Heavy Rain (PS3)

[Cyros]

Would love to get a release date for this.

[ThaGenecyst]

Gaming geezers have been eulogizing the venerated adventure genre ever since Tim Schafer's appropriately funereal Grim Fandango failed to set sales charts ablaze. Even though titles such as King's Quest, Maniac Mansion, and Myst were tremendous PC blockbusters way back in the day, publishers have largely abandoned story-heavy, action-deprived fare during the last decade in favor of shooters, RPGs, and racing games. Dedicated fans can still uncover a trickle of lower-profile indie offerings on the PC side, but console gamers seeking "interactive fiction" experiences are usually left with bitter, nostalgia-souring dregs (Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude, anyone?). But shockingly, an upcoming adventure game has emerged that even has the jaded console community taking notice: Quantic Dream's PS3 exclusive, Heavy Rain.

Although the previous two games to spawn from Paris-based Quantic Dream -- Omikron: The Nomad Soul (Dreamcast) and Indigo Prophecy (PS2/XB) -- were hardly mainstream hits, both pushed the routinely-overlooked adventure genre into daring new frontiers. Surprisingly, QD's third effort, a gritty, film-noir thriller titled Heavy Rain, has already amassed plenty of buzz thanks to a stunning 2006 teaser trailer known as "The Casting." Solely based on that clip's eerily realistic virtual starlet and her unabashedly emotional performance, many gamers who've rarely considered narrative-based gaming are already enraptured.

We recently had the opportunity to get a fleeting glimpse of the game's development in Paris and came away stunned...and confused by what we saw. The title's 100-person team has forged an unbelievably gorgeous graphical engine, yet it's tough to grasp the big picture because QD is keeping nearly every aspect of the game's story line and gameplay tightly under wraps. But hey, who really wants spoilers at this point, anyway?

Heavy Rain's eerily realistic visuals edge ever closer to that fabled "uncanny valley," and it's not simply because QD has thrown plenty of polygons around. In order to capture a believable performance, over 70 different actors have had their faces scanned, motion capture sessions captured, and voice work recorded. The developers believe that it's imperative for a complete performance to be captured from each individual actor, and QD has spent over 170 days creating all the crucial elements of Heavy Rain in its own in-house motion capture facility. Because the team knew that the project would be such a massive undertaking, it purposefully avoided casting big-name stars that would be unable to commit to such a massive, daunting project. Even the game's supporting cast sparkle with believability, as random passersby in Paris were invited to have their face scanned for inclusion in the game.

But as compelling as Heavy Rain's characters may be, we were perhaps even more amazed by its immaculately detailed environments. Rather than approach the settings as levels in a game, QD hired both a renowned movie set designer and an architect to create realistic, lived-in sets for its virtual actors to inhabit. Since nothing shatters the illusion of exploration like a flat, 2D object that you can't interact with, QD demanded that every single element in the game world must be rendered in full 3D. This astonishing level of detail wasn't easy to accomplish, and the team realized that it couldn't do it'itself. Instead, the team would build rough areas, collect all the pertinent real-world texture samples, and then outsource the heavy-lifting to various Asian development houses. Once QD got these reworked versions back, developers would go back for a final pass of artistic polish. We were shown several realtime environments that looked breathtakingly real, including a rain-soaked crime scene at the side of the highway, a stylish Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired abode packed with whimsical furniture, a cozy, cluttered apartment belonging to a young lady, a musty antique shop stuffed with ornate clocks, and a dusty, sunbeam-filled train station. We immediately wanted to wander through these areas ourselves, opening drawers, and searching for clues.

