E3 2012: Quantic Dream’s “Beyond” for PlayStation 3

During yesterday’s Sony press conference, there weren’t too many big revelations—though we did learn about some pretty awesome naval warfare in Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed III, not to mention cross-pollination between the PS3 and Vita versions of the game. You can check out my live-bloggery of the conference right here.

But right at the outset, Sony and Quantic Dream did lift the veil on the developer’s new, PS3 exclusive game, Beyond: Two Souls. The demo that was played didn’t show any gameplay that I could tell, but we did get very, very impressive real-time cutscenes featuring the game’s lead character, Jodie Holmes, and her ghost buddy who threw a cup of coffee at a wall.

It turns out that Jodie is played by Oscar nominee Ellen Page, and the resemblance in striking. Quantic Dream managed to get her and everyone else’s performances via some fancy motion capture tech that I’m sure will knock all our socks off when we see the finished product. Though, as eerie as the demo was, we didn’t get to see Jodie do a whole lot for much of it…she spent the majority of the footage sitting in a chair and staring straight ahead.

The game will focus on fifteen years’ worth of Jodie’s life and the struggles she encounters because of her ability to communicate with the other side. A post on Eurogamer notes that Quantic Dream has announced that the game is strictly single-player and offline, and that it’s being billed as an “interactive drama.” Beyond is set for a fiscal Q4 launch, meaning around the late winter/early spring of 2013.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think that Beyond is going to sell too many more consoles—that’s what God of War: Ascension and Last of Us are going to do. But as far as getting high critical praise? This game is going to go above…AND BEYOND. (ZING!)

Via Eurogamer