Tag Archives: Ellen Page

February 11, 2025 · 04:32

There is always a script

It seems that we are decently obsessed with series and movies based on video games. And there is plenty to be seen. In 2024 we got the first setting of the serialification (this might not be a real word) of the game and now applauded series Fallout. And there is plenty to applaud on this series. You see, this first season got 12 wins & 73 nominations. As such it was recognised on a global scale. So Fallout has broken the mould on a few levels. We will soon see a second season of The last of us. And there are a few more coming. There are mentions of Beyond Two Souls, a game based on the exploits Ellen Page (now Elliot Page) and had contributions of Willem Dafoe, Kadeem Hardison and Eric Winter. The game was quite excellent and I look forward to seeing the result on TV.

And what else?
That is what this blog is about. You see, there is a game that was released in 2014, the title was Infamous: Second Son. I rated the game as average. I still do. Yet it was gameplay that hindered the high score. Metacritic gave it 80% (I gave it 75%). The game starts really good, it is after the first fight into Seattle that the issue starts. The game is too linear for a game of this style, there was initial an issue with the side missions, something that was fixed, but the linearity and the fact that the second power was too strong that made me give the rating as low as I did.

Still, the game had amazing sides too. The story was amazing on nearly every level. The power that you receive in the beginning was awesome. The other powers are really good too, but neon (second power) was overly strong. I would have switched Neon and video around and adjust the story (more like tweaking) and it would shape into a massive hit for the Sony studios. The funny part was that when the game came out I had never heard of this person named Banksy, as such the graffiti could be a nice edge on the storyline.

Is that it?
Well yes, it is the recognition that the game had amazing properties that could easily turn into a TV series. For the horror/terror fans there is the notion of Prototype where Alex Mercer (you) is the target and the goal is finding out what happened. I particularly liked the achievement to drive over 65536 infected people and that is quite the grind. The story is captivating and the presumed special effect could be next level. There are legions of other games that could glue people to the TV and as ‘Hollywood’ seems to be running out of ideas the gaming solutions could propel them further. And as Sony is also streaming programs to the people they might look into the games they have. As I see it, plenty of options there. And that is the golden ticket for some. These games are propelling the stages to TV for a lot of actors and actresses. A setting that seemingly have been overlooked. And me? I am still watching whether Shogun will come to Blu-ray to Australia. (And a few more). So we should expect a new level of interaction between TV and gaming. I wonder who will bring it and what they will bring.

Have a great day.

Damage through virtual nudity

Gamespot’s Feedbackula gave me pause for this issue. It seems that when you have a PlayStation 3 debugging console, it will be possible to see Ellen Page ‘fully’ naked in a shower scene. Now, this was a little issue, because when I played the game the clock in the kitchen stated 7:49, which meant that pizza and the CIA buddy would arrive in roughly 660 seconds. The buddy might arrive late, but the pizza delivery guy is not likely to be late, hence, no shower. I saw the shower footage and under normal conditions you see nothing revealing. Which seemed to be different from Heavy Rain (a game I did not play) there is complete nudity, like a decent quality movie, when she takes of her panties, Madison’s view on her thighs are ‘blocked’ by a washbasin between her and the camera. So, basically we saw nothing ‘too’ revealing. With Beyond two souls it is a different thing. Here we saw in the making, that Ellen and her co-workers were all in tight fitting black overalls with grey balls all over their bodies (like bad 21st century polka dot fashion), which means that the body they used was not Ellen (so I guess), so why is this likely to hit her career? Willem Dafoe was naked in ‘Body of Evidence’; his career did not take a hit, did it? In case female gamers are into seeing a little more of Eric Winters, which made Katherine Heigl go ‘Oh my!‘ then check out ‘the Ugly truth’, for extra giggles check out the ‘outtakes’ on the DVD.

So why this hypocrisy, more important, how was this not avoided? I think that the breasts might not have been a big issue; here in Australia we see tens of thousands of them on the beach (usually in sets of two). What is likely the bigger issue is the noisy mess Sony is making out of it all! The latest (which is a few days old), is that “Actress Ellen Page is reportedly considering a lawsuit against Sony, it was revealed yesterday“, this news showed up on more than one location, so I do not know where this is at. What is important is that this is the same glitch Heavy Rain had and as such I do not know what that status is. That nude scene was on several sites. I do not know whether this had been Madison’s actual body (played by Jacqui Ainsley), if so then we can only envy Guy Ritchie. Likely that the nude body of Jacqui Ainsley was also based on someone else, but I could not tell in either case if this was the case (just logical assumption on my part).

