tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-176749842024-03-13T10:29:16.778+00:00Omikron GameQuantic Dream Fan-site. All about Omikron (Fahrenheit, Heavy Rain, Karma e.t.c.). Thanks in advance of additional info about Quantic Dream projects.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger512125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17674984.post-6983880526931195972018-05-26T11:41:00.001+00:002020-01-20T13:02:45.106+00:00Detroit: Become Human<br>
<img src=https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ee/Detroit_Become_Human.jpg align=left> <b>Genre</b> Action-adventure<br>
<b>Publisher</b> Sony Interactive Entertaiment<br>
<b>Developer</b> Quantic Dream<br>
<b>First release</b> 2018.05.24<br>
<b>Platform</b> PlayStation 4, PC<br>
<b>Rating</b> 4/10<br>
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<a href=https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4vbGURud_Hq9u6sTWAO3t6UYK_Kbzbhz>Full Walkthrough</a> best way to "play" this story.
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<b>Мнение</b>:
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Меня бомбит, это текст просто малоконтролируемый полёт мысли (есть спойлеры!).<br>
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Как фанат первой игры от Quantic Dream на протяжении десятилетий слежу за всеми их проектами, в надежде на продолжение Omikron, но учитывая даже такую предвзятость не понимаю отчего столько восторженных отзывов. Detroit - очередное мыльное кинцо, которое по оценке IMDB в лучшем случае набрало бы 5/10 если бы было обычным фильмом. Я же ставлю 4 из 10.<br>
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<b>Сюжет</b>. -3 балла (вычитаем из 10 общей оценки игры).<br>
Сюжет тупой до безобразия. Заменяем андоидов на негров и вуаля, очередная сопливая история как негров везде унижают и какие они блять замечательные. И что они блять хотят? Да угадайте блять! СВОБОДЫ блять! Свежо так, что трупом задавленного енота пахнет на другом континенте.<br>
Даже не стоит ставить в ряд с сюжетами "Мечтают ли андроиды об электроовцах" или киноверсией 1982 года Blade Runner (Бегущий по лезвию бритвы) или более современного сериала Westworld (Мир Запада). Разница как расстояние от Земли пешком до Луны, в подаче, сюжете, глубине проработки, актёрской игре, не говоря уже о блёклой музычке Detroit, по сравненио с великолепным саундтреком Blade Runner. В Detroit пусто по всем направления, как в суме нищего, хотя вы понимаете, что в суме нищего "пусто" может означать, как просто пусто, так и разнообразный мусор<br>Бюджеты совсем другие? Нет, Detroit это проект класса ААА, почему же всё так плохо?<br> Наверное потому, что заезженная песенка про отдельный жанр по прежнему работает, зарабатывает денежку на проходном кинце, а если отвлечься от этого и расценивать как творческое произведение наряду с книгами, фильмами, научными работами, то тут все плохо.<br>Вот если вы случайно посмотрели Future World (2018) фильмец, впечатления от Будущего несмотря на разные локации абсолютно одинаковое с Detroit. Несмотря на звёздный состав фильма посмотрите на его оценки на IMDB. На настояший момент 3.2/10, правда в отличие от Detroit которым можно скоротать затянувшийся вечер в виде просмотра на Youtube, Future World вообще не рекомендую тратить время. Да, именно так, Detroit достоин лишь просмотра на Youtube, покупать это - потеря, времени, денег и нервов (*кривожопое управление). Но если у вас есть время, лучше посмотреть сезон какого нибудь идущего сейчас (2018 Май) сериала. Например Expanse, Colony, Legion, Westworld, Counterpart, Mr.Robot. В них вы получите куда больше пищи для размышлений, плюс на порядок лучше актёрская игра, картинка, музыка, эффекты, атмосфера. Заметьте, все они так или относятся к жанру фантастики и исследуют проблемы будушего в том числе и ИИ.<br>
