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[NoMoreTrolls]

Sometimes I feel that there are only a tiny handful of us on here that can manage the sentiment "hmm, I didn't care for this" rather than the always-popular "this shouldn't even exist and the creators should feel bad and lose their jobs".

I can't stand Bayonetta. At all. Know what I don't do? Shit up Bayonetta threads. I even recognize that the game is probably even good, just not for me.

Franknbeans- they might be too big to download. I bet both games are 40-50 GB easy.

Thank you for this post. I've said this kind of thing in several threads, but typing on my phone is slow.

Beyond was decent, but I liked HR better. Luckily, once I had finished it, I was able to trade it in to Best Buy for $50 with their 100% extra credit deal. Who can complain about getting a new game for $10!

And God damn at that elitist bullshit from aeolist. I hope that that's what got him/her banned. What an awful way to look at things.

 

[TheGuardian]

Finished Beyond today and I loved it. Really nice experience and I'm looking forward to whatever Quantic Dream makes on PS4.

 

[TouchMyBox]

Cool, now put it on PSN.

 

[waggabond]

70 088 @Beyond2SoulsPS3 sold in France alone in 2013 (source: GFK). In fact, that's better than Heavy Rain in it's first 12 weeks on shelves

Good, just don't expect B2S to become a cult classic like Heavy Rain and sell more later on, because it won't happen.

Prior to Heavy Rain there was nothing, and Heavy Rain was a great game that set high expectations, where Beyond: 2 Souls failed to meet expectations set by Heavy Rain, it has nothing of its own to show for.

It's like Blizzard congratulating themselves for the big sales numbers on that shitty pile of garbage game they erroneously named Diablo 3, when everyone knows the sales were mainly due to Diablo 2 fame.

Diablo 4 won't sell nearly as high, nor will D3 expansions.

 

[NoMoreTrolls]

Good, just don't expect B2S to become a cult classic like Heavy Rain and sell more later on, because it won't happen.

Prior to Heavy Rain there was nothing, and Heavy Rain was a great game that set high expectations, where Beyond: 2 Souls failed to meet expectations set by Heavy Rain, it has nothing of its own to show for.

It's like Blizzard congratulating themselves for the big sales numbers on that shitty pile of garbage game they erroneously named Diablo 3, when everyone knows the sales were mainly due to Diablo 2 fame.

Diablo 4 won't sell nearly as high, nor will D3 expansions.

Saving this for March.

 

[IconGrist]

I enjoyed Beyond quite a bit. I can understand why someone wouldn't though. Either way congrats to the team. Very much look forward to their PS4 offering.

 

[bigboss370]

thank god.

I bought the game Day 1.

I don't think it was worth a full priced purchase, and there were some flaws in gameplay and narrative pacing/presentation. Heavy Rain was more enjoyable imo.

But I think its important Quantic Dream keep making these kinds of games, because they are refreshing gameplay wise, impressive on a technical level, and they are different from most other games with that they try narratively. So I wish QD success.

Immensely looking forward to what they cook up on PS4.

 

[NeoGash]

I don't know why Telltale Games gets a free pass while everyone rags on Quantic Dream.
I believe it's mostly because Telltale's stories and characters are incredibly strong

I don't know why Halo gets a free pass either, while everyone rags on Aliens: Colonial Marines.
It *might* be because Halo isn't a complete and utter piece of fucking shit, but I could be wrong, who knows?

 

[Rogue_Ledr]

Surprisingly I bought Heavy Rain, but not this deal.

Glad to see it still sold amply.

 

[seady]

Selling 1 million worldwide nowadays is not such difficult task anymore. Especially we are at the end of a generation where the user base is at its peak.

 

[NoMoreTrolls]

I don't know why Halo gets a free pass either, while everyone rags on Aliens: Colonial Marines.
It *might* be because Halo isn't a complete and utter piece of fucking shit, but I could be wrong, who knows?

Opinions, how do they work?

 

[NeoGash]

Opinions, how do they work?

