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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."
PS3 only. Good quality visuals. It is a detective story/game.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
All this realism stuff gets on my nerves. Sure it looks more realistic but is it actually a better game? Are the graphics on the Wii "realistic" hell no, they are basically cartoons but the games play well and I don't care about the graphics. So the eyes flicker around in this new game like the eyes of people in a meeting just waiting for it to finish, flicking to the clock, back to the notes and then gazing out of the window in a day-dream before flicking back into the room in case they are asked a question.
Realism isn't always the best way to convey the most emotion and impact, look at the finest paintings from the likes of Rembrandt, and its that impact that games companies should concentrate on rather than on yet another way to make a dull game look pretty.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
?ho immediately thinks of the production of "Chubby Rain" from that Steve Martin/Eddie Murphy comedy Bowfinger? heh. Off topic. Mod me down.
I think you probably do need to say it. What's your point? That every attempt to improve facial features is doomed because of the uncanny valley? That this technology shows that the uncanny valley worries are unjustified? That this project has achieved a lot but still fails due to the uncanny valley? That despite suffering from the uncanny valley, this project nevertheless has achieved a remarkable level of empathy?
"Realism isn't always the best way to convey the most emotion and impact"
Emoticons work much better.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
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?
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Most of you won't remember, but Quantic Dream is the studio that brought us Omikron: The Nomad Soul. That game had a soundtrack with David Bowie on it.
They also brought us Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy.
I'm a fan of their immersive adventure style games. Hard Rain ought to be a knockout.
They're using their grammar skills there.
It's not that games were somehow better back then, it's that you were younger and had more time to spend selecting and learning to play video games - and that you're comparing random games from today with your best memories of the best games of the past.
My best memories of, say, Deus Ex are much better than Crysis was... but I'm sure they're much better than Deus Ex actually was too.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Agreed.
However, looking at the development of art history... 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?
Interesting thought, but not one that persuades me. Many games have already made a virtue of deliberately non-photo-realistic visuals. Molyneux' games, for example, have cartoonish visuals not because he doesn't have the graphic sophistication to go for near photo-real but because he chooses not to.
I think the visual aesthetic has a lot to do with the entire experience the director is trying to impart. I really love The Witcher (my review here) for its immersiveness, and part of that immersiveness is the beautiful visuals which are clearly aiming towards (although not, at least on my hardware, quite achieving it). You really can, in The Witcher, just stop and watch the moon rise and be blown away by the beauty of the scene.
Photorealism also suits stories which build on the 'film noir' genre, as it's clear that Heavy Rain does - but black-and-white might work better (it's noticeable that the palette in those Heavy Rain screenshots is pretty subdued).
However, in the game I'm trying to work on I want to end up with a 'charcoal and wash' visual - very little colour and not a lot of detail. I don't - yet - know how to do this - near photo real would be a lot easier and may be what I eventually end up with. But the reason for that choice is partly to make the game look distinctive, but it's also to comment on the culture of the people I'm trying to tell a story about.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
I have to respectfully disagree. While I will admit that the nostalgia effect you describe is real and affects me too, it is not the whole explanation.
Far too many games have way too bland gameplay nowadays. Anyone having played assassins creed will know what I mean, although the story was quite intriguing. F.E.A.R. also suffered from shoot-the-same-guy-a-hundred-times-in-some-hallway-syndrome. Absolutely boring rubbish, although the paranormal events made it quite intriguing at the beginning. Half-life 2 had absolutely shitty gameplay in spite of an intriguing story and good graphics. I could go on and on, but you get the point.
But I also recognize some real good titles, which almost disprove your nostalgia effect theory. Portal was absolutely stunning for example, or Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy was very interesting, and most importantly: different. They stand out from the crowd.
But too many games nowadays focus on graphics and being "epic" and whatever, and the gameplay and/or story suffer as a result. It pisses me off.