One glance at the game's phenomenally lifelike real-time visuals will have you second-guessing your own reality's graphical prowess, but ultimately, the quality of Heavy Rain's story line will determine whether or not it's worth the price of admission. Luckily, its grisly serial-killer plot shows incredible promise. "Most publishers are still busy making games for 12-year olds," explains Quantic Dream CEO and founder David Cage. "Heavy Rain is for an adult audience who want to be emotionally engaged." Cage places immense value on depth and meaning -- two narrative tenets generally absent from even the best games' story lines. Cage even tried to pare the game's thousand-plus page script down to the size of a standard film script, but found it a fruitless exercise -- Heavy Rain's interlocking "nonlinear fractal structure" simply couldn't be contained by the antiquated medium. And you shouldn't expect to sit through oodles of talky, non-interactive cut-scenes either. Cage says that he'll resort to standard cinemas only when absolutely necessary, and he hopes to make Heavy Rain a game that can be enjoyed in short, episodic bursts. He believes that the savvy, adult audience he's courting don't necessarily have the time to sit down and plow through ten hours of gameplay -- instead, he hopes that it's an ongoing mystery that you'll keep returning to over the course of a few weeks.

True crime aficionados will surely be hooked: The game's premise has you investigating a series of unexplained slayings in a dreary, east coast American town, but the unique nonlinear "bending" narrative structure allows for greater freedom than you'd expect from the genre. Here, you're not constricted by a set path, but rather given freedom to make significant moral decisions that lead to a diverse network of interlocking story possibilities. Your dialogue choices (and contextual interactions, performed via simple, Shenmue-style button presses) will determine which ending you'll reach, and it's even possible for major protagonists to bite the dust along the way. Plus, Cage guarantees that we won't be witnessing an absurd, Indigo Prophecy-style deus ex machina moment in Heavy Rain's fifth act. "I'm trying to avoid adding yellow monsters from the Internet this time around -- Heavy Rain doesn't need supernatural elements to make an impact."

[Flawless]

Eurogamer Preview

Quote:

There's no rain during our trip to Paris to see Heavy Rain, which is bad news for the photographer travelling in our group, who might have done well out of that. Then again, there's no Heavy Rain on our trip to Paris to see Heavy Rain either. Nor, it turns out, was there any sign of it at Leipzig's Games Convention in August, despite its top billing at Sony's conference and director David Cage's press briefings. When we sit down with Cage three months later to ask whether anything we've seen so far - characters, locations, scenarios - is actually in the game you'll be invited to buy in the second half of 2009, he pauses for a second. "No."

Heavy Rain's vital statistics

Quote:

The script 2,000 pages long 60 scenes, each about 15-20 minutes long, most, but not all of which you see on any play-through 40,000 words of non-linear dialogue Based on 6,000 pages of notes and references 15 months in development The art design Two weeks scouting for locations on the East Coast of the USA 15 months of design by ten people Photos, topographical gameplay maps, sketches of every item, paintings of every scene The outsourcing to Asia Over 100 people involved outside Quantic Dream 480 man-months of work Based on an "outsourcing bible" and "level architect blueprints" The motion capture All done on-site at Quantic Dream in Paris 170 days of shooting across nine months Over 70 actors and stuntmen involved Casting sessions in Paris and London 30,000 unique animations recorded

[Candyman5]

Here it is, I couldn't remember what this puppy was called. Indigo Prophesy baby...lol. Is there a release date yet?

[goh]

Nope but I'd guess October 13th.

[tree3five]

Anything new on this game? I havnt heard anything in a while.

[Flawless]

Week long coverage at 1UP. Also, Gametrailers will have some new footage this Thursday on GTTV and just about everybody will be posting hands-on previews on Friday.

Quote:

When Quantic Dream showed their first Heavy Rain press demo "The Taxidermist," they semi-famously announced that it was a custom scene created for demonstration purposes rather than a scene from the game's story. But it was more than enough to ignite my interest, to the point that I would have voted it my E3 2008 game of the show had I not signed a non-disclosure agreement saying I couldn't discuss it at the time. So when I heard the developers were ready to show their next demo -- the first featuring actual story elements -- I knew it was time to ramp up our coverage for this week's cover story.

[Cyros]

Wooh!