My point was that he answered his own question. Telltale and Quantic Dream both make similar story experiences with basically zero gameplay, which is alright, as we are playing for the story. Only one of these companies has been making quality stories this generation. I'll let the people decide (or admit, rather).

EDIT: Yeah I should clarify with my first comment; I don't think Quantic Dream's games are bad, but in the example of Halo and CM, CM was a piece of crap (both sci-fi FPS games). The reason a lot of people like Telltale is because the writing is good, whereas QD have been sketchy in the past. Their games are still great experiences though and can be preferred over TT's games, just that it shouldn't come as a surprise that some people can praise Telltale whilst simultaneously disliking Quantic's games.

 

[Ramirez]

Any chance of this on PS4? I sold my PS3, but I loved Heavy Rain, one of my favorites from the past gen.

 

[RELIGHT]

So they went platinum. Nice.

 

[Acquiescence]

1 million copies in the span of, what, 4 months? That's a lot better than I expected, judging from various chart statistics. I'm glad for QD, but I hope they step up their game with their next project, because for me and many others out there, Beyond was an unmitigated disappointment after Heavy Rain. I don't want to see them drop the ball again with whatever's planned for the PS4.

 

[dakun]

loved Beyond and all their games before that.. this is a big "suck it" for all those "gamers" who question the right of QD's games to exist as a game.. there is an audience for these kind of games and this shows it.

1 million is really good for a niche game like Beyond.. gives me hope that Quantic Dream will have a long lasting partnership with Sony.. It's the perfect place for a creative team like Quantic Dream to be at..

look forward to their next game.

 

[Occam]

Excellent, I hope it continues to sell long enough to make a profit. The world of video games is richer for having games like Beyond in it, and I applaud Sony for continuing to fund Quantic Dream's projects. Can't wait to see what they'll do on PS4.

 

[brickarts295]

Anyone know the budget of the game?

 

[Aquamarine]

Anyone know the budget of the game?

$27 million, not including marketing costs.

1 million sold-through * $34 on average goes to Sony from a $60 sale = $34 million for Sony.

 

[Jerkapotamus]

I liked parts of Beyond. The Homeless and Native American chapters stuck out to me as being the most interesting. Overall, I didn't like how much it made me feel like I was just along for the ride, performing button presses when necessary to move the story along on its fairly linear path. Heavy Rain, while not completely free of this problem, did a better job of presenting choices that seemed to matter throughout the story. I hoped Beyond would do a better job in that regard, but it seemed David Cage had a reasonably specific story he wanted to tell, so it felt like a step back to me.

Glad it still sold well enough so that Quantic Dream can keep making games. Someone should be working in the area that they are. I hope I enjoy their next venture more.

 

[Wynnebeck]

That's great, hope the games continue to do well despite some people wanting genres they don't like to go away.

.

 

[Josephl64]

The story could have been better, but this is good news. I dream of the day that they hire a crime novelist for the script, but it was an experience worth having nonetheless

 

[brickarts295]

$27 million, not including marketing costs.

1 million sold-through * $34 on average goes to Sony from a $60 sale = $34 million for Sony.

And you even did the math for me thanks XD. But yeah not bad for QD.

 

[highoffcoffee496]

Glad it sold well; I made my sister and cousins play it and they loved it!

I do think it was inferior to Heavy Rain though; regardless I look forward to their next project

 

[MercuryLS]

I'll eventually play this on PSNow, but I really don't like these types of "cinematic" games that put story over gameplay. Especially ones with weird stories, stilted acting and weird uncanny valley faces.

Quantic Dream is really overrated and I wish Sony would just cut ties with these guys and spend their money elsewhere (like buying RAD).

 

[Stumpokapow]

I believe Beyond corrects many of the major mistakes made in Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain, and it does this largely by substantially improving the quality of the writing, scenarios, and characterization.

