Slashdot Mirror
Heavy Rain Gameplay Explained
David Cage, writer and director of Quantic Dream's Heavy Rain, has released a lengthy video of an entire level from the game, along with detailed commentary about how the game works. He demonstrates how to operate the UI, showing how contextual menus let you control actions, dialog, and even your character's thoughts, while also showcasing how the game's investigatory system works and even a few fighting-related quick-time events. 1Up recently spoke with Cage about his time in the games industry, including his previous work on Indigo Prophecy. They also did a Heavy Rain preview of their own, and spoke briefly about post-launch plans. The game is due out next year for the PS3.
I agree, the graphics are amazing. They did raise a question for me, though.
Should games-graphics attempt to simulate reality, or cinematography? Most seriously graphics-heavy developers seem to have a slightly schizophrenic approach to graphical effects - most especially lighting effects - in that they appear to be striving for reality while simulating cinematography.
A lot of lighting effects seem to be inspired by films - lens-flare, for example - which is great for dazzling entertainment, but drops a layer of abstraction into the immersive simulation by reminding you that you're not there. There's an interesting fuzziness around bright reflections & light-sources in the screenshots here which, while impressive and pretty, look more like something from the silver-screen than the real world. It serves to remind you that it isn't real, which seems at odds with the extraordinary lengths they've gone to in attempting to accurately reproduce realistic environments and facial-modelling.
Again, I think it's gorgeous, but I'll reiterate my question: given the continuous advances in games graphics, what should developers be aiming for? Reality, or cinematography?
Meta will eat itself
Working with Company X on an exclusive title will net you buddy-buddy status. This will open up an entire level of programming & financial support you have no hope of seeing while working on a cross-plat. Additionally, the lessons learned from this support (read: training seminar) can further be carried into other projects that will eventually become cross-platform. Your devs are all the better for it.
Isn't it logical to think that they'd make more money did they release the game for multiple platforms?
Yes it does, but what you could ask yourself is: is that profit bigger than the cost of developing for multiple platforms.
And in this case, you know they thought "No, it isn't".
And you can safely consider they know their job at least a little. Being pros at it and all that.
So your conclusion could be: "Damn! It is indeed expensive to develop for multiple platforms!" (to be more expensive than the great benefit of releasing in multiple platforms.)
And your next step in reasoning might be, for example: "Is it an unavoidable cost? Or are the platforms forcing a "fake" difference."
But you have many other, less paranoid, paths.
Plus, if you are really trying to push the boundaries, it is much easier to do so on a single platform. Developing for multiple platform generally means taking the least common denominator approach, doing only what you can do on all platforms and pushing the boundaries on none of them.
The cake is a pie
Maybe it is just me, but cutscenes are the worst part of a game. When the whole game is pretty much cutscenes, I'm turned off. When I'm playing a game, I want to play not watch a movie. Forcing you to participate in the cutscenes by pressing buttons at the right time makes this even worse.