Should Ellen Page go to court, then she would end up with a strong case. The Heavy Rain issue was from 2010; the fact that this issues surfaces again three years later, means that either Sony or the developer was unable or unwilling to learn from past mistakes. Those possibilities tend to get expensive once proven. Jacqui Ainsley was a model in numerous glossies; Ellen Page is an award winning actress, winning an Academy Award and a Golden Globe. If she can show that this event is hurting her career, then it would be fun to read in Forbes in 2014, that a Canadian from Nova Scotia became the CEO of Sony, a company that is one of the pillars of the Japanese Economy, (an unlikely, but entertaining scenario). I got the image from http://www.allgamesbeta.com/2013/10/uncensored-pictures-of-ellen-page-from.html (it is one of several sites).

I am adding a censored frontal shot, so that people can see how far this scene was taken onto the disc (even though nothing was ever shown in the actual game). It does not matter whether it was playful banter, or just a little piece of candy for the male gamers (remember that only development test consoles allowed for changing the camera angles), so why was it all taken this far for a scene that was not needed for the game or the storyline?

I initially thought that this would mean that this would add up to good times for Ellen Page. The issue is that when it comes to virtual nudity not much exists. There is an interesting paper called ‘A Passive Approach to Regulation of Virtual Worlds’ by Jacob Rogers that made it to the ‘The George Washington Law Review’. It was published in 2008 Vol. 76. (Pages 405-425). In this paper Jacob observes that there is a lot of legislation missing involving virtual events. However, Ellen is not without due defence. As Jacob quotes Professor Jack Balkin “someone might bring claims for intentional infliction of emotional distress.” Which came from “Jack M. Balkin, ‘Virtual Liberty: Freedom to Design and Freedom to Play in Virtual Worlds’,2004”. So there is precedence for this, which takes us to the world of Torts. Sony might claim that there was no intent, yet the issue three years earlier (also with a Sony game) had not been dealt with, which takes us to the world of Torts. We have Foreseeability of damage, the Wagon Mound 1 case [1961] could apply. If we consider (there are statistics), that the average gamer is a horny little rascal, then we could foresee that they would check the heavy rain option the moment a shower scene came up, if we accept (consider) that the shower scene had no bearing on the story, then we can consider two sides. First in the regard that the scene could have been replaced by a gun cleaning scene (she fires a few during the game), A hand wash laundry scene (in case the steam on the mirror was essential) or a dressing scene in front of a mirror. In the second it would have been an option to make the shower scene a non-interfering cut scene (a movie cut, not a location cut). All these options! As we are in torts, the negligent act causing economic loss is a situation that is covered in every common law nation, yes also in Japan.

So we can safely say that should Miss Page take this to the next level, Sony might be wise to give her a residency tower (to get some landlord income on the side), a small percentage in Sony Interactive Entertainment and at least 5 roles at twice her last pay to settle this issue (not a bad day for a short youthful Halifax Canadian). It is not realistic, but we can hope for her!

Beyond Two Souls

It is hard not to be trivial about a new game. It is always a new version of…. or a sequel of…or in this case, an evolution of…

If you want the short and sweet of this game then think Dragons Lair mixed with Half Life/Resident Evil. Beyond Two Souls is from the makers of Heavy Rain, and many would like to compare that, but I never played it, so that part we (me and my keyboard) will skip that comparison in its entirety.

For those under 30+, when Dragons Lair was first released it was like nothing you had ever seen. Consider the early 80’s, console games were in 8-bits. In that same year, EA releases the pinball construction kit and Origin Systems released Ultima 3. 8-bit graphics were not really that great, and in that same year Disney’s Famous Don Bluth is centre to a game that has Disney quality graphics using a laser disc. To give you an idea, consider Xbox graphics in the time of the CBM-64. All our minds were blown. The game was simple, you see segments of a cartoon, and by pressing the right direction on your joystick, you continue, or you die. The system was simple, but the result would not be equalled for at least 15 years (without a laser disc).