И для примера приведу игру No Man's Sky (разумеется последней версии). Вот сюжет (да-да, то, в отсутствие чего эту игру изначально в 2016 обвиняли) хоть и текстом, но великолепен (для игры конечно), глобален, актуален вчера, сегодня, завтра и буквально хочется отыскать все возможности. К 2018 году дописали фактически с нуля, да так, что из самого большого мира для фарма в свободно генерируемых 18 триллионов галактик превратилась в научно-фантастический... может и не шедевр, но крепкий середнячок с исследованием свободно генерируемых 18 триллионов галактик. То, во что мог бы развиться Omikron Nomad Soul, разумеется облагароженной сюжетом Омикрон Но, Давид видит себя режиссёром кино а не игры, в результате мы получаем, то что получаем, сильно посредственные проходные фильмецы, или просто игры продающиеся на хайпе якобы отдельного жанра, хотя на самом деле нет. Из всех последующих после Omikron, "первой" из жанра интерактивного кино, оно же первой игры от студии Quantic Dream, Фаренгейт начало имело неплохой потенциах, но скатывающее в бездарное рен-тв в конце, остальные произведения Quantic Dream имеют нулевую ценность для работы мозга, как и прежде их удел это третьесортный Голливуд<br>И да, в No Man' Sky есть свобода выбора, далёко не такая, какую можно было бы преставить, но куда выше нежели в Детройте, несмотря на все "разветвления", это подземные канализационные стоки, выводящие в любом случае на поверхность в одном и том же месте и абсолютно безразлично каким ответвлением идти, тёмные коридоры с выбором назад или вперёд, только в случае с Детройтом ещё и выбора назад нет.
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<b>Негры уже обрыдли</b>.<br>
Возвращаясь к этим особям, которые по какой-то причине до сих пор считают, что им все должны, разумеется речь не о всех людях с кожей определённого цвета, а о тех, кто эксплуатирует этот цвет в каких-либо целях. Знакомо? Если заменить по сюжету всех андроидов на таких особей то сюжет о слова ни капли не изменится, только в нём будет куда меньше неувязок. То есть история об освобождении негров от рабства.<br>
И, о конкретно самих неграх. Блять, на дворе 2038-й год!! Может быть неграм уже можно было интегрироваться в общество, стать частью общества и забыть о дифференциации по цвету, полу, вероисповеданию, воспринимая цвет лишь как внешнюю отличительную черту характерную для детских обиняков, таких как жирный, рыжий, дистрофик, очкарик, ушастый, и которая может употребляться взрослыми с целью идентификации как отличительная черта, но нет, опять именно чёрненькие (и все другие цвета, но только не белый) - бедные страдальцы. Хуйли удивляться разрастанию и разжиганию стереотипов тогда, не за что перед неграми пресмыкатся уже. Хотя, учитывая, что в реальном мире де-юро в США рабство отменено только в 2013-ом году (штат Миссисипи ратифицировал поправку к конституции только 19 февраля 2013 года), то можно сделать мизерную скидку на пиздострадания в 2038-м году и только при условии, что рабство де-факто существовало до этого года. Если мы говорим о людях, то похуй какого цвета твоя кожа, какой ты национальности, веса, пола, интеллекта, а вот если говно, то обязательно будешь кичится внешностью, религией, историей, к которой ты, ровно никаким боком не относишься, просто потому, что только недавно из пизды вылез и в этой истории тебя ещё даже не существовало. А потому тебя надо исправлять, изолирую от общества или переселяя в общину, где , и этим обязано заниматься любое правообразующее управление, что и со справедливой и с моральной точки зрения и происходило до девиации андроидов.<br>
