PARIS–The term “interactive entertainment” has been bandied about for almost as long as “convergence,” but next year’s PlayStation 3 exclusive Heavy Rain could give new meaning to both. That is, if all goes according to the plans of Quantic Dream’s president and CEO David Cage.
“We want to create experiences that engage the player emotionally and we want to explore the potential of interactive storytelling,” said Cage, who opened the doors to his Parisian studio to a small group of American journalists. “Our goal is to create a new format for an adult audience. This stems from the idea that there are a lot of kids’ games out there, but I’m 39. I was born with videogames, but I don’t want to play the same games I did when I was 12.”
Even at this stage, characters in Heavy Rain look amazingly lifelike.
Quantic Dream’s Indigo Prophecy, a critically acclaimed but poorly marketed PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox game from Atari, was the first step in the direction that Cage and his team focused on. Heavy Rain is a film noir thriller, based on interactive story telling that changes based on the player’s actions, choices and consequences.
“It’s much more a journey than a series of obstacles,” said Cage. “It’s an emotional rollercoaster ride that should give players pleasure through a deep range of emotions.
Depth and meaning is important for us. We want players to have an interest in the characters and care about the characters. We try to tell a story that means something and makes you think a little bit. It’s not about a battle between good and evil but something that makes you think as a human being.”
Cage is keeping mum on the plot, in part because it changes depending on how one plays the game. A professional musician who gravitated to gaming 11 years ago after designing music for games, Cage spent 15 months writing 6,000 pages of notes and references and the 2,000-page script that powers Heavy Rain. The porous script is packed with 30,000 words of non-linear dialogue, which has been brought to life by a cast of 70 actors and stuntmen. Currently, a development team of over 220 people will bring the extensive motion-captured action — the largest ever for a videogame — into a narrative that gamers can explore.
“The key was to find a structure that had a solid backbone and a potential for non-linearity and then I introduce a fractal structure, since we don’t tell a story that’s 90 minutes long like a typical Hollywood film,” said Cage. ” Each scene becomes a short movie in itself. Sometimes parts of a scene have that same structure. It’s interesting to have consistency between this.”
Despite the gargantuan script and the unprecedented 170-day mo-cap shoot, players won’t find many cut scenes in Heavy Rain. Cage uses cut scenes only when there is no other way to relay part of the story. The core of the gameplay is for the story to unfold around the player. Like many game developers, Cage believes cut scenes are bad.
“We only use cut scenes for really key moments when there’s nothing to play,” said Cage. “Each scene must offer something strong that matters in narrative and gameplay. You can’t just have a fantastic story but nothing to play or vice versa. It’s a challenge to find both an interactive and storytelling component in every scene.”
Taking a cue from another Hollywood medium, television, Cage has crafted a story that offers scenes that can be played quickly and seamlessly. This should open up gameplay to a more mainstream audience, just as Sony’s PS3 is reaching a larger install base of global consumers.
“This is not a game where you spend four hours in a set and then come back two hours later because we have to reuse the set,” said Cage. “We want to surprise you. Many things will change from one scene to another. This is a good thing for the way people play games today. Sometimes people play four or five hours in row and sometimes they just want to play for a short time. You can jump in and play a scene if you want.”
Although Cage was coy with revealing much about the actual story, some clues did come to life through his presentation. He sent a small team of artists to New York for two weeks to take digital pictures and videos as reference for the story, which will take place on the East Coast of the United States. A train station that was shown in a real-time 3-D level was called Lexington Terminal, so it’s not clear whether the city in Heavy Rain will be an actual city or a fictitious setting. Ethan Mars is the protagonist of the story, and there is a serial killer called the Origami Killer, who will likely serve as the antagonist. There will also be a love interest named Famille.
Cage won’t likely unveil much more about the actual plot because he wants people to enjoy an experience that will be unique depending on how the player interacts with this promising video game, set to release sometime in 2009.
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