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

Am I the only one

[nawcom]

?ho immediately thinks of the production of "Chubby Rain" from that Steve Martin/Eddie Murphy comedy Bowfinger? heh. Off topic. Mod me down.

So real you'll feel like you're in a chat room

[Ostracus]

"Realism isn't always the best way to convey the most emotion and impact"

Emoticons work much better.

Hard Rain?

[Dripdry]

Good lord, when I first saw the title of this thing I thought of that movie with Christian Slater from about ten years ago, "Hard Rain", and thought they were making a game out of it. It was at that point that I cried out in fear and pain, thrashing my keyboard into the wall and curling up in the corner, a whimpering smudge of a geek. "Make it stop...." was all I could be heard to say...

Re:Short summary;

[ya really]

With a nick like "MSFanBoi2," surely you would never have an axe to grind, would you? I'm also guessing you opinion is always completely non-biased and always gives a fair look to sony/linux/apple/etc. right?

Re:So realistic you'll feel like you are in a meet

[Anonymous Coward]

and my heart rate jumps when the other side bonzai-rushed

They threw little trees at you?