Heavy Rain Interview

Quantic Dream’s David Cage is a man with a message. His on stage Heavy Rain presentation during Sony’s gamescom 09 press conference will go down in history for the most uses of the word “love”, an emotion he hopes he’ll capture with the hotly anticipated PS3 exclusive. The following morning we sat down with the man himself for an extended interview on all things Heavy Rain, and a heap more. Read on for part one of Cage’s most revealing interview yet.

VideoGamer.com: I was at the Sony conference yesterday and I very much enjoyed your part of the show. You revealed Ethan Mars, who used to be an architect, as the fourth playable character. How has he been caught up with the Origami Killer?

David Cage: His son is kidnapped. He lost his first son because he didn’t take good care of him. He lost him in the crowd, and two years later he still suffers of this guilt. He has this strange relationship with his son, it’s very cold and distant because of what happened. His son disappears and he’s probably been kidnapped by the Origami Killer. Ethan knows he has four days to find his son alive, otherwise he’ll be found dead, probably in a waste bin, like the others.

VideoGamer.com: Is he trying to help his son without the help of the authorities? There was a moment in the trailer when he looked like he was fighting against a group of people. Are people not listening?

DC: I can’t tell you the story, but what happens in fact is that he thinks he has a lead, so he wants to explore that. But at the same time, the police start to find him suspicious for different reasons.

VideoGamer.com: You touched briefly during the conference on Scott Shelby, the third playable character. What can you tell me about him?

DC: Yeah yesterday the focus was really on Ethan. Scott Shelby is a private detective, and he’s been hired by the families of the victims to lead a parallel investigation on the Origami Killer case to try to find clues that maybe the police missed. He’s really a character from a Film Noir. He’s a typical private eye, working on his own. He’s really tall, massive, a bit overweight. He works alone always. And he has his own method – he’s a former cop. He will have to work with a very special teammate this time, a little bit against his will, and he will form this very strange team with someone else.

VideoGamer.com: At one point in the trailer I saw one character who has already been revealed…

DC: You really analysed the trailer didn’t you!

VideoGamer.com: Well, that’s my job!

DC: Oh okay! No I appreciate that!

VideoGamer.com: The character was interacting with one of the new characters. How will the four characters intertwine during the story?

DC: The four characters, depending on how you play, can meet and have relationships.

VideoGamer.com: Romantic relationships?

DC: They may. Not men!

VideoGamer.com: Is it possible to go through the game and not cross paths?

DC: There are characters that have to meet and there are other characters that may meet depending on how you play.

VideoGamer.com: Will you play each character’s story individually, or will there be a point where they all come together at the end?

dc: It’s a very classic structure with four characters. Each one starts from their starting point and they seem not to be related at all. And of course they start to cross and converge to the same point.

VideoGamer.com: That structure reminds me of early Tarantino films. Was there any inspiration you had for that structure?

DC: Yeah many movies did that very well. You mentioned Tarantino definitely did that very well. Collision was a very interesting movie with several characters whose destinies were interlaced. So yeah, all these were definitely inspirations.

VideoGamer.com: What’s your take on the PS3 in terms of its graphical potential. Is Heavy Rain pushing the system as far as it can go, or is there more left to provide developers?

DC: Well, you need to keep in mind that Heavy Rain is our first title on PS3. It’s not the second or third generation of games on the same platform. We’ve just discovered the platform right now. So yeah, there’s plenty of room for improvement I’m sure.

VideoGamer.com: PS3 owners looking at the games coming out on the PS3 next year are probably thinking the graphics are as good as they’re going to get, but you suggest they can get even better?

DC: Oh yeah I’m sure. At Quantic Dream we know we can do much better than what we do here.

VideoGamer.com: How long will it take the average gamer to complete Heavy Rain?

DC: I didn’t want the game to be too long, to be honest. I’m telling a story and I want to create a very intense journey. It’s difficult to create this emotion through 40 hours. So depending on how you play, I think that one typical walk through would be between eight and ten hours depending on how much you want to explore. It’s really up to you.

VideoGamer.com: Is that just one character?

DC: That’s all four characters. Their destinies are interlaced, so you play one scene with one and another scene with another, so it’s not like you pick up one at the beginning and you play all the way through. Everything is interlaced. So I would say eight to ten hours would be a typical walk through, but of course you can replay scenes. There is a big replayability value.

VideoGamer.com: Because you’ll want to see how else the scenes can play out?

DC: If you want to.

VideoGamer.com: Is it a purely single-player game?

DC: Yeah.

VideoGamer.com: Will there be any online features?

DC: Yeah definitely. We’re working on this at the moment, having some content online and different features online. But it won’t be of course multiplayer. It’s a single-player experience.

VideoGamer.com: Will you support the game after it’s released with downloadable content, or will it be a self-contained experience?

DC: It’s both. It’s a self-contained experience. We won’t release the end of the game as DLC that you need to pay for. The game has all the scenes it’s supposed to have. It’s a complete story. But we are talking with Sony at the moment about having maybe extra downloadable content, maybe with prequels or sequels about the characters. I’m sure people will get attached to some of them and will want to know them even better.

VideoGamer.com: Heavy Rain appears to be an emotionally engaging game. Some people criticise games for not being truly emotionally engaging, and say there’s never been a game released that has caused people to cry, for example. Will Heavy Rain make players cry?

DC: That’s really the goal of Heavy Rain. If people play Heavy Rain and don’t feel anything then we’ve missed the game. It’s as simple as that. Our starting point with Heavy Rain was to say look, all the games around here are just based on adrenaline. It’s just on excitement and frustration and competition – all these simple and primal emotions. What about all the more complex emotions like empathy, sadness, happiness? Can we make you smile or even laugh in front of your TV? Can we make you cry? Can we make you feel something different than just shooting and jumping? That’s the challenge of the game. I hope we succeeded. There are some very unique scenes in this game, things that, when I play them I really feel something and hope players will feel something too.

VideoGamer.com: So maybe they will cry?

DC: Who knows?

VideoGamer.com: What do you say to the critics who say the game looks too quick time heavy?

DC: Bullshit! Just bullshit! I mean what’s the question? We released Fahrenheit before. People know very well what the kind of balance we’re looking for is. The balance is quite similar in Heavy Rain. I think that people who didn’t see any demos or did not play the game are a little bit confused by the fact that the interface is in 3D. It’s not quick time events. You navigate. You’re free to explore. It’s just that the interface, instead of being 2D icons in the lower corner, they are now inside the set. That’s the only difference. You control the character second to second, and the balance is quite similar to Fahrenheit. There’s no difference.

VideoGamer.com: Was it simply the case that when some people first saw Heavy Rain they didn’t completely understand what you’re trying to do?

DC: You know when you make a first-person shooter, you just see ten seconds and you know what the game is about. When you see a game that has no real reference, that is kind of different, it’s really difficult. Some people imagine things. Don’t be afraid. It’s not quick time based. All the purpose of Heavy Rain is to tell the story not through cutscenes, but through gameplay. I would be stupid just to release cutscenes. I mean what’s the point? I’d better make movie then. That’s silly.

Heavy Rain is due out exclusively for PS3 in the first quarter of 2010.