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

[Dripdry]

Agreed.

However, looking at the development of art history, the masters first worked toward realism. Caravaggio with his tenebrism (dramatic shading, where 3D games begin to take off with better shading and lighting) really began to bring things to life. When they reached that pinnacle of realism, other forms began to emerge. I imagine gaming will do something similar as we become bored of perfectly realistic games, even if they are masterpieces of both art and game design.

Anybody else with a more extensive art background have any other comments on this?