The Game Environment as a Narrative Tool

“With Beyond, I wanted more diverse environments…The environment was a way to tell the story. It’s not just the background, it’s something you can use to tell the story.”-David Cage, Co-CEO, writer, director, Quantic Dream.

With the release of Beyond: Two Souls last week, Quantic Dream gave gamers an eerie psychological thriller with stellar voice acting from Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe. Always striving to shake convention, the team also used the environment to drive the game’s narrative. Watch how Autodesk Maya and the Entertainment Creation Suite helped create a living, breathing game world:

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About Beyond: Two Souls

The title stars Academy Award nominee Ellen Page (Inception, Juno) as Jodie, a young woman whose link to an unseen entity gives her supernatural powers. She is supported by another Oscar nominee in Willem Dafoe (Platoon, Spider-Man) who plays Nathan Dawkins, a government scientist who works with Jodie to analyze her powers. In BEYOND, gamers will play through fifteen years of Jodie’s story, experiencing the most striking moments of her life. Like its predecessor Heavy Rain, BEYOND will allow players to shape the course of the story through their decisions and actions taken in the game.