The Gaming Horizon – Heavy Rain

Originally written for Nuclear Geek.com

Welcome to my column, The Gaming Horizon, a semi-regular piece about the upcoming games you should definitely be keeping an eye on. Today I’m going to look at Quantic Dream’s Heavy Rain. The Paris-based developer are responsible for such cult favourites as Omikron: The Nomad Soul (also know as David Bowie: The Game) and the critically acclaimed yet financially panned Indigo Prophecy (or Fahrenheit depending on which side of the pond you come from). Indigo Prophecy did some really cool things concerning the effects of decisions, branching storylines and time-based event triggers. It’s the sort of innovation that Quantic Dream hope to expand upon in Heavy Rain. Now before you read on, watch the video below. I mean, really watch it.

‘The Casting’, a tech demo first shown at E3 2006, is a prototype whose goal was to define if it was possible to create a current-gen character with the ability to express complex emotions. Watching the video it’s easy to see that Quantic Dream achieved their goal, the in-game engine accurately capturing each subtle shade of emotion the actress experiences – from shy naivety to anger and tears.

“It was a short test done in three months, starting from scratch, including the script writing and development of the engine on PS3,” says David Cage, CEO and founder of Quantic Dream, “But most of all it was about understanding from an artistic point of view what crafting an emotional experience will mean in the future. On this point we learnt much more than we expected. Thinking about a video game as an emotional experience has a massive aspect on every single aspect of development, from the writing to the interface, to the technology and tools. Quantic Dream has invested in this particular approach for ten years; now we have a very clear vision of how emotions can be triggered.”

It’s a provocative proposition: that a videogame could possess the power to resonate on a deeply emotional level. A game that can evoke complex emotions – longing, despair, empathy – is the holy grail for some in the industry. Some may question whether such a feat is even possible. Many games have tried and failed, or at least fallen short of their goals. Mass Effect attempted a believable romance sub-plot, but the inflexibility of the conversation system and character models that strayed just the wrong side of the uncanny valley made it all a little too artificial. Final Fantasy titles have always done a good job of triggering emotions, but there has always been a certain disconnect with characters that are clearly computer generated. The touching recreation of relationship in Ico signified a new possibility for videogames but technological limitations only allowed it to take this so far.

So will Heavy Rain truly be able to encapsulate the essence of what makes us human? Cage is adamant that it will. “Most videogames only use very basic emotions, like fear, anger, power and frustration, but not the social emotions that appears later during evolution like empathy, sadness, joy, pity, love et cetera. These emotions are more complex to generate, but all other are forms managed to do it. I can see no reason why games should limit themselves to the same old basic ones…Our next project will continue to explore the direction we initiated with [Indigo Prophecy]. We discovered that an emotional experience based on storytelling could be as appealing as more traditional game forms. We also saw with the incredible reactions to The Casting that people were eager to discover new forms of interactivity. With this next project, we want to build on what we learnt, continue to improve the grammar of our narrative language, while offering a very unique type of experience. It is again very ambitious, unique and challenging at all levels.”

Details on actual gameplay remain scarce, but what is known fits into the emotional construct that Quantic Dream have proposed. There will be no supernatural elements, the narrative focus instead on dark film noir thriller, with mature themes such as a father’s love for his son providing the basis for drama – a complex narrative that will have to be handled delicately if not to come across heavy-handed. It’s important to note that the plot is in no way connected to The Casting, nor is it a sequel to Indigo Prophecy.

The ability to play as several different characters is nothing new to videogames, but there’s the enticing possibility that the ability to do so in Heavy Rain will be weaved into both the gameplay and narrative. “I continue to explore schizophrenia,” explains Cage, “What it means to be a different person – but the game will also be about love, fear, and how both can interfere. It will really be about moral choices, and the difficulty in knowing the difference between the good and the bad.” The interactive narration Heavy Rain promises, combined with an unprecedented level of emotional depth, is an exciting concept on its own, but tie it into considerations towards those aspects of the human psyche most titles are content to ignore and it’s clear that Quantic Dream have something very special in store.

Still…a father’s love? Schizophrenia? The dichotomy of love and hate? It all sounds very highbrow, and needless to say far removed from the mindless violence we’re used to. Alarm bells may ring for some. Fusing such intricate and diverse sentiments into a gaming experience is a complex task to say the least. Thierry Prodhomme, Lead Character Designer at Quantic Dream, is well aware of such difficulties. “Creating emotion on a virtual actors requires a combination of many different elements. Graphics or animations are just some of them. We tried to work on the lighting, the directing, the script, the animation of hair, the tongue and fingers. It is really the consistent combinations of all these elements that create emotion. This is why it is so difficult to achieve.” If The Casting is anything to go by, then it is clear that Quantic Dream are well on the way to accomplishing the seemingly impossible task of making a virtual actor capable of expressing and sharing complex emotions with the audience. And that was two years ago. We can only imagine what they’re capable of now.

We’ve seen the current-gen technology used to amaze with expansive vistas and creatures that fill the whole screen, but to have a game that looks inward rather than outward – to look at what makes us human – and transform this into gameplay, is a change of experience the importance of which cannot be understated. David Cage is well aware of this fact: “Time has come for interactive experiences to propose more than fun and adrenaline. We need to offer a wide panel of emotions, and not just fear, anger, frustrations, but love, hate, empathy, sadness. We should also start to bring depth and meaning by creating experiences deeply relating to a player’s inner self. Our industry is now ready to reach maturity. We need to become more ambitious, more creative; we need to dare to explore new directions and take new risks. I am convinced that great rewards will be found following that route.”

Let us hope that this is not a vision exclusive to Quantic Dream.