The most major evidence of the quality of the writing being improved is the fact that it is written in English. Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain are filled with ESLisms or awkward translations. Y2Kev has mentioned it before, but one of the most baffling in Heavy Rain is when a garbage dump is called a "wasteland". It comes through in pretty much every sentence. It's especially bad in Heavy Rain because the actors chosen are clearly not native English speakers and virtually every performance is poorly directed and contains heavy accenting or awkward pronunciations. This is not the case in Beyond. There's definitely an argument to be made that some of the subject matter was trite, but the dialogue at least has a relatively natural quality to it and the performances, even the ones by supporting characters, appear to be English-speaking actors with an English voice director being given appropriate feedback.

The second biggest fix is, compared to Heavy Rain, Beyond appears to have not had as much cut content and as a result the story flows from beginning to end much better than Heavy Rain. Very major things were removed from Heavy Rain. Major components of Madison's and Ethan's plotlines, actually. So there are things in the game that don't really make sense and are evidence of those things left over. As well, the central reveal associated with Shelby is generally considered to have been handled poorly. Nothing like this happens in Beyond. Probably the weakest overarching element of Beyond's plotting is the connection between Jodie and Ryan, which seems a little forced in the finished product. But this is definitely a minor issue as compared to Heavy Rain. I'd also add that several endings emphasize the importance of Zoey in a way that the game probably doesn't support--whether this is intended to be a tease or is a result of cut content is unclear. But this isn't leading to people saying "The game's story doesn't make sense".

As a result, I feel Beyond comes closer than ever to achieving the goal that David Cage set out for it. I think that's what makes the game a pretty unqualified success on its stated goals. As a matter of personal appeal, I think I liked Beyond's story more than Heavy Rain's. I do enjoy crime stories, and I thought Heavy Rain's musings on family were occasionally interesting, but I think Beyond was a more personal, contemplative story. I am surprised that the sort of audience that likes art-games, personal games, emancipatory games that try to tell personal or human stories did not like Beyond more. I thought it did a fairly good job of establishing the trajectory of a life, I thought characterization was fairly good, I thought it was able to achieve genuine emotion in parts without being too maudlin. Now, some people don't like experience games, because they're looking for more skill-driven, score-attack type gameplay, and I think that's a valid approach to games and if you're someone who likes shmups or fighters it's pretty obvious that David Cage is not really making games tailored to you. But within the confines of the kind of games it's competing against, the sorts of similar experiences, I think it's a success. A strong success.

From the non-story, gameplay side of things, I think Heavy Rain substantially corrected the major issues with Indigo Prophecy. Indigo Prophecy had very lengthy scenes of mashing Simon Says QTEs. Heavy Rain corrects this by shortening the length of action scenes and by remapping controls to make more sense contextually, so that the action on the screen reflects the buttons you're being asked to press. This makes the scenes far more enjoyable in a big way, especially scenes that have you almost playing twister with your hands. Indigo Prophecy had frequent permanent fail states attached to QTEs, where if you pressed the wrong button, you game-overed. Combined with the length of these scene, this was very frustrating. Heavy Rain fixes it by threading in failure into the narrative and making it add some elements of diversity to the story in terms of how it plays out. This makes failure feel more deserved and reasonable, giving the game a level of challenge without the frustration of having to repeat a rote and boring section.

I can't say that Beyond builds on these improvements, and ultimately I actually think the stick-dodging is weaker for action scenes than Heavy Rain's button prompts. I think it's weaker because it's difficult to ascertain the direction of movement sometimes (IE Jodie is dodging left but moving her arms right, or she's sort of dodging in two directions). Also there are fewer story junctions where failure has long-term ramifications or causes the player to miss scenes, so it's a little less rewarding.

In summary CAEG IS BAD RITER WER DA GAMEPLAY I HOPE QD GO BUNK RAPT NON GAME LOL GO BACK TO CEL PHON

 

[Dunkers92]

Almost finished it and its been really good. Glad it sold well. Personally, I prefer it to Heavy Rain

 

[Kinyou]

I would love to see him outsource some decent Hollywood writers I wont lie.

