In Quantic Dream’s 2010 game Heavy Rain, the player controls four different characters involved with the hunt for a kidnapped child and the Origami Killer, who will murder him unless his father finds him in three days. Writer and director David Cage garnered attention for making a game that uses realistic graphics and acting performances that was more akin to an interactive film. This year, Sony is releasing Cage’s follow-up, Beyond: Two Souls. Beyond stars Ellen Page as Jodie Holmes, a young woman who seems to be psychically tied to a ghostlike entity name Aiden. Willem Dafoe also stars, as researcher Nathan Dawkins. The game follows Holmes’ life from a troubled little girl to a teen being trained for military purposes to a woman on the run from the government and seeking refuge among the homeless. We spoke with Cage about writing and filming Beyond and the creative advantages new tech gave him this time around.
Co.Create: Heavy Rain was focused on four lives, and now Beyond seems to be focused on Jodie.
David Cage: Actually, I’m not just focusing on Jodie. I’m focusing on Jodie and Aiden. Aiden, this entity, is really a character with his own personality, his own desires, and his own goals. It’s the story of Jodie and Aiden, and their relationship and how it’s going to evolve through time. What was interesting to me was to tell the story of one person through several years and actually realize that when you control Jodie when she is 8, she is almost a different character than when she a teenager or an adult. She doesn’t move the same way, she doesn’t speak the same way, and you don’t have access to the same actions. It’s like having more than four characters. We have 40 different versions of Jodie in the game.
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