You can play all of Beyond with your iPhone
"For us this is a key feature in the game."
"Not everybody was born with a DualShock controller in their hands," remarked notable French game maker David Cage, pacing with emotion at the Eurogamer Expo today.
He was talking about his studio's decision to make its latest emotional thriller, Beyond: Two Souls, playable in its entirety with an iPhone or Android touch device.
It was a decision that originated in player feedback from Quantic Dream's last PS3 game, Heavy Rain. Cage said many and more people played it with a significant other looking on - often with that person calling the shots but not directly controlling what was going on.
"Sometimes it was the girlfriend or the wife," Cage said, "sometimes it was the friend who was not a gamer. Sometimes it was the parents or even the grandparents; there was a guy who told me he played the entire game with his grandmother.
"Cool."
In exploring how to get that second person more involved, Cage and Quantic Dream came up with the idea of bringing a second screen, a touchscreen, into the equation. The result is a free app for Android and iOS devices called Beyond Touch, which is available now.
"It connects to the console via Wi-Fi, and from this point you can play the entire game, in single-player if you want, just using your iPhone ... just with one finger. It's a very simplified interface [and] makes the game very passive and simple."
You can also play the game in co-op, with one player controller Ellen "Jodie Holmes" Page and the other person controlling the spooky Entity that Holmes is intrinsically linked with.
"For us this is a key feature in the game," Cage mentioned, and it's another way - along with the game's filmic qualities - that Quantic Dream is trying to expand the audience of games.
Beyond: Two Souls is due out exclusively for PlayStation 3 on 11th October. A demo touches down on 2nd October - next week.
