Omikron Game: Mayrem Chat with David Cage

Mayrem Chat with David Cage

Maybe you can noticed a NEW! menu at the top of the main page. (moved to links - last edited)
This is a link to our French site friendly community.
Yeah, David Cage comes there to answer fans questions about Heavy Rain production and something more. The same way as it was with Fahrenheit (but JeuxVideo Forum used fo this). Thought it's a French speaking community, but you'll have no great problem asking in English.
As usual we try to collect forum posts at the site.

Old stuff

Babble: I had intended to speak about a news according to which you had to publish the sources of TNS (Or perhaps tools of extraction, I do not know exactly of what it was a matter)... I have never succeeded in finding of official reference to this news. Therefore I wonder, was it a simple rumour?
DC: It is something of that it was extensively inside a matter. Game is now enough ancient so that we can librer source in the community to allow those who want to use them or to divert them.
We are going to make it, it is just necessary that they find the time to take a shovel and a pecker and to go to search archives to put everything online.
We are going to try to make this shortly...

kyllman: I read in an interview (which goes back to 2001 hein) that you had of racourcir (announced?) the end of NS but Eidos wanted that the play left for Christmas. Do you rappellez (?) yourselves in what the end would have been different?
DC:The end was much more complex initially. I had in particular provided that the player takes part in the revolution of Omikron and the final attack of the district of Ix by joining together the forces of Eveilles and of the people of Mayerem.
I have to be solved to mainly untie the history by kinematics instead of the epic attack which I had written…

Walkthrough

Younes38: I am not the only one to ask me this question, namely or this finds this dear Vosda' N.
I reach every pixel in the game but did not find it, is it necessary to find him only be incarnated under a specific character, to have an unspecified object or with a certain part of the play?
DC: Frankly speaking, I do not have the least idea of it… It is that that starts a little to go up with far. I suppose that there is somebody on the Net which found the answer to your question. It is a little stupid, but the players remember the plays often better than what wrote them (or then, they so much were suffered to make that one tries to forget them.

Younes38: Quite simply: Can one open the cupboard in the room of Agatha? (Lucas says that it is closed with key)
DC: No one can open the cupboard. DC: The scene was designed to be more complex, but we chose to simplify it.

Fahrenheit vs. Omikron

E-Boz: ...can one laissezr go himself to regard Fahrenheit as a genesis of the world of Phaenon, Kushulainn would become thus the downward one of Lukas Kane and the Ix virtual conscience that the Demons controlled. Or even Boz is he a malicious impostor machiavelic who succeeded in seizing Omikron while being useful itself of confidence that eveilles carries to him… TNS would not be whereas the continuation of a gigantic confrontation between Oranges and the Mauves where the player would be only one pawn.
DC:Good, there are like you it changings very quite certain sets of themes common between NOMAD Soul and Fahrenheit. I suppose that there are things which return in what I have desire for expressing. I think that my principal topic turns around the identity, schizophrenia (reincarnation in NOMAD Soul, multi-characters and the loss of control of Lucas in Fahrenheit).

E-Boz: ...do you have to think of Thelis with the character of Tiffany?
DC: For Tiffany, I actually thought of Telis. I suppose that there are psychoanalytical reasons with this character of woman well under all reports/ratios but which finishes badly… Complex of badly solved Oedipus?
All this being known as, one should not seek of another relationship between NS and F. Lucas Kane is not the back large father of Kayl; -)

Heavy Rain

UL:Heavy Rain wasl absent in Sony list of games. official E3 site E3 Insider still have no Heavy Rain on list. What was the problem?
David Cage:No issue. I guess they just forget the title... although it was number 1 of the most expected PS3 games on GameSpot for three weeks after E3...

UL:Heavy Rain. Is it final game? or just the technology name?
DC: Final title of the game... hopefully.

UL: What's the story? Is it a sequel to Fahrenheit?
DC: The story is still secret and no, it is not a sequel to Fahrenheit.

UL: What's the difference in "capturing -> rendering" between Heavy Rain and Fahrenheit?
DC: Totally new engine on PS3. The MoCap is three times more defined, we used facial mocap and the rendering is HR with Normal Maps, Spherical Harmonics and post rendering. It is really another world...

UL:Why do you need AGEIA? as I know all physics motions can be resolved by CPU and Video chip, without any problem. Also first PC AGEIA chip products sees not satisfactory results.
DC: We use AGEIA technology on console for physics in general. There will be a version using their card and a version without the card on PC. Consoles versions will include physics without needing anything else, of course.
In the demo, physics manage Marie's hair.

UL: How much people working on it? Heavy Rain collect all people sources you have, or somebody works at the next game?
DC: Heavy Rain will probably need more than 120 people, some internally, other externally. We start a second team working on another project.

