BEYOND: Two Souls is an upcoming “interactive drama action-adventure” game, exclusively being released for the PlayStation 3. BEYOND: Two Souls stars actors Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe as character and voice models. The game follows 15 years of the life of its protagonist, played by Ellen Page, and deals largely with the philosophical possibilities of what happens after death.
In this today-released gameplay trailer, we see that developers, Quantic Dream placed special emphasis on intuitive player control, hoping that the player won’t have to focus on how to manipulate the character into doing what they want, but rather easily enabling the player to do whatever they want to do in game. A large part of this process is the utilization of the ever-advancing motion capture technology to provide fluid movement and modeling of the characters.
In an additional effort to facilitate as much player-intuitiveness as possible, the developers at Quantic performed specialized user tests, in which they watched their test players go through various aspects of the game (as opposed to reading reports after the fact) and noted for themselves where the players had too much or too little difficulty with certain points. They then adjusted the game’s mechanics accordingly.
If this gameplay trailer is any indication, BEYOND: Two Souls looks to be a passionately crafted experience, which will be truly engrossing for the player.
BEYOND: Two Souls releases for PlayStation 3 in October of 2013.