Afaik is he getting some for his next project. I just hope he'll let them actually write stuff.

 

[omonimo]

Selling 1 million worldwide nowadays is not such difficult task anymore. Especially we are at the end of a generation where the user base is at its peak.

Wait, you are serious? Good Lord. People never stop to surprise me.

 

[NoMoreTrolls]

I believe Beyond corrects many of the major mistakes made in Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain, and it does this largely by substantially improving the quality of the writing, scenarios, and characterization.

The most major evidence of the quality of the writing being improved is the fact that it is written in English. Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain are filled with ESLisms or awkward translations. Y2Kev has mentioned it before, but one of the most baffling in Heavy Rain is when a garbage dump is called a "wasteland". It comes through in pretty much every sentence. It's especially bad in Heavy Rain because the actors chosen are clearly not native English speakers and virtually every performance is poorly directed and contains heavy accenting or awkward pronunciations. This is not the case in Beyond. There's definitely an argument to be made that some of the subject matter was trite, but the dialogue at least has a relatively natural quality to it and the performances, even the ones by supporting characters, appear to be English-speaking actors with an English voice director being given appropriate feedback.

The second biggest fix is, compared to Heavy Rain, Beyond appears to have not had as much cut content and as a result the story flows from beginning to end much better than Heavy Rain. Very major things were removed from Heavy Rain. Major components of Madison's and Ethan's plotlines, actually. So there are things in the game that don't really make sense and are evidence of those things left over. As well, the central reveal associated with Shelby is generally considered to have been handled poorly. Nothing like this happens in Beyond. Probably the weakest overarching element of Beyond's plotting is the connection between Jodie and Ryan, which seems a little forced in the finished product. But this is definitely a minor issue as compared to Heavy Rain. I'd also add that several endings emphasize the importance of Zoey in a way that the game probably doesn't support--whether this is intended to be a tease or is a result of cut content is unclear. But this isn't leading to people saying "The game's story doesn't make sense".

As a result, I feel Beyond comes closer than ever to achieving the goal that David Cage set out for it. I think that's what makes the game a pretty unqualified success on its stated goals. As a matter of personal appeal, I think I liked Beyond's story more than Heavy Rain's. I do enjoy crime stories, and I thought Heavy Rain's musings on family were occasionally interesting, but I think Beyond was a more personal, contemplative story. I am surprised that the sort of audience that likes art-games, personal games, emancipatory games that try to tell personal or human stories did not like Beyond more. I thought it did a fairly good job of establishing the trajectory of a life, I thought characterization was fairly good, I thought it was able to achieve genuine emotion in parts without being too maudlin. Now, some people don't like experience games, because they're looking for more skill-driven, score-attack type gameplay, and I think that's a valid approach to games and if you're someone who likes shmups or fighters it's pretty obvious that David Cage is not really making games tailored to you. But within the confines of the kind of games it's competing against, the sorts of similar experiences, I think it's a success. A strong success.

From the non-story, gameplay side of things, I think Heavy Rain substantially corrected the major issues with Indigo Prophecy. Indigo Prophecy had very lengthy scenes of mashing Simon Says QTEs. Heavy Rain corrects this by shortening the length of action scenes and by remapping controls to make more sense contextually, so that the action on the screen reflects the buttons you're being asked to press. This makes the scenes far more enjoyable in a big way, especially scenes that have you almost playing twister with your hands. Indigo Prophecy had frequent permanent fail states attached to QTEs, where if you pressed the wrong button, you game-overed. Combined with the length of these scene, this was very frustrating. Heavy Rain fixes it by threading in failure into the narrative and making it add some elements of diversity to the story in terms of how it plays out. This makes failure feel more deserved and reasonable, giving the game a level of challenge without the frustration of having to repeat a rote and boring section.

I can't say that Beyond builds on these improvements, and ultimately I actually think the stick-dodging is weaker for action scenes than Heavy Rain's button prompts. I think it's weaker because it's difficult to ascertain the direction of movement sometimes (IE Jodie is dodging left but moving her arms right, or she's sort of dodging in two directions). Also there are fewer story junctions where failure has long-term ramifications or causes the player to miss scenes, so it's a little less rewarding.

