Ellen Page Tells Us We Can Literally Become Her For Her New Project

At this point in her career Ellen Page has become something of an expert on super powers. From her role in X-Men: The Last Stand as the walk-through-walls kid sister of the team Kitty Pryde to her world-building turn in Inception, Ellen has portrayed tough ladies wrestling with powers and responsibilities way above her maturity level. However impressive those special abilities may have been, it seems like her upcoming role in the Playstation 3 exclusive game Beyond: Two Souls might win in a dork-driven debate to the death.

Beyond premiered a new 35 minute gameplay trailer at the Tribeca Film Festival this past Saturday night, which is strange, mainly because line goers were wondering what the heck a video game trailer was doing at the TFF. Firstly, the game comes from the writer/director David Cage and his Paris-based studio Quantic Dream, and both have made a name by creating incredibly cinematic game experiences that preference storytelling over the standard game tropes of shooting, jumping, and generally running amok. Cage's previous game, Heavy Rain, has become one of the best examples of the games' and film industries' getting even cozier as bedfellows in the uncanny valley. So this new project is, in many ways, a 10 hour interactive filmic experience.

It seems as though Cage has truly found his muse in Ellen Page ("Cage and Page" has a good ring to it, right?). Over the course of the 35 minute trailer (which you can check out on the next page), Cage's virtual camera is trained on Ellen's emotional performance as the game's main heroine, Jodie Holmes. We see her fighting for survival against the winter cold, making new friends among the dregs of society, and dramatically questioning her own desire to go on living. This very human and emotional performance is at the core of the game experience, but then Cage throws in a whopping spin: Jodie's invisible partner, Aiden, who endows her with supernatural abilities. (We love those!)

She also explained how challenging the process of performance-capturing a lead role in a game vs. her experiences shooting film. "It was absolutely the most challenging acting job because every day we're doing thirty plus pages and it was non-stop. A lot of it was really, really intense and grueling so I think in those moments having to get there and get there quickly was really challenging but a great exercise for me."

Beyond looks to be an emotional and action packed game with amazing performances from Ellen Page, Willem Dafoe (!) and the rest of the supporting cast. It's an exciting time for gamers as new advances in technology are making the games more immersive and realistic than ever. Beyond is not only using this new technology, but is raising the bar of user interactive experience to a whole new level. So if you ever wanted to kick a bunch of butt, deliver a baby or busk for cash as a virtual Ellen Page, your epic will be arriving on October 3rd.