God that’s a thing that I wanted to talk on but I couldn’t put my finger onto how.
No one is reacting to Jodie’s LITERAL GHOST ESPER POWERS as if they’re actually A REAL FUCKING BIG DEAL. I get the idea that they all sort of already know stuff like this kind of exists, but still. Guys. React like humans, there’s a difference between intellectually knowing you have some evidence of the supernatural and actually seeing it happen in front of you.
It made sense with her parents since they’ve lived with her for who knows how long, they’d get used to tables and chairs randomly being stacked together, but even in a world where the government lab kinda already knew the supernatural exists, I still think they should of emphasized just how astonishing it is that this stuff is really happening, for real.
What I like: This game is really pretty and has nice environments. Jodie and Nathan actually look like Page and Dafoe, which is impressive considering how bad modeling characters after their voice actors can turn out. And Page does a fantastic job with the mediocre material she’s given. My favorite parts of the game are where Aiden gets to mess around with people. I would have focused this game more on the implications of Aiden’s powers.
What I dislike: How the narrative treats Jodie. Cage seems to think that tormenting female characters automatically translates to good writing. I also find the government stuff to be at best boring.
I want this game to turn into Jodie and Aiden conquering the US as revenge. But what I expect is more of Jodie suffering.
Like others have mentioned, the basic concept of the game is cool: a “girl with amazing but terrifying powers” story where the powers themselves are their own character is actually something I’d like to see more of! Willem Dafoe seems intent on portraying Nathan as a flawed but ultimately decent person and his big weird face feels like the perfect match for that; his affection towards Jodie feels warm and natural but there’s just enough background strangeness going on that we’re never entirely sure how genuine he’s being/how much he isn’t telling her, and I think the game could’ve done more with that.
Boy oh boy but this game has a problem with how it treats its female characters. Jodie is the plot’s punching bag who gets treated like a potential trophy by half the cast (including Aiden, ugh), Nathan’s wife and daughter are tragedied out of existence before we even get to know them as characters, her mom is a weepy dish towel, she utterly traumatized that poor woman taking part in the card-picking test, any peers around her age tend to get shown as bullies or flakes…at least there’s the mysterious agent she meets up with in the bathroom during the embassy affair, but she herself is in and out so quickly it’s hard to get a feel for her. Sure, most of the characters in the game are indifferent to her at best, but given how much Jodie suffers it gets exhausting when she isn’t allowed to have any fun or bond with people who aren’t father figures or CIA superiors. Also while the “no game overs” approach might work in theory it just feels like there’s even less agency for the player to hustle the plot along. Why aren’t we watching a movie or TV show if we can’t even CYOA ourselves into an alternate timeline or weird bad end?
It’d probably be too much to ask for this game to become supernatural slice-of-life (will Aiden get the tool box off the top shelf? will Aiden open the jar of pickles?) or more focused horror (does Jodie’s presence aggravate the monsters? does Aiden look like that, too? what happened to that plot line, anyway?), or even both, but I’d like to see the game go for one of those options. I’m hoping we can learn more about what Aiden’s deal is, at least in terms of motivations and how he views Jodie, and it’d be nice if this could be done in a way that isn’t possessive and creepy (ha ha, yeah, I know). I’d also like Jodie to catch a damn break for once.
Aside from stuff you’ve mentioned like optional kidnapping scenes, the Worst Relationship, and parts where you can just nope out of a scene before anything actually happens, is there a way to play this game that significantly changes or recontextualizes the plot? I don’t think a story on rails is necessarily a bad thing, but are there ways to interact with B:TS in ways more involved than what we’ve seen here?
This actually makes me wonder if Aiden’s whole deal of saving Jodie serves as much more of a way of preventing Game Overs than it normally would. Since Cage has such a weird aversion to “failures” in his games, was Aiden and his ghostly protection almost entirely just a means to avoid having to code them?
Yeah, this is so something that I keep thinking about. Like, the government and the DPA are so keen to keep things like this under wraps, but Jodie is also allowed to just go out and show everything she can do to a bunch of teenagers? I guess no one was recording any of this for posterity…
Not to spoil too much, but you are going to continue to be disappointed about this.
