The Beyond: Two Souls demo I played at E3 featured protagonist Jodie Holmes as a CIA operative, undergoing a perilous mission in the war-torn streets of Somalia. Quite how Jodie and her accompanying supernatural entity 'Aiden' came to this point is unclear, and that's fine; Quantic Dream has a curious life story in mind for its unusual heroine, and this was a mere portion of the game's ten or so hours.

Still, it was jarring. Heavy Rain often placed itself in the more normal, human situations that games tend to avoid. While it had its share of action, those sequences were smaller parts of bigger scenes, and not necessarily what defined them. In contrast, Beyond's Somalia demo offered 20 minutes of war-based intensity, and at times it outwardly resembled the medium's bevy of military shooters. It was weird.