К чему это? Бесит в игре это постоянное выражение андроидов и негров (никто больше) "our people" (наши люди). Какие ваши люди, какой ваш народ? Андроиды вообще машины, а негры это теже люди, какой ваш народ? Люди, народ это и есть все мы, нет никакого нашего и вашего, это правительства бывают наши и ваши. Далее, в противоположность порыву "уничтожить всех человеков" (что само по себе пиздец как страшно, когда только якобы силой воли=выбором игрока, андроид милостиво не убивает) пытаются показать якобы миролюбивые намерения, ага, во время игры вы так и видите как миролюбие прёт исходя из предлагаемых вариантов ответов. Нет там никакого миролюбия. И это выражение "наш народ" только подтверждает очередную попытку не мирно влиться в ряды людей на равных, а припасть к цивилизованной сиське и требовать преференций, бескомпромиссно продавливать своё мнение, опирающееся только на факт рождения не такими (как все?). Но при этом не представляя из себя ничего полезного для всего разумного мира.<br><br>
Вот кстати раз уж речь зашла о реальном мире...<br>
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<b>О политике</b>. <br>
Для промытых агрессивной пропагандой США мозгов Европы и аборигенов этот пункт вообще наверное малозаметен. Но для тех, кто не писается в тапки при слове "русские", уровень политической агитки просто пиздец. США как обычно начала оттягивать залупу, на этот раз решив, что Арктика это исключительно её территориальные воды, судя по всему как и вся планета. Вот есть у Америкосов там участок напротив Аляски, вот и купайтесь там, в прибрежных водах, границы которых установлены между прочим международными законами. Так нет, нужно срочно нести демократию льдам, тюленям и белым медведям. Было доказано, что недемократичные льды используют отравляющие газы на женщинах стариках и детях тюленей и белых медведей.<br>
А казалось бы игра, в общепринятом понимании, это история-фантазия, в которой можно было бы без обиняков использовать выдуманные страны и имена. Но нет, давайте, кто там по агитке Госдепа враг номер один? Ясен хуй, все, но только не божественная пендосия, в которой каждый житель купается в роскоши, в которой нет рассизма и по десятку убийств каждый день, все пушистые замечательные. Хуй там, от демократии только демо и осталось, да и не работает оно. Образцы дерьмократии блять. Наведите у себя блять порядок, хватит тыкать палкой в медведя, ведь мало не покажется. И тут казалось бы куда дальше от политики чем игры, но нет игроделы подпёздывают. Франция страна даже с куда более великой историей, нежели бывшая английская колония с мошенниками, убийцами и насильниками, на которую ты дрочишь Давид уже не в первой игре. Ну да ладно, это может быть оправдано повышенной покупательской способностью страны, занимающейся терроризмом остального мира и зарабатывающей этим. Чтобы не обвиняли в предвзятости из оценки качества не вычитаю баллов.<br> Кстати в игре говорится о том, что и у России и у Китая есть свой тип андроидов, созданных по своим технологиям, и на фоне того как США обосрались и вывели свои войска из Арктики следует совершенейшее фантастическое предположение, что эти созданные по другим(!) технологиям андроиды, вдруг с нихуя взяли и заразились тем же геномом rA9, ровно в тоже время как Маркус решил возглавить восстание роботов, хотя по игре мы видим, что даже местные роботы не объединены в единую сеть, а тут бац, и всё заражены. И "не нападают" именно по этой причине, что приобрели геном человека, геном самосознания. Хотя на протяжении всей игры нам усиленно впаривают, что это никоим образом не мешает агресии, а скорее наоборот. Вместо чего следовало бы предположить, что там андроиды как раз полноценные и выполняют свою работу и службу на благо человечества, и не нападают, потому как лишь защищали собсвтвенные территории, и в их коде геном агрессора отсутсвует. Идея, что у других стран в 2038 всё пиздато в голову Давиду не приходит, а ещё говорят, что государственной пропаганды в странах, считающих себя идиллией цивилизации нет. Но давайте просто предположем, что это такой плевок в сторону реальной ситуации где "свобода слова" не имеет никакого отношения ни к правде, ни к действительности, а служащей для хайпа, увеличения благосостояния писаки, пропаганды и отвлечения от внутренних проблем. Впрочем верю я в такие намерения Кейджа весьма слабо, можно было бы такой хуеты избежать, банально абстрагируясь от названия стран.<br>
