Beyond Two Souls !LINK!
During my sole playthrough of Beyond, Jodie was a guarded woman whose trust was difficult to earn and easy to lose. When her morals were violated, she reacted with righteous anger, readily unleashing Aiden onto those who would dare to cross to the dark side. She treated those she allowed into her life with kindness. She gave a man lost after the death of his wife a chance to live once more, and forgave her parents when they caused her harm. She was as balanced as you could ever hope for a woman put in her tenuous position, always searching for the greater good beyond her immediate needs. You could construct the antithesis of my portrayal of Jodie if you desired, or find another path to venture down. So even though the story was not my own, the character was, which made me care dearly for her as the situations became more troubling.
beyond two souls
Beyond: Two Souls never really looks at this beyond a surface level, though, and this is an issue across the board. Big subjects appear here and there, from homelessness through to foreign intervention, and there's even an interlude where Jodie stays with a Navajo family and helps them with an evil curse. There's a lack of nuance and depth overall that doesn't help the player's engagement.
Jodie and Aiden seem to age in sync, for as Jodie grows older, Aiden grows stronger, and their bond grows greater. The powers displayed by Aiden include a powerful psychokinetic thrust that can move physical objects and damage spiritual entities, basic possession skills that allow him to take over the minds of nearby humans, a Vaderian "force choke" that he uses to strangle various hostiles, psychic abilities that allow him to direct mnemonic imprints from certain spots to Jodie for her to experience, and the ability to "read" the souls of recently dead human beings, the technical term being mediumship. He can also heal Jodie and the people who Jodie directs him to heal.
Aimed at an adult audience, Beyond: Two Souls has a fair amount that parents should be aware of, and as such, this section will contain light spoilers. Bad language isn't as strong, or as frequent as in many other games, but the older Jodie gets, the more foul mouthed she becomes, with a fair few "f**k"s and "sh**"s making their way into the dialogue. While you can romance other characters, it never gets beyond simply kissing on a bed, although there are several awkward scenes where men try to force themselves upon Jodie (with dialogue about "taking it and liking it"), although both are stopped before anything can really happen.
A government researcher who becomes a surrogate father figure to Jodie. And I Must Scream: Nathan builds a machine in order to see his dead family. Only problem is that it more or less puts their souls into a state of constant pain and being unable to tell him how much suffering he caused them by doing this. He refuses to listen to Jodie and even his wife herself when she talks to him through Jodie, and he nearly causes the apocalypse trying to get them back. In the end he realizes what he's done and he does not take it well.
Anger Born of Worry: He has this reaction in "Like Other Girls" if Jodie sneaks out of the DPA but leaves the bar early. He even cites Kirsten's birthday party as an example of how dangerously protective Aiden can be of her.
Anti-Villain: He wants to merge the Infraworld with the human world so that he can reunite with his dearly departed family.
Beard of Sorrow: After he learns that his wife and daughter were killed in an accident, he grows a stubble.
Big Bad Slippage: By the end of the story, he becomes so deluded by grief that he effectively becomes the Big Bad, since his actions nearly cause an apocalypse.
Driven to Suicide: If Jodie manages to convince him to see the errors of his ways, he will kill himself out of guilt.
Earn Your Happy Ending: Regardless of how he dies, he is immediately reunited with his family after his death.
Fatherly Scientist: Nathan is one of the very few people who are unconditionally kind to Jodie. Jodie calls this into question when she learns that Nathan lied to her about her past, asking him if she was anything more than a lab rat to him.
Ink-Suit Actor: Like Jodie, he looks just like his portrayer.
Ignored Epiphany: During the finale, he traps his family's spirits between dimensions while he searches for a way to reunite with them. When Jodie channels them, they tell Nathan that they are suffering and want to be freed, which he claims is not true. Shortly after, he admits that Jodie "opened his eyes" when he "didn't want to see", only to reveal that he's gone off the deep end completely and gotten it into his head that deactivating the containment field and merging the Infraworld with the mortal one is the solution.
Killed Off for Real: Dies in all possible outcomes in "Black Sun."
Love Makes You Crazy: Does not take his wife and daughter's death well.
Parental Substitute: He becomes a surrogate father figure to Jodie after her foster parents leave her at the institute. In turn, he deeply cares about her as a surrogate daughter, especially after losing his real daughter in a car accident.
Residual Self-Image: After he dies, his spirit takes the appearance he had before his family died.
Sanity Slippage: Years of grieving his wife and daughter have made him delusional and desperate to bring them back to life by any means, wreaking havoc in the human world during the process. What's worse is, since his wife and daughter die when Jodie is still at the DPA facility, the player can see the moment his sanity starts slipping away.
Selective Obliviousness: When Jodie channels his family, he utterly rejects the thought that they are suffering because of his insanity, and accuses her of lying to him. The implication is that on some level he knows that Jodie is telling the truth, but can't stand to let his semblance of a family go.
Tragic Villain: The loss of his family is what drives Nathan into opening a portal to the Infrawold in a desperate effort to be reunited with his family, which would also cause the apocalypse in his world.
Walking Spoiler: Several of his tropes are spoiler-tagged.
Well-Intentioned Extremist: He wanted to bring his wife and daughter back to life by using the Condenser. Of course, this would result in the evil poltergeists wrecking havoc in the human world.
A kid whom Jodie finds injured during her assassination mission in Africa, and later befriends and protects along the course of her objective. To Jodie's horrified realization, she unknowingly murders Salim's father after Aiden possesses his body in order to complete her mission. Badass Adorable: Was armed with a rifle when Jodie found him, and assists her in fighting the soldiers as well as avoiding capture in order to complete her mission.
Children Forced to Kill: He does help Jodie in taking out the soldiers, but attempts to kill Jodie himself at his own volition.
Child Soldier: Given that he's wielding an assault rifle almost as big as he is when Jodie meets him, and is bleeding out from a bullet wound in his leg at the same time, it's safe to assume that his country's civil war swallowed him up just like it did the adults.
Easily Forgiven: Averted. He is seen cheering with the mob that chases Jodie during her extraction, showing that he now possesses a newfound but justified hatred for Jodie for killing his father. Considering that his father was the only relative he has (to the knowledge of the player/audience), this is very understandable.
Funny Foreigner: He's more adorable than humorous, but though he doesn't understand English, he's able to pronounce Jodie's name at least.
Improbable Infant Survival: He was shot in the leg when Jodie found him, but is immediately healed and survives to the end of the level he appears in. In the final chapter of the game when Jodie goes to stop the Black Sun, Salim is seen with the many souls that roamed the dimension, but in reality he's just one of her memories, so Salim is still alive.
Protectorate: Jodie goes full Mama Bear towards Salim during her mission.
Walking Spoiler: Not to the extent of Nathan Dawkins, but he does appear during a rather crucial part of the storyline, and adding to that, Jodie's guilt over murdering his father played a factor in her abandonment of the CIA.
What Happened to the Mouse?: He is last seen cheering with the angry mob that pursued Jodie after she assassinated the president (unknowingly) and left a grieving Salim behind to escape.
You Killed My Father: Understandably raised hell when Jodie has his father killed through Demonic Possession in order to complete her objective, and even attempted to gun her down with his father's gun in a fit of rage. If Aiden doesn't shield her from the bullets, Jodie takes one in the arm, which she doesn't seem to mind in light of what she's done.
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