Two Becomes One
by ALEX CARNEVALE
Beyond: Two Souls
creator David Cage
On the inside, the deep inside, are you aching to watch Ellen Page as a CIA agent gone rogue? Think about this, and realize that French auteur and all-around good guy David Cage has made it so that you can play as a four year old Ellen Page. Marking other people's graves there will be other accomplishments, but for David Cage there can be but one.
david cage watches them so closely
Jodie Holmes (an ELECTRIC Ellen Page) has lived with a spirit all her life. In the axiomatic, potentially libelous language of The U.S.A., this means this being comes from the Infraworld and must be used as a mercenary by the CIA. There was no one else to do this job but Ellen Page. Basically no one could look as good in so many different outfits.
When you think about it, most any job is more properly filled by Ellen Page. She can crow about how her shirt sucks and she got stains on her moccasins, doesn't this totally ruin an otherwise Ellen Page-worthy day?
you don't look a day over 900
French developer Quantic Dream uses advanced motion capture techniques to do the impossible - make Willem Dafoe look any age less than 90. Ellen's mo-cap begins to go awry from ages 8-16: Beyond: Two Souls covers her entire lifespan, including a completely unproductive goth phase. Before she goes out on state-sponsored assassination missions, she must cast aside the pendulous responsibilities of her bat mitzvah:
She is watched by men at all times, Ellen Page is. They want to harm her emotionally, usually, or beat her up. In a bar once, she murders three men who try to rape her. Cage follows this bromide of a scene with a lengthy sequence in which Page's Holmes finds a spiritual connection with some Native Americans.
Because of her service to her country, there is a deep and abiding possibility that Ellen Page could be nominated as the President of the United States. We are just dumb enough to convince ourselves of something like this, Cage opines. All his favorite movies (chief among them Requiem for a Dream quite obviously) and games are American, and Beyond: Two Souls plays out, in its segmented vignettes, like a collection or a compendium of his obsession with our country.
Hailed for his ability to bring true human emotion into gameplay, the character models of Beyond: Two Souls are so realistic that Ellen Page's presence is palpable, and if she overstays her welcome, just be glad that there's no abortion message in there. Oh wait there was one.
Ms. Page actually had to dispel some vicious rumors when the lifelike model of actress Ashley Jensen in The Last of Us tread on her recognizable image by resembling EP too closely. People kept going on tweeter and congratulating her about her performance, the one she never made. (It might have been too familiar a compliment long before The Last of Us ever came to be.)
"um, ms. page, she doesn't really look very much like you" "EVERYONE LOOKS SOMETHING LIKE ME BRENDA" Instead of having the good grace to recognize that not every brunette was her clone, Page issued a warning. She wrote in letters a sociopath cuts out of a magazine, and it said "don't tread on my IP" and there was, for some reason, an emoji after that. (If intellectual property belongs to Ellen Page, it is usually called EP after its Oscar-nominated namesake, Ellen Page.)
She could have further explained, but her new game was not out yet. She could have said, "Guys I have a spirit named Aiden inside of me in my next game, Beyond: Two Souls. Would you be willing to play as a spirit inside me? Sounds good, doesn't it? Chris Evans looks like a hunk of cheese up close. See you guys."
Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording.
"Infallible" - Pearl Jam (mp3)
"Sleeping By Myself" - Pearl Jam (mp3)