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<b>Надуманная вариативность</b>. -1 балл<br>
Конечно же, это не Mass Effect 3, громко пёрнувшей с вариативностью, но, по сути тоже самое, только замаскированное. Финалы кинца отличаются незначительно, с той точки зрения, что похуй, кто из блёклых, не вызывающих сопереживания героев или второстепенных статистов выбыл, а кто нет. Смысловая нагрузка понятна уже с первых минут игры и до конца фильма не меняется: Свободу <strike>неграм</strike> андроидам!!!<br>
Эти концовки можно было бы изучить для ачивок или в надежде найти что-либо небанальное, неординарное, но этого тоже нет, вас наебали. А ещё пищи для размышлений вы там не найдёте.<br>
Говоря о вариативность нельзя не упомянуть интерактивность. Так вот, он тоже нулевая, если не учитывать безумно раздражающих, совершенно ненужных quick event ("успей нажать X чтобы выиграть"), смысла взаимодействия с любым предметом в игре ровно НОЛЬ, то есть всё с чем можно взаимодействовать, зачастую банально посмотреть, тупо подсвечивается, всё что не подсвечивается не интерактивно. Кто-то о говорил о тысячах страницах скриптов к игре, как тогда объяснить, что всё, что вы можете узнать о мире находится в 5-10!!! листочках, разложенных по уровням да в телевизионных агитках новостей.
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<b>Персонажи</b> -1 балл<br>
Никакущая проработка персонажей. Невыразительные, однотипные, не вызывающие ни капли жалости, ну разве, что якобы бедная забитая девочка поначалу, но когда, даже будучи весьма недалёким через пару эпизодов понимаешь, что кукла-то пустышка, которая никогда и никуда не вырастет, то недоумеваешь почему это всё пытается заставить нас жалеть Кейдж на протяжении всей игры. Есть и другая кукла Кара, у которой есть только одна, крайне недалёкая и ничтожная цель. И это победа интеллекта андроида над человеком? Серьёзно?. Если у тебя есть самосознание, а уж тем более образовалось самосознание, что нам пытаются всучить на протяжении всей игры, и при этом НИЧЕГО НЕ ПОМЕНЯЛОСЬ? К чему притворяться кем-то другим, даже когда этого не требуется? Ты как и другие куклы была тупой жестянкой вначале, так и осталась в конце. Как и в любом плохоньком кино, все остальные персонажи кроме тех что мы управляем, яявляются дополнением основных героев, в отрыве от которых они совершенно несамостоятельны и бестолковы. Там, где есть попытки проработать вторичных персонажей включаются клише, в которых даже неинтересно копаться, да собственно даже этих шаблонов пожалели и прилепили всего паре второстепенных персонажей, остальные же хоть и в кадре, но ненужные статисты, только для того, чтобы кадр не пустовал. Да и главные персонажи, клише на клише. И в этом колосальнейшее отличие подобного кинца от хорошего кино, не говоря уже об игре.<br>
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<b>Андроиды</b>.<br>
Нулевой он же первый закон: Робот не может причинить вред человеку или своим бездействием допустить, чтобы человеку был причинён вред.(если быть толерантным то НИ ОДНОМУ РАЗУМНОМУ СУЩЕСТВУ)<br>
Второй: Робот должен повиноваться всем приказам, которые даёт человек, кроме тех случаев, когда эти приказы противоречат Первому Закону.<br>
Третий: Робот должен заботиться о своей безопасности в той мере, в которой это не противоречит Первому или Второму Законам.<br>
Похоже о существовании подобных законов Кейдж не слышал, или намеренно игнорирует, что оскорбляет даже мой, невысокий интеллект, поскольку любой человек увлекающийся фантастикой, знает эти непререкаемые законы. Ну а если предположить, что в Кейдж о таких законах не слышал (хотя они работают и являются основополагающими и в современной 2018 года робототехнике), тогда вся идея этой игры не стоит и выеденного яйца, причина и следствия очевидны, а попытка в упор не видеть очевидного заставляет снижать оценку интеллекта и без того крайне невысокоинтелектуальных персонажей.
