 "Beyond: Two Souls to release in October, casts Spider-Man's Willem Dafoe")
Pop quiz: how many Quantic Dream employees does it take to change a light bulb? It will take a whole battalion of casting directors, lawyers, and Hollywood agents to negotiate a multi-million dollar bulb-changing deal with Hollywood A-listers. Jokes aside, in addition to spending a huge chunk of its production budget hiring Ellen Page (Juno, Hard Candy, Inception), we all know that French developer specialising in Hollywood-rivalling, story-centric thrillers has been working on a supernatural thriller dubbed Beyond: Two Souls for a while now. The PS3 exclusive game now has a definite release date. It’s slated to hit North America on 8th October. While the European release is pegged in October as well, there’s no mention of a specific date. The European launch, which is usually the Indian release as well, generally trails the North American one by a couple of days, though.
Quantic Dream has released two videos to coincide with the announcement, which also reveals the inclusion of another Hollywood A-lister—Willem Dafoe. Readers will recognise his work as the Green Goblin in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man adaptation and the Oscar-winning Vietnam war film Platoon. Cast as a Government scientist by the name of Nathan Dawkins, Dafoe’s character will be tasked with the job of tapping into the depth of protagonist Jodie Holmes’ (Ellen Page) extrasensory powers while posing as her surrogate father. Watch the newly released video where Dafoe’s character meets Page’s as a part of what seems to be a government experiment reminiscent of Clive Barker’s Hellraiser.
The game follows 15 years in the life of supernaturally gifted Jodie Holmes, who is linked to an entity called Aiden—the eponymous second soul. Not much is known about Aiden, but the game focuses on the protagonist’s quest to know more about the entity, even as the Government officials chase her for their own interests. Beyond: Two Souls employs painstaking motion capture and is touted to feature a script running to around 2000 pages.
What video game announcement would be complete without the mention of a DLC or two? Quantic Dreams keeps up the tradition by revealing that North American pre-orders through GameStop/EB Games will include an exclusive 30-minute additional chunk of DLC. Don’t get too excited about the freebies, because that means the rest of the world will have to cough up cash for the DLC that’s claimed to pack in 30 minutes of additional content. If that wasn’t enough heartburn, buyers from these stores will also receive a free steel-book packaging that includes the original soundtrack, extensive behind-the-scenes features, PS3 theme, and an avatar bundle.
All those goodies may cost a pretty penny for those of us who live on the wrong side of the Atlantic Ocean, but at least the following interview/behind-the-scenes footage with Willem Dafoe showcasing the motion capture process is free.
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