In summary CAEG IS BAD RITER WER DA GAMEPLAY I HOPE QD GO BUNK RAPT NON GAME LOL GO BACK TO CEL PHON

Citizenkane.gif

Great post.

 

[Carl]

I'll eventually play this on PSNow, but I really don't like these types of "cinematic" games that put story over gameplay. Especially ones with weird stories, stilted acting and weird uncanny valley faces.

Quantic Dream is really overrated and I wish Sony would just cut ties with these guys and spend their money elsewhere (like buying RAD).

So because you don't like their games, you think no one else should get to play them either. Okay.

 

[MWS Natural]

Great news, one of my underrated games on GAF. Gets way more hate than it should.

 

[Waldo Lydecker]

Well deserved. Really an excellent game. Beautiful graphics, tense and gripping story and atmosphere and very good acting from Page.

Although I feel that the fact it wasn't for sale on PSN did harm the overall sales.

Maybe Heavy Rain and Beyond can't be played from HDD only, I don't know. But I would love a PSN bundle with Heavy Rain, Beyond and Fahrenheit as a PS2 classic.

 

[CMojicaAce]

Loved this game. Would have been Top 5 for me last year had Tearaway not come at the last minute and pushed it to 6. Glad it didn't tank.

 

[ComputerMKII]

I believe Beyond corrects many of the major mistakes made in Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain, and it does this largely by substantially improving the quality of the writing, scenarios, and characterization.

The most major evidence of the quality of the writing being improved is the fact that it is written in English. Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain are filled with ESLisms or awkward translations. Y2Kev has mentioned it before, but one of the most baffling in Heavy Rain is when a garbage dump is called a "wasteland". It comes through in pretty much every sentence. It's especially bad in Heavy Rain because the actors chosen are clearly not native English speakers and virtually every performance is poorly directed and contains heavy accenting or awkward pronunciations. This is not the case in Beyond. There's definitely an argument to be made that some of the subject matter was trite, but the dialogue at least has a relatively natural quality to it and the performances, even the ones by supporting characters, appear to be English-speaking actors with an English voice director being given appropriate feedback.

The second biggest fix is, compared to Heavy Rain, Beyond appears to have not had as much cut content and as a result the story flows from beginning to end much better than Heavy Rain. Very major things were removed from Heavy Rain. Major components of Madison's and Ethan's plotlines, actually. So there are things in the game that don't really make sense and are evidence of those things left over. As well, the central reveal associated with Shelby is generally considered to have been handled poorly. Nothing like this happens in Beyond. Probably the weakest overarching element of Beyond's plotting is the connection between Jodie and Ryan, which seems a little forced in the finished product. But this is definitely a minor issue as compared to Heavy Rain. I'd also add that several endings emphasize the importance of Zoey in a way that the game probably doesn't support--whether this is intended to be a tease or is a result of cut content is unclear. But this isn't leading to people saying "The game's story doesn't make sense".

As a result, I feel Beyond comes closer than ever to achieving the goal that David Cage set out for it. I think that's what makes the game a pretty unqualified success on its stated goals. As a matter of personal appeal, I think I liked Beyond's story more than Heavy Rain's. I do enjoy crime stories, and I thought Heavy Rain's musings on family were occasionally interesting, but I think Beyond was a more personal, contemplative story. I am surprised that the sort of audience that likes art-games, personal games, emancipatory games that try to tell personal or human stories did not like Beyond more. I thought it did a fairly good job of establishing the trajectory of a life, I thought characterization was fairly good, I thought it was able to achieve genuine emotion in parts without being too maudlin. Now, some people don't like experience games, because they're looking for more skill-driven, score-attack type gameplay, and I think that's a valid approach to games and if you're someone who likes shmups or fighters it's pretty obvious that David Cage is not really making games tailored to you. But within the confines of the kind of games it's competing against, the sorts of similar experiences, I think it's a success. A strong success.