Nope! The closest the game gets to having meaningful choices is a throwaway line or two in later chapters, like Jodie mentioning the bar from Like Other Girls in The Dinner. If you are prevented from getting to the bar, she doesn’t have any reason to bring it up.
Think of this game less as on-rails and more like a series of figure eights. You can derail the story a little bit with your choices, but you are always going to be led back to the plot points required for you to progress. The next chapter is highly indicative of this especially.
Something I noticed that’s confusing me: does Jodie need to speak aloud to communicate with Aiden? Previously it’s seemed like she’s been talking every time she needs him to hear her, but this video has a few spots where we hear her voice but her mouth doesn’t seem to be animated. You’d think she’d rely almost entirely on telepathy (or whatever) if she had that option. Is this just me being inattentive, was it an animation goof, or do they go into this further at some point?
Nah, you see, Aiden gave everyone parachutes, so nobody died!
Wait, that’s not how parachutes work?
I guess this part comes before the part where Jodie jumps out of the helicopter, right? Since this introduces the idea of Aiden being able to shield a fall, somehow.
Well that…was a fascinating chapter. The bit with the bike shield was actually kinda cool, and I’m glad we got to see Jodie and Aiden stretch their full powers…though a shame it was in that sort of way.
Regarding what Jodie said at the end, that guy she talked to was alive at least.
Jodie just murdered 20+ people and blew up a good part of town… I mean she WAS cornered, but again I think some of the destruction was excessive.
Anyway, what felt somewhat weird how suddenly Aiden’s feats of strength shot up to 11, I never got the feeling he could push cars or destroy buildings.
Anyway, as far as action goes this chapter was pretty cool and it seems that you could probably tackle this situation in a few different ways based on the cop outlines
It might be they handle escalation of powers better in how the game normally plays out, but it is kind of weird. Aiden does have a history of going overboard or excessive when it comes to protecting jodie, or being let loose. Its like it tries to behave and then jodie lets it off the metaphorical leash.
I actually tend to forget that we still don’t know what extent of control Jodie has over Aiden. It does seem she can influence some of his actions directly, but it could be that this was just him going completely nuts over her being killed.
There’s basically no establishing “thing” for any chapter beyond the very distant last Jodie going “bwaah I’m in a space cube” or whatever at the very beginning of the game. Not a single chapter really has an establishing shot. This is bad enough in chronological order, but I have to imagine in the “proper” order it’s a clusterfuck. Especially with regards to events where Jodie is the same age.
Yeah, this chapter’s not so bad. The next one, however, goes right back to having some problems which mostly relates to depictions of suicide attempts.
And like I said, I’ll make a little video detailing the proper order and probably also make an alternate youtube playlist with everything in game order, just to see how that plays.
I will say this, though: as the player, you get some warning before the chapter even starts about where it is on the timeline. There is a big, wavy timeline that shows you the upcoming chapter and all of the ones you’ve previously played, but you can’t really be sure how long it is between each chapter; you only find that out when you start playing.
Content Warning
This video contains the following:
Attempted Suicide
17 - Homeless
Well, it wouldn’t be that much of a David Cage game if it didn’t feature a good portion of the story around a group of homeless people, but thankfully, unlike in Indigo Prophecy, they aren’t secretly a large cult of “benevolent” overseers. These people are… people, and sure they don’t have a whole lot of depth, but they’re fine for the limited amount of time we get with them.
Overall, this is an alright chapter with some nice moments that are otherwise marred by some pretty egregious moments. I like the little cast of characters here, and it kind of sucks that they basically stop existing after this video.
Fun Fact: Based on the traffic signs from the scenes with the overpass, we can tell that this is supposed to take place somewhere within Washington state. (If you look closely, you can see a route number within a silhouette of George Washington, a signifier of the state we’re in.)
Among the nice moments and some, admittedly, interesting storytelling methods, do any in particular stand out to you as good/memorable?
Also, there will likely be a “mid-week” update on Friday or Saturday as the next chapter is entirely cutscene.
problems 
Content Warning 
