Those familiar with Quantic’s previous works, most notably Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy, should not expect anything more focused here. In truth, Beyond’s plot would still feel disjointed even if it were told in order. Next to something like Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, this experiment with chronology feels unfocused we are frequently thrust into deeply dramatic scenes that claw at our tear ducts far too early, before we’ve had the chance to fully invest in characters and their circumstances. It gives Beyond a schizophrenic, alienating feeling, and left me constantly trying to catch up with the progression of the narrative. This flitting back and forth across multiple eras of Jodie’s life presents a couple of problems. Her plight is driven by an unwanted tethering to a Poltergeist-like spirit she calls Aiden, whom you can also control depending on the circumstance. Beyond dances between these chapters: Jodie as a little girl, Jodie as a stubborn teen, Jodie as a young woman, Jodie as a little girl again, and so on. Jodie’s story is told in chapters out of chronological order across 15 years of her life. She’s a character wonderfully realized by actress Ellen Page, who proves to be much of Beyond’s saving grace. Unlike Heavy Rain before it, which dipped into silliness but was at least thematically consistent, Beyond’s only consistency is its focus on Jodie Holmes, the game's tragic heroine. Beyond is an opus – a muddy and unfocused one, but an opus – packed with so much plot it feels like Cage has indulged his every whim and want in a single project. Indeed, if there was ever a game that suggested that Cage is a frustrated film director at heart, it’s this one. But Beyond is a game that made me feel too much like a passive participant, which made “playing” it a very confusing and unrewarding experience. This is principally because Beyond: Two Souls takes the vision that writer/creative director David Cage and his team at Quantic Dream have held onto for so long - that interactive drama is the way to make gamers conditioned to meaningless violence feel something in the depths of our brittle souls - to unprecedented extremes. Representatives for Sony Computer Entertainment, and Jeffrey Abrams, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.If you are the type who scrolls down a review to see the score before reading the text, know this first: I have never found assigning a number to a game so difficult. The email thread between Weil and Russell ends there, and we weren't able to find any legal cases in Los Angeles pertaining to Ellen Page, her legal representation, and Sony (or Quantic Dream). It's unclear where the legal action went, if anywhere, after that. The issue was enough for Sony to send takedown notices to websites publishing the images of Ellen Page's naked in-game character. Moreover, he said in one leaked email, "The developer has the responsibility, but that doesn't mean that I won't get sued." Russell said that the game's developer is ultimately culpable for the content of the game, not its publisher, Sony. Responding on February 4, 2014, Russell told Weil he'd, "started to look into this," but would need a few days to get all his facts together. (Sony / Beyond: Two Souls) Ellen Page's character "Jodie" in the video game "Beyond: Two Souls" Here's the "shower scene" from 2013's "Beyond: Two Souls" as it appeared in the normal version game: It was in the informality of a Bet Tzedek board meeting that Abrams first broached the subject of Page's unexpected nudity in "Beyond: Two Souls," according to the emails. Page's lawyer, Jeffrey Abrams, serves on the board of Bet Tzedek, a Los Angeles-based legal group, alongside g eneral counsel of Sony Pictures Entertainment Leah Weil. By the time it got to SCEA, Page's attorney was talking legal action. They've been available online since October 2013, when the game launched.Īccording to the leaked emails, Page's legal team got in touch with Sony, and eventually Sony Computer Entertainment America, the PlayStation arm of Sony. Which is to say, yes, of course, images of a naked Ellen Page from "Beyond: Two Souls" are very much available online. But if "Beyond: Two Souls" is run on what is known as a "debug" PlayStation 3, which is typically available only to game developers and journalists and lets you see content buried in a game's code, players can see Page naked.