From the non-story, gameplay side of things, I think Heavy Rain substantially corrected the major issues with Indigo Prophecy. Indigo Prophecy had very lengthy scenes of mashing Simon Says QTEs. Heavy Rain corrects this by shortening the length of action scenes and by remapping controls to make more sense contextually, so that the action on the screen reflects the buttons you're being asked to press. This makes the scenes far more enjoyable in a big way, especially scenes that have you almost playing twister with your hands. Indigo Prophecy had frequent permanent fail states attached to QTEs, where if you pressed the wrong button, you game-overed. Combined with the length of these scene, this was very frustrating. Heavy Rain fixes it by threading in failure into the narrative and making it add some elements of diversity to the story in terms of how it plays out. This makes failure feel more deserved and reasonable, giving the game a level of challenge without the frustration of having to repeat a rote and boring section.

I can't say that Beyond builds on these improvements, and ultimately I actually think the stick-dodging is weaker for action scenes than Heavy Rain's button prompts. I think it's weaker because it's difficult to ascertain the direction of movement sometimes (IE Jodie is dodging left but moving her arms right, or she's sort of dodging in two directions). Also there are fewer story junctions where failure has long-term ramifications or causes the player to miss scenes, so it's a little less rewarding.

In summary CAEG IS BAD RITER WER DA GAMEPLAY I HOPE QD GO BUNK RAPT NON GAME LOL GO BACK TO CEL PHON

Good post. About the bolded, I consider myself 100% part of that audience yet I really liked Beyond.

 

[Interfectum]

Great news, one of my underrated games on GAF. Gets way more hate than it should.

It gets a lot of bizarre, irrational hate. A lot of these Beyond threads have personal attacks against Cage and wishing failure on both the game and the developer.

 

[MercuryLS]

So because you don't like their games, you think no one else should get to play them either. Okay.

I didn't say that, I jus think Sony could choose a better studio and projects to fund in the future.

 

[ScriptedReality]

Definitely not the game for me. I played heavy rain and liked it though. I hope this game sells more. MORE games is always nice.

 

[neoemonk]

Rented it from Redbox to see if it was worth a purchase and it became the game that finally killed my Blu Ray drive. The PS3 is digital only from here on out.

 

[KillerMan91]

Selling 1 million worldwide nowadays is not such difficult task anymore. Especially we are at the end of a generation where the user base is at its peak.

It really isn't that simple. PS3 software sales will be down yoy this year compared to last year (or year before that). Active userbase hasn't grown in ages.

 

[RoboPlato]

I believe Beyond corrects many of the major mistakes made in Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain, and it does this largely by substantially improving the quality of the writing, scenarios, and characterization.

The most major evidence of the quality of the writing being improved is the fact that it is written in English. Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain are filled with ESLisms or awkward translations. Y2Kev has mentioned it before, but one of the most baffling in Heavy Rain is when a garbage dump is called a "wasteland". It comes through in pretty much every sentence. It's especially bad in Heavy Rain because the actors chosen are clearly not native English speakers and virtually every performance is poorly directed and contains heavy accenting or awkward pronunciations. This is not the case in Beyond. There's definitely an argument to be made that some of the subject matter was trite, but the dialogue at least has a relatively natural quality to it and the performances, even the ones by supporting characters, appear to be English-speaking actors with an English voice director being given appropriate feedback.

The second biggest fix is, compared to Heavy Rain, Beyond appears to have not had as much cut content and as a result the story flows from beginning to end much better than Heavy Rain. Very major things were removed from Heavy Rain. Major components of Madison's and Ethan's plotlines, actually. So there are things in the game that don't really make sense and are evidence of those things left over. As well, the central reveal associated with Shelby is generally considered to have been handled poorly. Nothing like this happens in Beyond. Probably the weakest overarching element of Beyond's plotting is the connection between Jodie and Ryan, which seems a little forced in the finished product. But this is definitely a minor issue as compared to Heavy Rain. I'd also add that several endings emphasize the importance of Zoey in a way that the game probably doesn't support--whether this is intended to be a tease or is a result of cut content is unclear. But this isn't leading to people saying "The game's story doesn't make sense".

