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Opposable Thumbs / Gaming & Entertainment

Heavy Rain at E3: personal, third-person journey into hell

At this year's E3 we were treated to a lengthy demo of Heavy Rain, the story- …

Is it possible to create a game that is both cinematic and able to put you into the head of the character on the screen? We have no idea, but Heavy Rain is going to try. Petro Piaseckyj, Managing Producer for SCEA, played the game in front of me in a private section of Sony's booth, and he explained that you'll always be able to know what the character is thinking... even with a third person view.

Heavy Rain is the follow-up to Quantic Dream's Indigo Prophecy, a title with a heavy cult following in the US. At E3 we're seeing a brief section starring one of the game's four characters, Norman Jayden. He's a profiler for the FBI, and he's looking for a stolen car. He's also a drug addict, and it has been too long since he's had a fix. You can change your camera angle to see what's going on in the scene with a single button press, and another button brings up a list of thoughts in the character's head. You can then explore those thoughts, digging deeper and deeper into Jayden's head.

"Right now the thoughts are moving slowly, and they're easy to read," Piaseckyj explained. "But if he becomes stressed, or if he needs the drug, the thoughts move much faster, and the words may begin to jitter and twitch." It's a visual way of showing a character's mind racing, and it's very effective on the screen. Jayden hunches down against the rain as he walks around the junkyard, looking for clues. This isn't just a voice performance, actors did their own motion capture as well; each character in the game looks, moves, and sounds like an actual person.


This is a game that may re-train players in how to play a video game. If you ignore the first few nudges in one direction, don't worry, you can get back on track later. You can explore every clue, or barrel straight through the storyline. If Jayden stops using the drug, he'll face the consequences. Or players can decide to continue to use, and deal with that set of consequences. "This is a mature game," I was told. "We're going to put you into situations that will make you very uncomfortable."

Jayden gets involved in a fight with a character—I'm trying to avoid any kind of spoiler—and we get to see the next evolution of quick-time events. It's not so much that they've been updated, just used in a very polished way. Each arrow is placed where your eye will naturally go. If a button press would make a character punch, it will appear on his fist. If you want to make him dodge, the arrow will be where he will go. It doesn't feel like we're being locked into movements, it's more like a very visual choose your own adventure novel. No more taking your eyes off the action to handle the quick-time events; now they're placed where your eyes will be anyway, and that placement is contextual and gives hints about what will happen.

Exploring, trying different things, and accepting the outcomes are all a part of the game. "There's no such thing as failure or winning or losing, you're creating a story. We have four characters, and any one of them can die at any point, and the story continues. It's just that character's storyline has been removed from your story." There will be autosaves, and if you fall into an outcome that bothers you, it's possible to go back and replay it. The hope is that you'll just come to terms with having a dark story, and not use the autosave often. So what happens if everyone dies? "You haven't failed. You've created a tragedy," Piaseckyz told me.


While being brave and refusing to take a mulligan on bad choices will lead to a much darker, unique story, there was never a temptation to remove autosaves. "I think that would be horribly frustrating. The game is eight to 12 hours long, we don't want you to have to start the game over every time you play. You have to have save points."

The fact that the game is over in 12 hours is somewhat misleading, though, since certain actions trigger certain scenes and avoid others. Your actions will have consequences, and there are always more things to learn by exploring and making new choices. How much content is actually in the game? Piaseckyz held his hands apart, pantomiming the size of a large book. You'll want to play multiple times, in other words. "There are dozens of endings," Piaseckyz said. How many characters will live to see them? That will be up to you.

Heavy Rain is coming in 2010, for the PlayStation 3.

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