But why exactly am I calling the game “a mess”? In the spirit of a few earlier installments of this unofficial series of blog posts, I want to focus on the opening five minutes only – but it should be enough to show where the core problem resides.
Well, okay, if I focused on just these five minutes, it’d be a mighty short blog post, as the game opens up with a very, very long cinematic. So let’s pretend that did not happen and assume the game begins with a playable flashback sequence in which our heroine, Jodie, is eight years old, lives in a military complex, and some people run experiments on her.
I will be describing that sequence in fair detail, but I don’t consider it a spoiler. There are no real twists in that sequence, and there are no revelations or surprises unless you have no idea what Beyond is about.
So let’s talk about the major sin of the opening – and, actually, most of the game – which is…
No, it’s not the fact that the game is an interactive drama with a minimal amount of “true” gameplay. We cannot have that conversation after the greatness that was The Walking Dead, which is 95% cut-scenes.
No, it’s not the linearity of it all. We cannot have that conversation after the greatness that was To the Moon, one of the most linear story-telling games in history.
The real culprit is, then: the lack of Player-Protagonist Sync.
Yeah, it’s a term as graceful as “Ludonarrative Dissonance”, but bear with me for a second here. Also, please remember that everything I write in my blog posts is merely my opinion and my point of view. I don't claim to be 100% right. These blog posts are meant to inspire further discussion and research, not to "inform". Anyway, moving on...
The surprising thing is that, on the surface, the opening minutes are perfect. Here is what happens. You are a little girl with supernatural powers, and you live – but what a sad life that is - in a room somewhere in a military complex. A man comes in and says it’s time for yet another experiment. He goes back to the door and waits for you there.