2013年底的旧文，但观点并未过时：互动电影（interactive drama）因其引人入胜的剧情和身临其境的代入感赢得一些玩家的心，同时也因缺乏游戏性为一些游戏媒体和正统玩家所诟病；这些游戏的销量与那些大作相较只能说差强人意。它们的优势在哪？发展趋势又将怎样？
My wife’s usual after-work routine is to come home, get changed, and unwind with a DVR-ed episode of Scandal, New Girl or The Vampire Diaries. Yesterday, she came home,
turned on my PlayStation 3, and proceededto play Beyond: Two Souls for the next four
and a half hours.
我妻子的下班日常往往是：到家，换装，打开DVR看新一集的《丑闻》、《杰茜驾到》或是《吸血鬼日记》愉悦身心。而昨天不一样，她回到家，打开我的PS3，接下来的四个半小时里她一直在玩《超凡双生》。
My wife is not a gamer. Despite the fact that she’d say otherwise, the last gamesshe
played with any regularity were the original Doom and Crash Bandicoot back when
she was in grade school. So while spousal gaming might be normal in some marriages,
it isn’t in mine, and it’s truly amazing how Beyond: Two Souls has managed to capture
my wife’s interest.
我妻子并不钟情于游戏，尽管照她的说法，她在上小学时经常玩《毁灭战士》和《古惑狼》，但此后就没下文了。有些夫妻双方都是游戏迷，但我们一家显然不是，正因如此我很惊讶地发现《超凡双生》吸引了我妻子的注意力。
The game is divisive, that much is clear from the reviews. It’s rare to see a game get
both nines and perfect tens, and also fours, fives and sixes from major outlets. I’m sure
you’ve already metacriticedthe full range for yourself. I personally gave it a nine in
my own review, though I can’t really judge those who scored it lower.
照目前的测评来看，对这款游戏的评价明显呈两极分化趋势，它即得到了9分乃至10分的完美评价，也得到了刚好够格甚至不及格的分数，而所有这些评分都出自各大游戏媒体，这倒真是难得一见。我相信各位玩家在全方位考虑后也在metacritic网站上给出了自己的分数，至于我在自己的测评里给了它9分。对于那些给了更低分的人我不予评价。
The chief complaints about the game are about how its interactivity is mostly passive,
choices don’t feel like they have consequence, and you can never really lose. All of
these are correct statements, though I’m not necessarily sure they all need to be
viewed as inherent negatives. In fact, I think we need more games like this. Why? Not
only because my non-gaming wife is now obsessed with Beyond: Two Souls,
it’s that the last time this sort of thing happened with her, it was with Heavy Rain.
对这游戏的多数差评主要围绕三点：游戏体验过于被动；剧情选择并不影响结果；玩家压根就输不掉游戏。这些评价讲的很到位，尽管我觉得没必要把它们看做这游戏本身的缺陷。其实照我看来，这样类型的游戏多多益善。为什么这么讲？这不仅仅是因为我那跟游戏不沾边的妻子现在迷上了《超凡双生》，还是因为前一次似曾相识的场面也是牵涉到一个游戏——《暴雨》。
Heavy Rain《暴雨》PS3画面
“What’s that?” she asked as I played Heavy Rain on my newly purchased PS3, bought
five years after release once I decided I didn’t need to be an Xbox loyalist, and I wanted
to experience all the titles I’d missed out on to date. “It’s called Heavy Rain,” I said. “It’s
kind of like playing a mystery movie,” was the best way I could described it. “They look
so real,” she said, used to only the graphics of Crash Bandicoot, for the most part. Then,
after being hypnotized by the next two chapters, I heard something that truly stunned
me. “Can I play?”
那时正好是PS3主机发行5年后，我在一番考虑后决定不做一个Xbox粉丝，于是我买下了PS3，想着要把错过的游戏都补回来。当我在新买的主机上玩《暴雨》时被妻子撞见了，“这是啥？”她问道。“这游戏叫《暴雨》，”我告诉她，“玩这游戏就像亲身体验一部悬疑片。”鉴于她对游戏画质的概念基本上仅限于《古惑狼》之流，我妻子惊道：“简直跟真的一样。”接着，在我为接下来两个章节的故事神魂颠倒时，身旁一句话让我镇住了，“我能玩玩嘛？”
The point I’m making here is not about women wanting playing video games, it’s about
my wife wanting to play video games, as a person who would normally never go out of
their way to partake in the past time. It’s simply not her thing. But there’s something
about the unique format of these David Cage movie/book/story games that appeals to
her, and she can’t get enough of them.
这里我要讲的不是女性愿意接触电子游戏，而是说我妻子——一个以前从不想花费精力去玩游戏的人——会有玩游戏的想法。要知道，游戏就不是她的菜。但David Cage编导的这些“电影/小说/剧情类游戏”中有一种独特的风格赢得了她的好感，让她欲罢不能。
She likes the fact that interactions are pretty passive in the game. More often than not,
she’s left the room when I’ve been blowing up half of Columbia in BioShock Infinite,
slaughtering soldiers in Call of Duty or curb stomping bandits in The Last of Us.