UL: When QD began to work on this project? year? two years? (this questions was during E3 2006 - comm: UL)
DC: For Heavy Rain, Feburary 06.

UL: Press release actress name and video titles differences in Second Name BRAncilhon versus BAncilhon. How right? Is it mistake?
DC: Aurelie Brancilhon.

UL: Does QD canceled projects live in this new project? bLast, Quark... other?
DC: We usually start several projects at the same time. Over the last years, one of them get so much interest from publishers that we had to cancel or at least postpone the others. Each Quantic Dream's project requires up to 80 people and all our attention. It is difficult to start several original project with the same ambition in matter of quality...

kyllman: I read, that Heavy Rain, from its creation, will cancel TNS2, because Quantic could not work on the 2 projects at the same time.
DC:Mmmmm… It is a little more complicated than that…
Whereas the beginning of Fahrenheit, all the editors asked for why one wanted to make this odd play rather than one following NS, at the end of Fahrenheit, all the editors wanted Fahrenheit 2 and did not include/understand why one wanted to make NS2…
One embarked in-house on this demonstration of virtual actor while thinking of the two projects, and the feedback of the editors, the press and the community a little took us of short (600 000 remote loadings…).
Conclusion: temporary pause on NS2 time that HR correctly is launched, but it is in the plans of launching a second project in the months which come.

General

E-Boz: In fact my question is simple: why do you make video game, Mr. Cage?

DC: Why I make video game? Parce interactivity and real time are a new exciting mass media which is going to allow to create new emotions. It is also siily as this. I one am not frustrated of cinema, I like interactivity and I chose this mass media rather than other one intentionally, even if I try to employ it in another way.
What interests me, it is to participate in the creation of this new language. It is surely the most exciting adventure that an inventive can live at present. I search new words, new codes.
With their qualities and their defects, I hope that TNS and Fahrenheit bring each something once again.

E-Boz: You make me think of Serge Gainsbourg... " In the French song, it is necessary to invent a new language, a new sonority the French song is to invent. "
And I wish you a similar parcour because you have all that is needed for.
Admirer's word!
It what titille me is précisement the fact that you want to create a new language. But they want to create a new language only if they want to express something that cannot be satisfied with already existing languages. Otherwise they speak to say nothing.
What do you therefore want to express that you cannot say otherwise than by video game?...
That has t-il therefore in the bottom of you there that you want all to say to us we, the players who penetrons your world at your invitation?
DC:I really do not have message which I try to reveal in the planet across my "work".
I think that I am very interested by schizophrenia, question setting on why they are the one what they are, what this makes to be somebody else.
It is themes which seems to come back regularly in my work without that I try to cause it (the change of body in Nomad Soul, Lucas Kane who kills dnas a second state and the possibiité to control several figures all at once in Fahrenheit).
No idea of the source of my interest for schizophrenia, I obviously do not suffer from it (unless I do not know it).
I think that interactivity is ideal mass media to recall this topic.

UL: Do you really think a very expensive Motion Capture can concurrent with some mathematics modeling of people moving? Cause it's not very difficult to write an algorithm of man's moves, and using some sources like Havok engine may be not simple, but real.
DC: Mmmmm, it is unfortunately not as easy. There is no algorithm of human move and I don't think we will see that in the coming years. Physics is great for rag doll for example and there are some great technologies merging animations with physics, but you always need mocap animations at the start. MoCap is by far the fastest, cheapest and higher quality you can get.

UL: Also as I know AGEIA technology use HAVOK engine too, so why you need capturing and not simply sit and write moving scripts?
For example looking for the game world (thought I'm just a gamer) I see Movies and Games future without real actors at all.
DC: Some confusing here. HAVOK and AGEIA are two totally separate technologies. Again, there is no "moving scripts" in any of these technologies or in any tehcnology I know. You always need key framed or mocap animations.

UL: About developers diary. It was very interesting to read David's notes at the site, when I began to look for Omikron project in 97.
Fahrenheit has a postrelease developer diary posted at unknown site. (1UP). Yeah I know you work hardly you have no time to write, but may be other QD team members want to write? Can we hope to see the stages of Heavy Rain and Karma ?
DC: I would love to, but it really takes a lot of time. Once my writing work is finished on Heavy RAin, I may consider writing a blog again...
Meanwhile, there is a very long post-mortem of Fahrenheit on Gamasutra.

UL: Quantic Dream has more popularity in game industry after Fahrenheit release, and what about cinema industry, how they react?
DC: Very well... but I cannot say more for the moment ;-)

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Else welcome to the French community site Mayerem, but before you living Onikron Game site read answers for your question, not to ask already answered. Just type in search what you want.

Sorry for English. Some posts was cutted. ;) - UL
Source: Mayrem