Is Beyond: Two Souls a videogame or an interactive storybook?

Beyond: Two Souls has made waves in the video gaming world recently. David Cage’s latest offering to the world comes in the form of a PS3-only ‘movie’ starring Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe, except that he said, very seriously, at a Sony Beyond: Two Souls fan event, that it’s not a movie. It’s a game.

There’s evenly split feedback all across the internet about Beyond. People claim it’s a new genre. Some say it’s little more than an interactive storybook. Others say it’s a superb game. I was leaning towards calling it a movie myself, but after playing Beyond, I’ve been forced to think:

What really makes a game a game?

My first video game was an ancient DOS one called Alley Cat. It had a very simple premise. As an alley cat, you had to survive various levels involving dogs, clotheslines, and goldfish bowls. Later, I progressed to WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness, Star Wars: Rebel Assault, Archon Ultra, and yes, even Barbie Riding Club.

I commanded orcs and humans, piloted the Millenium Falcon, oversaw a fantasy chess board, and rode horses. Some of those tasks were complicated. Some were simple; riding a horse with your keyboard is not difficult.

The games I played were many and varied, and they had one thing in common. They were interactive and engaging, and provided me enough compulsion to want to complete them.

It wasn’t about how many buttons I got to press over a game’s duration, nor was it about how many complicated combinations I could muster. Neither was it about how difficult a game was to complete, though some of them were tough. It was, however, about how the game engaged me, whether through the actions required of me via the controller or keyboard, or through the story that it weaved and the seed it planted in my heart that made me want to see it through to the end. It was about how much fun I had playing them.

I guess I’m trying to say that a game is a game when it engages you both physically and mentally. True, a movie engages you, but it omits to make use of your body and brains. You don’t have to spend a single brain cell processing puzzles or holding your own against a veritable barrage of orc warriors. Games, though, they pull you in, press the buttons to all of your sensors, and don’t let go.

And that, in spite of a physical lack of button pressing, was exactly what happened in Beyond: Two Souls.

So what really is Beyond?

Beyond: Two Souls follows Jodie, a girl with a ghostly companion, throughout her Hollywood-movie-esque life. Its heavily cinematic, chronologically disjointed story has a plot full of sex and blood and explosions that might have been written by the most jaded Hollywood scriptwriter. But it’s still a game.

In Beyond, you’re in control, albeit a control limited to occasional button presses and jogs of the analog sticks. There is more engagement when you take charge of Aiden, Jodie’s supernatural other half. Since he’s the one who can do stuff like kill people and smash up things, most of the action happens when you take control of him. Most of the time, you’re with Jodie, and you’re watching what happens.