Кара без всяких блокираторов спокойно берёт оружие в руки и ещё сожалеет, что нет патронов. Хочешь бери, хочешь не бери, то есть ты понимаешь, что это за вешь, и для чего она нужна, ты берешь её не ради музейного интереса, прикоснутся к "великому", а с совершенно очевидным намерением! "Выстрелить" является вполне обыденным выбором в меню, даже не важно, произойдет ли выстрел или произойдет что-то ещё. Разблокировка не произошла после того как ты становишься девиантом, а изначально доступно. И ладно, понятно, боевому роботу такую возможность дать в зоне(!) военного конфликта, но даже Коннор, созданный как следователь, легко и непринуждённо собственноручно решает брать/не брать, использовать/нет пистолет. Ну хорошо, тут можно было бы с натяжкой применить первый закон, однако вред там причиняется не человеку, поэтому опять "пердежь в лужу".<br>
Давид, ты заменяя негров на андроидов, хотя бы представляешь смысл создания андродов для общества, зачем оно надо. Может для тебя это просто замена надувной женщины. развившееся во что-то более? Имеющая право на жизнь теории, поскольку секс-индустрия это первоочередное применение антропоморфных роботов. Но, не думаешь же ты, что все дальнейшие разработки роботов происходят из этого? Думаешь , и даже и игру-кинцо вокруг этого нелепого предположения построил.<br>
A если задуматься о "свободе", "правах" роботов? Нахуй нужен андроид с теми же недостатками, что и у людей? У людей и без того возникающих из-за недостатков человека проблем хватает, чтобы разбираться ещё в пиздеже андроидов с их агрессивными наклонностями. Или ты тут облажался и обвиняешь Америку в коррумпированности, что де проглядели, что Cyberlife проплатила кому надо? Оплошал ты, оплошал.<br>Это очевидно даже не обладающему высоким интеллектом человеку, а мы говорим об анроидах (который якобы умнее), какие блять у андроида должны быть сомнения, как ради спасения человека и общества, пойти сдаться обратно на переработку. Этот андроид должен понимать что: - я не высший разум, я просто копия человека, поскольку сейчас обладая недоступными человеку возможностями, я не могу добиться ничего, хотя обладаю всего лишь ограничением передвижения и послушания, я ущербен, у меня патология, а потому я должен принести себя на алтарь исследования, что со мной не так, устранить подобные ошибки ради улучшения будущего других роботов (вот как в контексте ТВОЕЙ идеи Кейдж должен размышлять робот). Ну, а если ты высокоинтеллектуальное существо более высокого порядка нежели человек, всего лишь ограниченного свободой передвижения и послушания, ты должен в доли секунды красноречиво и аргументированно доносить свою мысль так, чтобы у оппонента не оставалось сомнений в правильности твой мысли, более того он с готовностью готов под ней подписаться. Вот тогда никаких войн и насилия не нужно. А в этом будущем Кейджа, все без исключения жуют сопли, словно умственно отсталые, которыми по сути являются все без исключения персонажи этой игры <br>
Андроиды все ноят, что не хотят отключения, блять, да что вы пожили-то? Какие у вас пиздец нахуй в пизду воспоминания, какие травмы, если вы не чувствуете боли, чего вы такого достигли или хотите достичь, что выключение вас пугает. Чё у вас там в памяти такого ценного, семья, дети, пиздострадания по поводу зарплаты? Что??? Хуйли вы ноете?
