Heavy Rain (PS3)

[eDotd]

While Sony has been hemorrhaging exclusives for quite a while now, one of the titles they've decided to hype is Quantic Dream's Heavy Rain. This game has been getting a good amount of buzz in the day or two since a post on Sony's blog talked about the title and pegged it a Sony exclusive.

This is an exciting development, as Quantic Dream has made some great story-driven games like Indigo Prophecy and Omikron: the Nomad Soul, but I'm skeptical about the game's financial future. Based on the video demowhen we featured him in our article about writing in games, these things make for great experiences but rarely pay off when it comes to actual sales. (NSFW language) shown at E3 last year, David Cage hasn't lost any of his love for emotionally-charged writing or story-based game play. However, as we noted when we featured him in our article about writing in games, these things make for great experiences but rarely pay off when it comes to actual sales.



TECH DEMO: HEAVY RAIN
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[HMcCoy]

Re: Heavy Rain (PS3)

Indigo Prophecy and Omikron: the Nomad Soul

Loved both of those. This should be hot.

[Flawless]

Re: Heavy Rain (PS3)

New details


On Locations:
"I don't want to do a big free-roaming city like GTA, because the flow of the story will then be hard to control. Nevertheless, I do want to incorporate big sets, with a crowd, heavy populated areas like a mall and a subway are going to be in there. Of course, the gameplay has got to make use of that aspect too."

On Graphics:
"People will be surprised. Internal (Sony's) feedback on graphics has been great. This is going to be a truly next-gen game. But still, we want to do something unique with the graphics, going beyond just making the most photorealistic world we can."

On Gameplay:
"With the release of Fahrenheit, we gave the adventure genre a new grammar. We brought new ways into the genre, new words if you want to see it like that, a new vocabulaire. With Heavy Rain, where going to expand on that same grammar."

On Story:
"Heavy Rain is about normal people that have landed in extraordinary situations. I wanted a much more personal story. The first thing that came to my mind, as a father of two little boys, was that the main theme should simply be a father's love for his son. This is not a game about saving the princess or the world. Its purely about a father's love."

"The main story will revolve around 4 different characters, and we're putting the spotlight on their perceptions. The question 'what is good and what is evil' is the key here, that will be just a matter of viewpoint...I believe heavily in moral choices, I'm going to use them A LOT. They're not about being good or bad, but about finding the right balance."

[Flawless]

Re: Heavy Rain (PS3)

Dreaming of a New Day: Heavy Rain's David Cage

The first and most obvious thing that I want to talk about is emotion in games. One thing that comes to mind for me is that you're going very far into realism, and quite often, the more realistic you get, the more difficult it can be for players to identify with the characters, given the Uncanny Valley situation. So why do you want to push toward realism?

DC: I agree and disagree with your statement. You don't have to be realistic to create emotion. Of course it's not required. There are many, many examples of that in the game industry. What I'm interested in with realism is that I want to learn, basically, what it means to perform for an actor, and what it requires to translate this performance from a technical and creative point of view. Basically, I want to learn, and we really learned a lot working on the casting demo, for example, not only from what worked but also from what didn't work.

I think the uncanny valley is something that people talk a lot about, but I think we'll start to see the end of it. We're not out of the Uncanny Valley yet, but we can start to see how to limit it. Once we have learned how to create really realistic characters, then they will be contrasted to nonrealistic characters, and we will apply what we've discovered to different types of rendering and characters.

So you don't feel that realism limits your audience?

DC: No, I'm the opposite. To tell you the truth, I think it's easier for a major part of users to relate to something that looks real, as opposed to something that's totally out there. I wouldn't say this is my personal opinion, because as an educated gamer, I can relate to basically anything based in talent. But I think a lot of games explore realism, and I think it's easier for players to relate to something that's close to what they know, rather than something totally strange.

Heavy Rain will be shown at the Leipzig Games Convention next month.

[stiffarmleft]

Re: Heavy Rain (PS3)

I loved Indigo Prophecy, can't wait for this.

[Flawless]

Re: Heavy Rain (PS3)

New Screens

[ThaGenecyst]

Re: Heavy Rain (PS3)

eat your heart out metal gear

[in mid air]

Re: Heavy Rain (PS3)

Amazing graphics!!

