Heavy Rain - Playing a Story

Edge Magazine is running a piece about Heavy Rain, a thriller by Quantic Dream that's been in development for a few years now. Edge spoke with David Cage, the game's writer and director, about using graphics technology not simply for breathtaking landscapes or realistic lighting, but to bring the characters to life and make them more believable. Cage walked the folks at Kotaku through a demo, and they provided details on how the controls will work. From Edge: "'We worked very hard on motion capture, especially facial motion capture,' explains Cage. 'As you know, eyes are incredibly hard to do: the minute movements they constantly make mean you can tell whether something is human or not. We created a technology to motion-capture that from actors.' The shaders applied to the lead character's eyes and the skin that surrounds them also conspire to nudge Heavy Rain's characters closer to believability. The 'deadness' that so often afflicts such digital mannequins has been significantly chipped away, and we are presented with Madison, a character whose facial features, though attractive in an expectedly unnatural sort of way, also carry blemishes that succeed in breaking down her artificiality."

Comments

Re:We've hit rock bottom, FSM save us all.

[Das Modell]

No, it's like saying good games are few and far between, which is something that I do say. My reason for saying it about films isn't because I haven't seen many, it's the opposite. I have seen so many that I am not easily impressed. Perhaps your tastes are simply more shallow than mine.

You're full of shit. You haven't seen anything.

Length has a lot to do with developing an environment, characters and an overall story. I don't do rush job stories.

Again, length != quality.

On another note, these "excellent" films that you keep boasting about must be phenomenal. So good that you conveniently keep forgetting to list any of them.

There's no point in listing them.