As a result, I feel Beyond comes closer than ever to achieving the goal that David Cage set out for it. I think that's what makes the game a pretty unqualified success on its stated goals. As a matter of personal appeal, I think I liked Beyond's story more than Heavy Rain's. I do enjoy crime stories, and I thought Heavy Rain's musings on family were occasionally interesting, but I think Beyond was a more personal, contemplative story. I am surprised that the sort of audience that likes art-games, personal games, emancipatory games that try to tell personal or human stories did not like Beyond more. I thought it did a fairly good job of establishing the trajectory of a life, I thought characterization was fairly good, I thought it was able to achieve genuine emotion in parts without being too maudlin. Now, some people don't like experience games, because they're looking for more skill-driven, score-attack type gameplay, and I think that's a valid approach to games and if you're someone who likes shmups or fighters it's pretty obvious that David Cage is not really making games tailored to you. But within the confines of the kind of games it's competing against, the sorts of similar experiences, I think it's a success. A strong success.

From the non-story, gameplay side of things, I think Heavy Rain substantially corrected the major issues with Indigo Prophecy. Indigo Prophecy had very lengthy scenes of mashing Simon Says QTEs. Heavy Rain corrects this by shortening the length of action scenes and by remapping controls to make more sense contextually, so that the action on the screen reflects the buttons you're being asked to press. This makes the scenes far more enjoyable in a big way, especially scenes that have you almost playing twister with your hands. Indigo Prophecy had frequent permanent fail states attached to QTEs, where if you pressed the wrong button, you game-overed. Combined with the length of these scene, this was very frustrating. Heavy Rain fixes it by threading in failure into the narrative and making it add some elements of diversity to the story in terms of how it plays out. This makes failure feel more deserved and reasonable, giving the game a level of challenge without the frustration of having to repeat a rote and boring section.

I can't say that Beyond builds on these improvements, and ultimately I actually think the stick-dodging is weaker for action scenes than Heavy Rain's button prompts. I think it's weaker because it's difficult to ascertain the direction of movement sometimes (IE Jodie is dodging left but moving her arms right, or she's sort of dodging in two directions). Also there are fewer story junctions where failure has long-term ramifications or causes the player to miss scenes, so it's a little less rewarding.

In summary CAEG IS BAD RITER WER DA GAMEPLAY I HOPE QD GO BUNK RAPT NON GAME LOL GO BACK TO CEL PHON

Incredible post. 100% spot on

 

[Carl]

I didn't say that, I jus think Sony could choose a better studio and projects to fund in the future.

Are there any other publishers who would back QD though? I struggle to see EA or Acti putting money behind a game like Beyond

 

[Darksol]

I'm all for story based games and enjoyed this a lot. Well done, QD.

 

[Coulomb_Barrier]

May I proffer that Beyond appeals more to a female audience?

My little sister wants the game and said it looks "awesome" and that some of her friends have it.

 

[DR2K]

Another success from QD. Deal with it.

 

[Stumpokapow]

I didn't say that, I jus think Sony could choose a better studio and projects to fund in the future.

It's not a zero sum thing, publishing budgets are extremely elastic. Sony didn't steal money from Psygnosis making Dark Wipeout Souls 2098 so they could fund Quantic Dream. They're funding Quantic Dream specifically because they're doing something different. And it's not clear to me that there are too many teams of a comparable size that would be looking for funding to do something different--you could have probably made the argument for Team Bondi (which Sony did fund!) but they're gone now. I don't think it's as easy as saying that $30 million could fund 60 indie games or whatever, because again I don't think Pub Fund or indie outreach is being negatively impacted.

