Beyond Two Souls

[Jonathan]

Beyond: Two Souls is an interactive drama action-adventure video game for the PlayStation 3 home video game console, created by French game developer Quantic Dream and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. It was released in October 2013. The game features Jodie Holmes, one of two player characters. The other is an incorporeal entity named Aiden: a separate soul linked to Jodie since birth. Jodie, who is portrayed by actress Ellen Page, possesses supernatural powers through her psychic link to Aiden, growing from adolescence to adulthood while learning to control Aiden and the powers they share. Willem Dafoe co-stars as Nathan Dawkins, a researcher in the Department of Paranormal Activity and Jodie's surrogate-father-figure. The actors in the game worked during the year-long project in Quantic Dream's Paris studio to perform on-set voice acting and motion capture acting.

Despite being a video game, Beyond: Two Souls premiered at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival, marking only the second time the film festival recognised a video game. David Cage, writer and director of the game, explained that game development studios should provide "interactive storytelling" that can be played by everyone, including non-gamers. The game received polarized critical reception upon its release. Sales reached over one million copies worldwide by the end of 2013, two months after the game's release. A PlayStation 4 version was released as both a standalone title in November 2015 and in the Quantic Dream Collection with Heavy Rain, in March 2016.

[Jonathan]

While the story is told through nonlinear narrative, this summary is given in chronological order.
Young Jodie Holmes (Caroline Wolfson) lives with her foster parents in an ordinary suburban home. Since birth, Jodie has had a psychic connection with a mysterious entity named Aiden, with whom she can communicate and perform telepathic acts, such as possessing peoples' minds and manipulating certain objects. After an incident with some neighbourhood kids results in Aiden almost killing one of them, Jodie's foster parents seek help to care for her condition, permanently leaving her under the custody of doctors Nathan Dawkins (Willem Dafoe) and Cole Freeman (Kadeem Hardison) of the United States Department of Paranormal Activity.[9]

Under the two doctors' care, Jodie slowly learns to control Aiden and the powers they share. During this time, Nathan and Cole are building the condenser, a portal that connects the world of the living with the world of the dead—the Infraworld. One night, Nathan learns that his wife and daughter were killed in a car accident. While trying to comfort him, Jodie discovers that she can channel spirits of the dead from the Infraworld; she helps the spirits speak to the living through a psychic link created by her physical contact. As the years pass, a teenage Jodie (Ellen Page) seeks her independence, both from the doctors and from Aiden, and tries several times to live a normal life. At each attempt, Aiden intervenes, ending in disaster.[10]

At one point, Nathan asks for Jodie's help with the condenser, which has broken open. After braving hostile entities from the Infraworld, Jodie manages to shut down the condenser and warns Nathan not to build another. This gets the attention of the CIA, who send agent Ryan Clayton (Eric Winter) to forcibly recruit Jodie. After training, the now-adult Jodie goes on multiple missions as a field agent, often with Ryan, to whom she slowly becomes attracted. On one such mission in Somalia, Jodie learns that the target she killed was not a warlord, but the country's benign president. An enraged Jodie flees in disgust, despite Ryan's pleas. Branded a traitor, Jodie becomes a fugitive, evading and fighting pursuing CIA forces. Along the way, she befriends a group of homeless people, one of whom she helps give birth, and a family of Native Americans whom she saves from a malevolent entity. The CIA eventually recaptures Jodie after she attempts to reconnect with her catatonic biological mother, who has been held and forcibly drugged for decades in a military hospital.[11]

The CIA hands Jodie over to Nathan, now executive director of the DPA, overseeing the DPA's newest condenser, code-named the Black Sun. He reveals that the CIA is willing to let Jodie go if she agrees to a final mission. Jodie and a CIA team led by Ryan destroy a facility housing a Chinese-developed condenser before it is used to attack the United States. Jodie then learns that Nathan built a miniature condenser to speak exclusively to his family, but without success. After showing Nathan that his refusal to let them go is only making them suffer, Jodie tries to leave, only to be held in captivity by the CIA—the organisation has deemed her too dangerous to be freed. Jodie is subjected to the same fate as her mother. Nathan appears and informs Jodie that he's decided to shut down the containment field to the Black Sun, merging the two worlds together and making death meaningless. Too weak to free Jodie, Aiden contacts Ryan and Cole, leading them to her. After Nathan shuts down the containment field, the three chase after him into the heart of the Black Sun, with the intent of destroying it.[12]

During the trek towards the Black Sun, Cole is injured by entities and Ryan sacrifices his own safety to keep Jodie alive. Eventually, Jodie confronts Nathan near the Black Sun. He commits suicide to reunite with his family. As Jodie shuts down the condenser, she has a vision—Aiden is her stillborn twin brother. Jodie must make a choice: go back to the world of the living, or go on to the Infraworld and be reunited with everyone she has lost. By the story's end, the Infraworld has become a widespread threat in the not-so-distant future. Jodie prepares to confront the threat.[13]