's creativity isn't limited by technology, but his own lack of talent in writing. All the technical prowess and flashy tech doesn't mean anything if you can't make people care with your writing. I'd say about half the people that played Heavy Rain liked the story and the other half just MST3K it for the rest of us.

[Yellow Mage]

Re: Emotion! Beyond: Two Souls has Willem Dafoe in it!

Emotion has been done and done well in gaming for decades. Its never been a matter of graphics or technical prowess using them, but good writing and good game design communicating it to the player.

Not sure if this can be emphasized well enough.

Emotion has been done and done well in gaming for decades. Its never been a matter of graphics or technical prowess using them, but good writing and good game design communicating it to the player.

That's better.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Emotion! Beyond: Two Souls has Willem Dafoe in it!

Well, I'll at least give them this - the trailers with the actors are better than the one for AMC's The Walking Dead (Merlindurl, what more could you want?).

Dunno about Telltale's The Walking Dead, though. That game pretty much succeeded everywhere Heavy Rain failed.

I don't know if the trailer will sell gamers on Beyond, because dynamic choices aren't new but its obviously new and mind-blowing to Willem Dafoe because he doesn't play video games.

[Malacite]

Re: Emotion! Beyond: Two Souls has Willem Dafoe in it!

Hmm, even Walking Dead has some major faults to it though. But overall yes, it was much better done. I love Quantic Dream's style, just wish they'd get better writers.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Emotion! Beyond: Two Souls has Willem Dafoe in it!

TT's TWD had some technical problems and game save issues, but in terms of writing a competent, mature story with believable characters that puts TWD light years ahead of anything Quantic Dream has produced.

When you look back at David Cage's little speech at the PS4 press event, you see a man who is kind of fucked up in the same wayt Peter Molyneux is. The difference being David Cage blames technology and Molyneux blames himself for failing to meet his own hype. In reality, one person just lacks the talent while the other's mouth writes checks his production times and costs can't cash. Quantic Dream has the technical talent, but with a film buff that writes bad fan fiction at the helm.

Lots of video games have bad writing, but this can be masked by not going too far out of your own depth. The simple axiom of writing what you know. That's Cage's problem - he write stuff he doesn't know shit about. There's only so much actors like Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe could do to salvage the script they've been given if Cage goes out of his depth again and the E3 trailer and the Kara tech demo both went off-rails within minutes.

[Malacite]

Re: Emotion! Beyond: Two Souls has Willem Dafoe in it!

Going to have to disagree with you.

Aside from the characters derping really, really hard at points (missing obvious shit or just doing things so mind-bogglingly stupid...) Kenny in particular breaks things too much. Even if you side with him 100%, he STILL yells at you and mistrusts you and is just a general piece of shit and that's just nonsense. Like I said before, your decisions in that game are sadly largely cosmetic.

I did still love the game and it was my pick for GotY, but there was plenty to criticize outside of the bugs. And we all know how much you hated Heavy Rain so.... (again, not that it was perfect either - lots of screw ups in that game too, but I loved the presentation.)

[Icemage]

Re: Emotion! Beyond: Two Souls has Willem Dafoe in it!

I think the difference between TT's The Walking Dead and Heavy Rain is that TWD is very, very good at fooling you into thinking you have control over the story, but "all roads lead to Rome". That's a testament to excellent writing and good dialogue.

Heavy Rain actually DOES give you control over the story. The endings play out very, very differently depending on what you choose to do, and how successful you are at trying to do so. Its weakness is in some derpy storyline branches and some really awkward animations.

Also: Heavy Rain's few but intense action sequences are some of the best QTE-based gameplay I've ever seen. The car chase scene is simply stellar, and if you don't agree you have no soul.


Icemage

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Emotion! Beyond: Two Souls has Willem Dafoe in it!

TT also has the advantage of years upon years in the Adventure genre, some of its staff being around since the early Lucasarts years. They practically defined the genre Cage claimed he created after making Heavy Rain, so I'm more than happy to see TT winning all the awards and people saying TWD is better than HR. In a time where AAA games could have dominated GOTY it was TWD and The Journey that walked away with the spoils.

I couldn't be happier about seeing that. After that Dishonored walking away with what awards it did made me happy as well, though i think Xenoblade got robbed in many RPG categories.

Praise aside for TWD - I still want QTEs to die. If Shenmue III ever happens, I'll let it slide for that one game and Dragon's Lair/Space Ace reissues, but aside from that, QTEs should die.

[Malacite]

Re: Emotion! Beyond: Two Souls has Willem Dafoe in it!

I'm not so sure they need to go away entirely, just be used more intelligently and/or sparingly.

Less Asura's Wrath, more... well I guess God of War? Can't think of anything off the top of my head that does QTE's extremely well or at least not just for the sake of having them. Actually even GoW could trim it down a bit (like with the chests...)