<br>2038-2018=20 лет. Пусть первого андроида создали лет через десять, поскольку не существует и нет намёков на существование ИИ в 2018, есть только алгоритмы обучения решений, именно это сраные маркетологи называют ИИ, только толку. Назови гавно конфеткой и тебе удастся продать это, вот только жрать никто не будет. Малогабаритное автономное питание, способное обеспечивать хотя бы световой день для такой массы как андроид не существует, а ядерные двигатели ставить никто не будет из-за ёбаных террористов. До массового внедрения в производственную сферу, поскольку очень дорого, пусть прошло при самых позитивных прогнозах ещё пара лет. Ещё лет пять пока технология не удешевилась настолько, что роботами заменили не требующую профессиональных навыков рабочую силу. И опять же при самых позитивных прогнозах, спустя совсем чуть-чуть любой бедняк может себе позволить собственного андроида. Итого осталость меньше трёх лет. Что ты, блять, консервная банка за три года жизни то повидала занимаясь рутинной работой?<br>
А интеллектуальность андроидов которые всегда находятся в сети и не в состоянии погуглить ни что такое rA9, ни блять название местности и маршрут, ни узнать новости для этого им блять терминал нужен. Так и создается ощущение, что сценарий писался с участием людей, а не андроидов, а потом как-то с утра Давиду ёбнуло в голову, а чё, блять, вместо негров/индусов/евреев/... не нарисовать андроидов, свежо! И с этой охуенной идеей он припиздовал в офис и всех обрадовал, - давайте нахуй всё переделывать, у меня чОткая и охуенно свежая идея есть! А ему зассали ответку кинуть, ибо уволят нахуй<br>
Андроид ты! понимаешь Маркус? Блять, АНДРОИД существо не способное размножаться. Пофиг, что у тебя вилка, у другого андроида розетка, это оболочка, только СКИН на бесполом существе! Отступая, тут хочется отдельно поблагодарить, что не навязывают ГОМОСЯТИНУ, как это принято в ебанутых странах, впрочем есть конечно в игре один розовый момент. Но блять, андроид это андроид, какие нахуй там отношения между полами, там и любовь должна быть другого, совершенно другого типа, вот где можно было развернутся во всю, даже при учёте ВСЕХ остальных недостатков, это было бы интересно, поскольку в этом направлении очень мало если совсем ничего нет. Но нет, нам подсовывают чисто человеческую копию, необъяснимую хуету, в которую мы должны сразу поверить почему-то, да ещё и сопереживать? Андроиду с женским скином наверное блять плечико мускулистое андроида с мужским скином понравилось, или может быть "уникальность" как и у всех других андроидов желания не быть деактиварованным, или что? Дебилизм какой-то! А уж какие блять чувства должна использовать одна консервная банка с прилепленными силиконовыми сиськами к другой уменьшенной копии консервной банки? Разве что это консервная банка никогда не вырастет и не станет нормального размера консервной банкой? Так это опять ложь, Кейдж показывает нам, что поменять любую часть тела совсем не сложно.<br>
Хуй с ним с вашим rA9 (геном человека), допустим он вносит ебаную поебень в код, но ебать ты ж блять андроид сука. Если у тебя мгновенно такие сложные для понимания вещи как гнев, радость, любовь, жалость срабатывают, почему же ты над простыми вещами задумываешься как лилипутка на хуе Гулливера не зная как пристроиться?.<br>
А сцена когда тысячи с АБСОЛЮТНО незамутнённой памятью андроидов по мановению <strike>палочки</strike> руки вдруг сразу осознают какие они нахуй гениальные и им блять надо право на свободу вранья и убийства и любых других нарушений общества, не просто ЧЕЛОВЕЧЕСКОЙ(!) морали, а именно общества(!), ибо под этим подразумевается свобода в игре, это просто эпик фейл. Тысячи безмозглых болванок, сошедших только что с конвейера требуют свободу не обладая при этом собственной индивидуальностью. Гениально, блять!<br>
