Heavy, Man
We finally got to play Heavy Rain. We are impressed. We will now tell you about it.
Published: May 22, 2009
Forget all the bravado and flashiness of American developers' pimping of their products, it's the Europeans' mix of boisterous enthusiasm that makes them the kings of the not-so-self-reserved hype machine. If you've ever listened to French developer Quantic Dream's head cheese, David Cage, you'll likely already know what we're talking about; his combination of zeal and propensity for ladling on the hyperbole in a way that doesn't always feel like he's shooting for the moon almost instantly recalls a certain Peter Molyneaux whenever he's spinning his own games.
After finally seeing Heavy Rain up and running on a PS3 right in front of our faces (that or it was one of the most impressive orchestrations of smoke and mirrors we'll ever see), though, it's hard not to get just a little bit excited about the maturation of what Cage, serving as director and writer of the hard-boiled postmodern noir adventure, is trying to do. The history of the developer's work is evident in just about everything they do: the branching, not-over-when-you-die nature of the story (first seen in the Bowie-powered Omikron: The Nomad Soul), the heavy quick time events action sequences that border on the gimmicky yet never teeter over the edge (used almost exclusively as the means of interaction in Indigo Prophecy), it's all here.
The difference, of course, is that the underlying tech for it all and the presentation has leapfrogged nearly everything else out there -- especially once you consider the ends that Quantic Dream has gone to just to make it all feel like you're controlling a dark, moody murder mystery. As was mentioned multiple times during the presentation (and even once we'd finally gotten a crack at playing the game) was the over-arching theme of "How far are you prepared to go to save someone you love?" This simple little premise is littered with connotations and potential, but even after playing through the 10 or so minute sequence of peril-strewn investigation and quite literally death-defying action bits, we're really no closer to figuring it all out.
Before we get into the actual particulars of all those quick button presses and why they're not just another glorified QTE sequence (well, not entirely), let's delve a little into the actual gameplay that has you affecting the world, chiefly the ARI (that's Alternate Reality Interface for us laymen) that serves as the major detecting tool for Norman Jayden, one of the four main characters in the game. Jayden has a promising career; he's a profiler for the FBI, has worked on numerous cases involving serial killers, but his latest, a string of grisly murders perpetrated by the mysterious Origami Killer (so named because he leaves origami figures on his victims as a calling card), is a harder nut to crack than normal.
For all that 29 year old Jayden has going for him, though, he's still only human, subject to the same vices as the rest of us -- in his case an addiction to the drug Tryptocaine, which he needs to take lest he have some seriously nasty withdrawal symptoms (which come into play in a second). The actual process for taking the drugs requires a finger-mangling set of controller interactions that must be done quickly, but they, like nearly every action in the game, can lead to a different outcome.
At any point where Jayden is pondering the situation or has to speak to someone, his actual thoughts will present themselves as on-screen button prompts that swirl around him. If he's nervous or, say, feeling the effects of his withdrawals, they'll move far more quickly, will shake or will appear garbled. Though it wasn't yet in the build we played, you'll actually be able to hear the thoughts too, and no doubt there will be some fun effects applied to those.
After finally seeing Heavy Rain up and running on a PS3 right in front of our faces (that or it was one of the most impressive orchestrations of smoke and mirrors we'll ever see), though, it's hard not to get just a little bit excited about the maturation of what Cage, serving as director and writer of the hard-boiled postmodern noir adventure, is trying to do. The history of the developer's work is evident in just about everything they do: the branching, not-over-when-you-die nature of the story (first seen in the Bowie-powered Omikron: The Nomad Soul), the heavy quick time events action sequences that border on the gimmicky yet never teeter over the edge (used almost exclusively as the means of interaction in Indigo Prophecy), it's all here.
The difference, of course, is that the underlying tech for it all and the presentation has leapfrogged nearly everything else out there -- especially once you consider the ends that Quantic Dream has gone to just to make it all feel like you're controlling a dark, moody murder mystery. As was mentioned multiple times during the presentation (and even once we'd finally gotten a crack at playing the game) was the over-arching theme of "How far are you prepared to go to save someone you love?" This simple little premise is littered with connotations and potential, but even after playing through the 10 or so minute sequence of peril-strewn investigation and quite literally death-defying action bits, we're really no closer to figuring it all out.
Before we get into the actual particulars of all those quick button presses and why they're not just another glorified QTE sequence (well, not entirely), let's delve a little into the actual gameplay that has you affecting the world, chiefly the ARI (that's Alternate Reality Interface for us laymen) that serves as the major detecting tool for Norman Jayden, one of the four main characters in the game. Jayden has a promising career; he's a profiler for the FBI, has worked on numerous cases involving serial killers, but his latest, a string of grisly murders perpetrated by the mysterious Origami Killer (so named because he leaves origami figures on his victims as a calling card), is a harder nut to crack than normal.
For all that 29 year old Jayden has going for him, though, he's still only human, subject to the same vices as the rest of us -- in his case an addiction to the drug Tryptocaine, which he needs to take lest he have some seriously nasty withdrawal symptoms (which come into play in a second). The actual process for taking the drugs requires a finger-mangling set of controller interactions that must be done quickly, but they, like nearly every action in the game, can lead to a different outcome.
At any point where Jayden is pondering the situation or has to speak to someone, his actual thoughts will present themselves as on-screen button prompts that swirl around him. If he's nervous or, say, feeling the effects of his withdrawals, they'll move far more quickly, will shake or will appear garbled. Though it wasn't yet in the build we played, you'll actually be able to hear the thoughts too, and no doubt there will be some fun effects applied to those.
