I have to start off this section with the video game “Beyond: Two Souls”. It is one of the rare genres, which uses the storyline as the primary selling point. It centers around a girl named Jodie Holmes, voiced by Ellen Page, and her life living with an invisible entity known as Aiden. The game itself plays out like a movie, but the story does not flow chronologically. The player jumps to and from different major events in her life as he/she tries to piece together her memories. By doing so we learn about her rough childhood, during which her foster parents give her up to the CIA’s Department of Paranormal Activity (DPA) to become a test subject because of her powers, although, the game starts out during her late teens or early twenties. The story is just so amazing that I spent almost 8 hours watching someone else play through the entire game, as though I were watching a movie.
What I want to focus on, however is Jodie as a character. What’s so amazing about this character is her resilience. She is this person who is strong enough to annihilate a large force of CIA operatives and a helicopter single-handed, yet she is also helplessly fragile at times. Her power has been the cause of almost all the grief and pain that she experiences and has experienced, but she continues to live, searching for a place to call home. Throughout the game we see instances of her breaking down into tears because of the things she is forced to do and because of the influence the spirit holds on her life. She is forced to kill on so many occasions, and sometimes she kills without wanting because Aiden will act on his own accord.
It’s really hard to explain without spoiling everything; I just want to emphasize how great a character she is. Even with physical strength, she has moments when she breaks, just like everyone else. She will cry when people day, and feel anger when deceived. She is like any other person, including men, in every way except for her connection to the paranormal.
I’m finding it really hard to explain why I like her so much, so I’m putting a link to a video that shows my favorite moment in the game. It is during the time in which she is on the run from the CIA and is saved by a group of homeless people. Even though, in the end, she is the one doing the saving, it’s safe to say that she was emotionally rescued by the group of homeless. The video is rather long but this part of the story is a relatively short arc in her life.
The fact that she sacrifices herself is such a way for what is her new family is really similar to how Elmire sacrifices her body to Tartuffe to save her family. The only difference is that Elmire is depicted as one of those “strong” women you see in so many writings. There isn’t great depth in her character and because of her fortitude she seems somehow unreal. On the other hand, even though Jodie has this amazing power, she is not invincible and has all these weaknesses, physically and emotionally. She has great depth as a character and becomes easily relatable towards, even though she is a fictional character.
I couldn’t help but get emotionally attached to her as a person while watching, so when I saw the moment her head started bleeding I shouted, “NO!” to myself in the solitude of my room. My eyes even began to water a little when I thought that she might be dying, even though I knew that there were more parts meaning she wasn’t going to die at this point.