It is truly a remarkable feat what Quanitic Dream have achieved. They've built upon the past 45 years of home computer gaming and crafted a control scheme that is somehow worse than any that has come before it. They've made errors that go beyond fundamental, these are entirely new mistakes that have so far never been discovered. The word "counterintuitive" fails here; as the physicist Wolfgang Pauli once remarked with sadness when shown the work of an aspiring student, the controls for this game are "not even wrong." Pressing left to go right? That's mere child's play. In Beyond Two Souls, you can begin a movement sequence and enjoy the entirely novel experience of watching the camera angle swing around specifically to generate the exact wrong input. You can relish the thrill of an on-screen direction prompt appearing at precisely the moment required to confirm what you just did, then scold you for doing it the wrong way as your character runs face-first into an obvious obstacle. That then becomes an elegant metaphor for the rest of your experience with the game, that is, slamming your head repeatedly into insurmountable problems that vanish into nonexistence as soon as they arise until you begin to question whether or not you even have hands. After being delighted by Detroit: Become Human, and from there in Heavy Rain adjusting to the quirky yet creative and immersive control schema that typifies Quantic's output, I was excited to try Beyond Two Souls, which I've heard so many good things about. Perhaps I need to experience it on a console, or simply buy a controller, so I can see for myself why this game is so widely praised. But the keyboard and mouse controls, which I vastly prefer, should carry a minimum sentence of ten years hard labor in a state penitentiary.