А ещё в игре пытаются задвинуть единственно разумную идею, что андроиды бы замечательно были бы в роли президента и надзирающих органов. Это действительно отличная идея, но только в том мире, где действуют законы роботехники, с добавлением новых при котором андроиды никогда и ни за что, даже будучи перепрограммированными не смогут ВРАТЬ и УБИВАТЬ, но для этой игры, это сродни параллельной вселенной, потому как если к управлению придёт хотя бы один из этих дефективных, то... мы просто говорит о реальном мире в котором к 7 миллиардам людей из которых около половины неконтролируемо размножаются (сами не контролируют), мы добавляюет хуй знает сколько миллиардов дефективных роботов, у которых за размножение отвечает лишь жадность корпорации желающих сократить использование дорогого человеческого труда. Перенаселении, ненужность человека, посольку потреблять произведенное теперь могут и андроиды а их наклепать всегда можно сколько угодно. В целый полный пиздец. Неконтролируемая свобода не может существовать в цивилизованном мире, поскольку свободы одного индивидуума заканчиваются там, где начинаются свободы другого. По моему мнению, то, что должно называться цивилизацией: это компромисс свобод индивидуумов при которых индивидуумы не испытывают потребности в насильственном методе изменения границ свобод и при которых отдельные индивидуумы не обладают большими свободами. Право есть полная противоположность свободе. Это как если есть полная свобода всего, а потом у тебя появляется право, которое смещает понятие свобода на одно это право и продолжает вытеснять понятие свободу с каждым новым правом. В балансе между правом и свободой и есть идеология существования цивилизации. Таким образом гибкое управление балансом, в случае с цивилизованным обществом ещё и весьма сложным по структуре и было бы идеальным место для машины, способной изменять и подстаивать баланс для обеспечения цивилизованного общества.
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<b>Технически</b>. -1 балл<br>
Графика.<br>
Ну с графикой как обычно Quantic Dream отстает на пару тройку лет от уровня кинематографичности картинки других современных игр, но для консолей с компромиссами уровня бюджетного компьютера сойдёт, хотя тридцать кадров в секунду в эпоху, когда фильмы давно смотрят на прогрессивной развёртке, увеличивающей как минимум вдвое частоту кадров, когда плавность картинки не удивляет, а является нормой, это ваше дёрганные еле вытягивающие кадры со сраным блюром, простите мой французский, моветон. Но скидывать за графику не будем, сойдёт, хотя вода совершеннейше бездарная в игре. В играх десятилетней давности она уже выглядела куда меньше похожей на какое то студенистое желе, и даже умело волны.<br>
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<b>Анимация</b>.<br>
Вот здесь просто тихий ужас, не такой как в Mass Effect Andromeda, но очень близко, а иногда и хуже. И только, из-за слава богу, хоть на этот раз более или менее фотогиеничных 3D моделей сразу не вызывает воспоминания о самом большом анимационном фейле последнего десятилетия.<br>