Something that’s not quite as horrifically violent or intense appeals to her.
她很喜欢这种游戏过于被动的交互体验风格。当我在《生化奇兵·无限》中把半个哥伦比亚城闹个天翻地覆，在《使命召唤》里杀戮敌军，或是在《美国末日》中痛打匪徒时，她往往选择走开。那些相比之下不那么激烈*力暴**的内容更合她的胃口。
The same goes for its difficulty. I have tried to teach her various games over the years,
but she’s quickly frustrated by repeated death, far more used to forms of entertainment
that require nothing of her to keep moving forward, like TV and movies.
游戏难度对她来讲也是如此。几年来我试着教过她玩好几种不同类型的游戏，但她很快就因为一次次的挂掉而对其厌倦了。她更习惯于享受那种不需要考验技术的娱乐方式——比如电视节目和电影那样。
But here? There is no “failure.” The quick time events are pretty easy, even for non-
gamers, but even if they’re missed, the game simply moves in a new direction. Yes,
sometimes this results in death (more so in Heavy Rain than in Beyond), but even that
is woven into the story. The game isn’t going to force her to replay the same segment
over and over until she gets it right.
但《超凡双生》不一样，这游戏没有“失败”的概念。游戏中的QTE*动作即使对“非玩家”来说也很好掌握，况且就算QTE失败了，游戏情节只会朝着一个新方向推进下去。当然，有些失败会造成角色死亡（这种情况在《暴雨》中更多见一些），但这一点也是游戏剧情中已经预想到的。这游戏并不会强迫她在找到诀窍前重复地去玩同一个章节。
I think what people who hate this type of game fail to realize is that it has the potential
to capture a market far outside those who usually play games. While I respect the idea
that a “core” gamer doesn’t want to play a game that barely requires any interaction,
I think it’s wrongheaded to say there’s no place for Cage and his philosophy of what
games can be in the industry. I know I’m using my wife as an example here, and it’s
hardly a scientific study, but I think she’s representative of a larger sample of the
population who could appreciate games like Heavy Rain and Beyond as interesting
new ways to tell stories. But so few games like these exist, no non-
gamers are buying consoles just to play them, so their exposure remains limited.
就我看来，那些厌恶这种游戏类型的人没有意识到其蕴藏的潜力：它能在正统玩家之外开辟新的市场。我尊重一些“核心玩家”不想玩缺乏互动性的游戏的想法，但要说David Cage和他的游戏哲学在游戏产业中没有一席之地，我觉得这种说法就有些偏执了。我知道我是拿妻子作为一个个例，这样的归纳不怎么科学，但她可作为一个广泛人群样本中的一个代表，这部分人群懂得欣赏像《暴雨》和《超凡双生》这样的游戏，把它们当做一种新颖的叙事方式。但是这样的游戏出的太少，而“非玩家”们不会因为想玩这些游戏就会费钱去买主机，所以它们的推广仍受到束缚。
For gaming to evolve, it needs to continue to grow its audience. It’s something the Wii
did successfully through motion controls, but that was only temporary. I think
“story games” like these could be a more permanent form of expansion for games,
if only there were more quality ones made. While there will always be a place for the
type of action-centric, consequence-laden games that us traditional gamers enjoy,
I don’t think it’s fair to try and run the guy out of town who is trying to do something
different with the medium. Beyond isn’t perfect, and has its share of script and story
issues, but I still think it gets a lot of things right.
如果游戏类型要取得突破，首先需要持续扩大该类型的受众面，就像任天堂Wii主机推出体感控制而大获成功一样；可惜任天堂取得的成果仍有限。我认为如果能有人做出更多高质量的“剧情游戏”，那这种游戏类型会对整个游戏界产生更深远的影响。我们传统玩家喜爱的那些注重互动性和结局的游戏固然能拥有自己的地位，但就因此把持有异见者赶出游戏圈也太不公平了。《超凡双生》的确不完美，它的剧本和故事性也存在一些争议，但我仍认为它有不少可圈可点之处。
To me, this feels like an entirely new genre of media, not just within gaming itself.
Titles like Heavy Rain and Beyond combine books, movies and games into something
that isn’t any one of them. If judged solely as a film, or only as a game, I can
understand the bad scores, but when you combine them, I think the effect is unique
and something we need to see more of. My wife agrees. Or at least she would,
were she not currently lost in her quest to save the world from the ghost apocalypse.
在我看来，这就像一种全新类型的媒体，而不仅仅局限在“游戏”这个框框里。《暴雨》和《超凡双生》这样的游戏将书籍、电影和游戏融合在一起，成为一种独一无二的媒体形式。如果把它单一地理解为一部电影或一部游戏，那低分评价是可以理解的；但假如同时以两种角度衡量，获得的评价将截然不同，我们需要看到更多这样的东西。我妻子对此表示赞成——至少当她不再沉迷在《超凡双生》的故事里，想着要把世界从灵体浩劫中解救出来时，她会抽出时间表态的。
*QTE是QuickTimeEvent（快速反应事件）的缩写。在QTE中，玩家要对游戏画面上出现的按键或是角色的动作趋势迅速作出反应，并按下与画面所对应的按键。