[Bornindamecca]

Re: Heavy Rain (PS3)

This is the kind of game that could potentially get me to buy a PS3 before(if) Blu Ray becomes a necessary part of my life. They did a nice job with the acting, but they definitely have to worry about the uncanny valley. That was like watching an animated corpse in many ways. It's something I think they can fix if they work on the lower eyelids, darken the eyes and play with the specular technology.

[Flawless]

Re: Heavy Rain (PS3)

Trailer

http://www.gamersyde.com/stream_8318_en.html

...

[ThaGenecyst]

Re: Heavy Rain (PS3)

Holy crap I think that looks better than MGS4 graphically


QTE's remind me of Indigo Prophecy's.... oh man I can't wait for this one

[Altimus]

Re: Heavy Rain (PS3)

The visuals in this game are spectacular.

[stiffarmleft]

Re: Heavy Rain (PS3)

That looks great, I would like to see more interactive movie type games, with a good plot.

[Flawless]

Re: Heavy Rain (PS3)

1UP: Heavy Rain First Look

Like any good teacher, Cage starts with a bullet-pointed list, which sounds similar to the one he established last time around: an emotion-driven experience, with mature themes, in which choices matter and the story is the gameplay. The "rubber band stories," which allow players to make decisions but not branch the story off in too drastic a direction, return as well. I come to realize a few minutes into the demonstration that Cage's theories and goals haven't changed much in the past three years (Indigo Prophecy shipped in the U.S. in October 2005), but their execution has evolved considerably.

If there's one place his speech seems to differ, it's when he mentions wanting the game to be "accessible to a broad audience." In some circles, that's code for wanting to sell more copies, but for Cage it seems to come from the desire to simplify the interface and reduce confusion. Case in point: Movement in Heavy Rain doesn't come from the analog stick; it comes from holding down the right trigger (R2), "like in a racing game," says Cage. "Simple. You never get lost. Pressing the button always makes you move forward." The newly freed left analog stick, then, controls your character's head -- and serves as the steering wheel, essentially.

Those having Resident Evil tank-controls-nightmare flashbacks can relax. While button-movement seems strange at first, it solves one of Indigo Prophecy's key control issues. Because that game relied so heavily on cinematic camera angles, as the view changed players often found themselves turning around unintentionally; the camera would shift before they could orientate themselves to the new perspective. With button-movement, that problem disappears, though I'm curious to see how natural it feels to move quickly with this setup.

The rest of the controls have changed a decent bit as well. You still interact with the world around you using the right analog stick (to knock on a door, for instance), but now you make many choices with the Sixaxis' tilt sensor. Walk up to a door and the game will give you three dialogue choices, which you select by physically moving your controller toward them. "What is interesting in this interface is the fact that you are not stuck when you want to talk," says Cage. "In most games, when you want to talk, you enter a cut-scene with fixed cameras, and there's nothing you can do. But here we can move and talk and interact at the same time, like in real life." Using a similar interface, you can pull up a short list of your character's thoughts at any time by holding down L1 and moving the controller to select between them, the idea being that you can ask your character what they are thinking as a way to gain clues or extra information about what's occurring around them.

Once Cage finishes showing this second playthrough, however, he returns to his point about not reading too much into the scene, saying that the full game will feel more like a "dark thriller" than a horror movie. "Imagine many scenes like this, each one having a different context, a different scenario," he says. "I don't want you to believe that Heavy Rain is a story of serial killers, and you're stuck in many houses, and you need to escape, and each time it's the same game."

Yet with little more than a promise of "themes never used in games before," I find myself as excited for the game as I have been for any in recent memory, and the majority of that comes from the similarities to Indigo Prophecy. That game wasn't without its faults, but conceptually, it was incredibly refreshing, and it's rare to see a game that experimental with a significant budget behind it, which added up to one of the most memorable games I've ever played. And now to see that approach evolve, with some of the best graphics in the industry, makes Heavy Rain hard not to like.

I'm not sure if my excitement comes from Quantic Dream's talent, or because they are the only ones attempting games of this sort, but there's something important worth paying attention to here.

[goh]

Re: Heavy Rain (PS3)

I hope there's some very minor level of customization. I can't stand her hair.