Heavy Rain Preview

by PaulAlanRichards on Jan.24, 2010, under Gaming

Heavy Rain is a cinematic and evolving thriller from Quantic Dream, the developer behind the critically acclaimed Fahrenheit. Dealing with a range of adult themes, the game revolves around a sophisticated plot and strong narrative threads that explore a complex moral proposition. You assume the role of multiple characters, with very different backgrounds, motivations and skills, in a world shaped by Bending Storylines – a dynamic narrative design where your actions and decisions will shape your story.

Genre: Adventure
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Developer: Quantic Dream
Release Date: February 23, 2010

Exclusively on: PlayStation 3

PEGI: 18+

The Plot

A city on the US east coast is being terrorized by the ‘Origami Killer’, whose victims are all discovered drowned, four days after they go missing. Seemingly the only clues: an origami figure and an orchid, discovered on each of their bodies.

The public is gripped by fear and paranoia. The authorities seen no closer to a credible suspect. And now another potential victim has disappeared – Shaun Mars.

As the clock ticks amidst suspicion and anxiety, four very different people are drawn into the invesigation – each following their own leads in a desperate search for shaun.

Each of them know what the coast will be if they don’t reach him in time – and they will soon be forced to ask themselves just how far they are prepared to go.

Development

Quantic Dream started working on Heavy Rain in February 2006. It was announced at E3 2006, where a tech demo entitled The Casting was presented to the media and general public.

The Casting Tech Demo

Some game physics will be made available by the use of PhysX by nVidia. It is used for console physics in general in the game. Originally for the PC, there were going to be two separate versions of the game to handle cases of a computer being equipped with the appropriate physics processing unit, and to handle cases when it is not present on the system. However, now that the game has been announced as a PlayStation 3 exclusive, it is assumed that that won’t be necessary. In the demo, the physics of the hair made use of the AGEIA technology.

In an interview given to GameDaily.com, Quantic Dream co-CEO and executive producer Guillaume de Fondaumière insisted that characters would be true virtual actors capable of showing highly realistic emotions.

In September 2009, Quantic Dream released a gameplay clip from the game revealing a topless scene where the game’s protagonist, Madison controlled by the player is able to perform a striptease on a character in the game, with full topless nudity.

An official response on the European PlayStation Blog said that the Heavy Rain demo “… should be on the store on the 11th of Feb”.

Gameplay

According to a demonstration given to Edge magazine, the game will use a unique control scheme. A trigger button on the PlayStation 3 controller will move the character forward. It will take advantage of the button’s analogue function, allowing the user to control the speed of the character’s movement by pressing harder or softer on the button.

The left analogue stick will control the movement of the character’s head and the direction the character moves in relation to where the character is looking. David Cage explains that this frees the movement of the character from the perspective of the camera. The rest of the game is played using a series of context sensitive actions such as picking up a bottle in a grocery store and hitting a robber on the head with it, and quick time events, normally for chase and combat sequences.

Players are able to bring up a selection of their character’s current thoughts by holding the L1 button and pressing corresponding buttons to say or do what they’re thinking. These thoughts will sometimes blur, and selecting them at the wrong time will affect the character’s reaction, causing them to say or do something in the wrong way. Action sequences, such as when the player is being attacked, play out as quick time events. Players will be presented with various symbols, requiring them to either press buttons, move the right analogue stick in a certain way, or shake or tilt the controller. Failure to execute these commands take the story along a different path, and certain mistakes will lead to a character’s death. For example, in one scene, Norman Jayden is interrogating a suspect named Mad Jack when he starts to suffer from withdrawal symptoms and button prompts will show up. If he fails to take his drugs, he will be taken to a scenario in which he will have to escape from a car before it is thrown into a crusher, killing him. In scenes like these, a ‘timer’ scene is shown at the bottom of the screen, indicating how long the player has to escape from his predicament.

If a character dies, the game does not end, and play control switches to another character, with the events of the previous character’s death affecting the story. In the event that all four characters die, there is a proper conclusion to the story and the game ends.