I guess what I'm saying is, it's okay to point out that you wish Sony was choosing a "better" studio, but unless you really expand on who you think is out there wanting, what you think they'd do with the money, and why you think Sony couldn't fund both Quantic Dream AND that studio to achieve their publishing goals, you're basically just saying "games I don't like shouldn't be made".

Right, like, I don't think Killzone is a particularly good franchise. So, if Sony wasn't funding it and was making some game I really liked, I guess that'd be a net positive for me. But I think the reason why Sony are funding the franchise is because they want a mid-high tier internally owned FPS franchise. I think they've probably given up on "Halo killer" or in contemporary terms "Call of Duty killer", but I think they still want a high profile internal FPS franchise. Killzone 2 had a pretty brutal development, but 3 and Shadowfall appear to have been on time and on budget. So to me, that's an indication that Sony is getting their money worth there, even if the franchise ends up being a loss leader or not hugely profitable overall. I don't think funding Killzone is preventing Sony publishing, like, a fighting game or something. I think if they saw an opportunity and felt a fighting IP would benefit them, they'd do both. So the real question is is there a studio out there who can make an FPS that's going to be more successful or a better strategic fit than Guerrilla or work cheaper or faster or whatever. And I think if Sony saw that opportunity, they'd take it. That's why Sony's racing holdings have consolidated as much as they have, right, because it didn't make sense to fund quite so many racing options.

I also figure that QD has some value for their mocap tech, although it's not clear to me if Sony has access to any of that and/or who QD serves as a client.

May I proffer that Beyond appeals more to a female audience?

I'm not sure it's 100% successful at that, but yeah I just think the basic framing is obvious:

Heavy Rain:
- Crime story
- 3 male leads, one female
- Core plot is a man and his kidnapped son
- Violence is part of the shady world of crime
- Law and order type themes

Beyond:
- Story about a girl's life
- Really only one lead (Defoe's character is QUITE minor compared to Page's, no one should get the assumption it's a double-lead story), and she's female
- Writing emphasizes girl's internal monologue (through conversations with Aidan)
- Ending and ultimate resolution of game centers on emotional perspective of player
- While violence is a part of the game, much of the violence is abhorrent, against the character's nature, and dealt with immediately after with a severe narrative pushback
- Themes mostly include human dignity, identity, service

To compare the two, it seems pretty obvious to me that Beyond has a comparatively more feminine appeal. That's not to essentialize it and say "boys can't wear pink" or whatever, obviously I'm male and it appealed to me. But there's no doubt if you compare Eat, Pray, Love to The Expendables, one targeted women more and one targeted men more, and I think the same thing is true.

There's probably still some male gaze stuff and I don't think Cage writes women as well as he could, but yeah I would agree with your submission.

 

[NullPointer]

Also there are fewer story junctions where failure has long-term ramifications or causes the player to miss scenes, so it's a little less rewarding.

The overall lack of a feeling of consequence took all the wind from my sails.

Especially in those fights when they ask you to dodge, and if you mess up, so what? She stumbles, and its on to the next no-fail QTE as if nothing happened. Such a stark difference from Heavy Rain and the biggest reason that Beyond felt like a "push-button-to-advance" interactive movie more than anything else.

The cover-to-cover stealth sections were the only times I felt in control, or that I was making a choice, and those didn't count for much at all.

So it was far more than just a little less rewarding for me, but great post all the same.

 

[Jerkapotamus]

Are there any other publishers who would back QD though? I struggle to see EA or Acti putting money behind a game like Beyond

Probably not. Heavy Rain has sold about 3 million copies, and that's probably about the highest a QD game would be expected to sell. From the perspective of big publishers, that game would be a failure to them. Platform holders, on the other hand, get the added benefit of diversifying the games available on their platform. Sony can point to Heavy Rain and Beyond as unique experiences only available on their platform.

 

[-Winnie-]

Excellent news! This game deserved to be experienced by as many people as possible, and it bodes well for whatever Quantic Dream make next.

 

[McSpidey]

Awesome, I had a great time with this game.