Now take that concept and take it in a more modern and more interactive setting and you get Beyond Two Souls.

Wait!

Do not think of this as a simple game, as I said, it was trivialised!

The reality is that this is more than a mere evolution! This game is the first one I witness that uses the 6-axis controller to the maximum degree it can. I want to add to that, that the interactivity between the player and the game is the most complete I have ever seen. It is almost the game Nintendo could imagine, but could never make into a reality!

This game is something else. The story is given to you in a shuffled way! Frank Miller thinks more linear then that, but that does not matter, the story holds on to you like a jigsaw and the picture it paints slowly evolves into a masterpiece, a chronological approach would never have worked this well. Ellen Page IS the real star, as both actress and as character. Willem Dafoe is the supporting character, and as such he is the support, however he is also the glue that holds many of the pieces together. The voices and the looks give you a view into this story like you never seen it before. You control Ellen/Jodie in an amazing way. Like my favourite slogan from FX, ‘The story is everything’ and this story does not fail to deliver.

So, you control Jodie through events with an ‘assistant’ and as such you control where she walks, how she drives and how she interacts. In action scenes your controller becomes control, and as such you interfere with what she does, do it wrong and she does get hurt. This is actually most awesome during fight training. Get it wrong and she gets dropped to the floor, hard! That sequence is actually one of the cooler moments. You get to do it again and again, until you get it 100% right. It actually felt like you were experiencing a martial workout. Very cool!

There are other moments where it is a little unsettling as you might achieve the control over it. The directions for a new player seem a little ‘off’ in the beginning. As I said, the 6-axis controller had never been used to THIS degree before. Tilting it to the left or right (the entire controller), to empty a bucket. To sharply lower the controller as you jump of a wall. Shake when you are being held. It was an awesome experience.

As stated, you get a disjointed story, chapter by chapter and as you start at the end, you jump forward and backwards into the story, it really works! Without linearity you see parts and not know what does and does not connect. As you take control of Jodie or the ‘assistant’ the story unfolds. Uniquely, this game can be played by two, so if you do that, then one controls Jodie, the other the ‘assistant’, a pretty unique experience for this type of game.

Then the graphics, they are high in standard; however there are moments that will do more than blow you away. In a few close-up cut scenes, you control Jodie, and in those moments Ellen Page looks better and clearer than she does on Blu-ray. These are uncanny moments.

I am not giving anything away at this point, so you’ll need to get through it yourself. However, there are ‘hidden’ or hard to spot interacting points. If you get to them you can unlock a bonus. Not sure yet what they are and I only found one so far, but that means that this game has more to offer then you think. I am also predicting that when I was offered a certain choice, I unlocked an achievement. I feel a certainty that going another way will give a different achievement, so replay and experimenting is a part of all this.

So, what about the verdict?

It is a top notch game with a 90% rating. It is no ‘Last of us’, it is no ‘GTA’, it is an evolved game and this game is nothing less than a master evolution of whatever it used to be and the game is better for it. This leaves me with certainty that we will see more versions of this game, especially considering the optional additional interactions on a PlayStation 4 controller, which means that Beyond 2 Souls is only the tip of the iceberg and that already blew me away on the PlayStation 3. So the future of the PlayStation 4 seems to be a solid one. The music which involved Hans Zimmer, a legend in soundtracks, gives this game the atmosphere it deserves. So was this an interactive movie?

No, it is a game where you move, walk around and interact/search for clues and events. In addition it must be said that it has a few really small flaws. At times her movement seems a little less liquid, but not as irritating as we saw with Resident Evil. In addition, the move you make is depending on what you see that means if you are ready to punch and the camera shifts to the other side, that you move you had in mind would be the wrong one. That is part of the gameplay challenge and this game plays that part without a flaw. Whatever flaw it had, was purely the user of the controller. In the end, you will have taken Jodie, from being a small girl of 6-8, to a battle hardened, beat the crap out of anything goddess though places from Urban, to Military complex, to the middle of the desert. The story remains an awesome experience.

There is one other side to all this, it is one that is futuristic. As we see more and more of these games evolve with the use of professional actors, it will not an unrealistic thought that the Videogame industry will actually get its own Oscar category. If so, then Ellen Page might become its first recipient.

Tag Archives: Ellen Page

There is always a script

Damage through virtual nudity

Beyond Two Souls

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