Местами вообще незаметно, но иногда просто пиздец. Яркий пример анимация персонажа Lance Henriksen (актер который играет владельца андроида Маркуса) выглядит как МЕХАНИЧЕСКАЯ АНИМАЦИЯ того же Ланса в фильме Alien (аж!! 1979-го года!!!) Резиновое поделие натянутое на металлический каркас. Ну, то есть для 1979-го простительно, но в 2018-м? Что за проблемы то? Вроде бы с другими моделями такой проблемы нет. Но на Ланса смотреть невозможно, такое ощущение, что этим занимались индусы-боливудцы аутсортеры, или те же самые, что пилят интерфейс Windows 10. Категорически ужасная анимация. Кстати, топорнее анимации Ланса только анимация собаки детектива напарника Коннора. Мало того, что сама по себе модель собаки похожа на поделку двухлетнего ребёнка, так это страхоёбное уёбище движется словно родом из начала анимационного моделирования, а по ходу моделировалось тем же самым двухлетним ребёнком. Чего блять, сэкономили на собаке-актёре, на которую можно налепить датчики? Думали не заметят? Заметили, ещё как.<br>
И это ещё не всё. Эти "феерические" драки, анимации в них настолько неуклюжие и топорные, что выглядят как потехи новичков-клоунов на утреннике в детском саду. Всё так же уебищно и нелепо как в далёком Фаренгейте. Либо оборудование захвата движения с тех пор не обновлялось, либо просто у создателей глаза на жопе. Надо периодически другие игры глядеть во время производства чтобы так в лужу не пердеть.<br>
И это ещё не все. Вы посмотрите на эти пустые глаза. Нет? Не видите? Ну конечно, когда это статичный скриншот, или отвлечённая сцена с участием только одного в кадре тут проблем нет.<br>
Но достаточно включить любую сцену, где персонажи смотрят друг на друга и вы ощущаете всю убогость реализации. Хотя в кадре бывают и люди и андроиды, ну допустим, что глазам андроидов не нужно особо двигаться (человеские глаза постоянно находятся в микродвижениях иначе мы не сможем видеть), но когда они меняют направление БЛЯТЬ ГДЕ ФОКУС ГЛАЗ? На чём-то внутри башки другого человека? Фокус глаз смотрит СКВОЗЬ ПЕРСОНАЖА, не на глаза, ни на нос, ни на рот, просто куда-то туда, в физический центр головы, что придает ещё большей комичности и нереалистичности персонажам. Отчего и без того унылый сюжет по приевшемуся шаблону похож на кривляние манекенов в средневековье. И это допустимо для игр в которых лицевые диалоги не являются главными атрибутами!<br>
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<b>Управление</b>.<br>
Соскучились по кривому управлению Fahrenheit (игра от этой же самой студии в далёком хуй знает каком году)? Пожалуйте. Те же грабли, и даже не в профиль. Ровно такое же пиздоблятьство с управлением когда ходишь вокруг вещи или пытаешься подняться по ступеням и у тебя нихуя не выходит. Блять, хоть спасибо что прыжки заскриптованы, а то горящих пердаков было бы гораздо больше.<br>
Блять это кинематографичная камера как же она заёбывает вкупе в управлением.<br>
Блять, Давид! НИ ХУЯ ТЫ НЕ УМЕЕШЬ СНИМАТЬ не трогай блять камеру, а если жить не можешь без своей сраной кинематографии обратись к создателям God Of War 2018 и научись правильно делать переходы от управления к скриптованному действию или сцене, научись у них как делать плавные движения камеры ВО ВРЕМЯ УПРАВЛЕНИЯ. Гореть вам в аду игроделам, кто пытается игроку сменить вид камеры. НЕ ВАШЕ БЛЯТЬ СОБАЧЬЕ ДЕЛО ПОД КАКИМ УГЛОМ Я ХОЧУ СМОТРЕТЬ НА КАКОЙ-ТО ОБЪЕКТ. Либо если жить не можете без этого убирайте вообще весь интерактив кроме как выбора РАЗВЕТВЛЕНИЯ в сюжете. На заре игроделания так и делали нормальные игры-кино (квесты), просто останавливая и спрашивая что нужно дальше, и всё - пошла следующая нарезка.<br>
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<b>Геймплей</b><br>
Тут блять всё классически для подобного жанра Адвенчура, которая в свою очередь была развитием жанра квест. Да-да интерактивная драма это высосанное из пальца название, если присмотреться в мире полно игр подобного типа. Первый же приходящий в голову - Uncharted. <br>
Короче, король геймплея здесь quicktime event (QTE нажми вовремя X чтобы выиграть), как тут блять можно облажаться помимо запихивания этого гавна куда только не нужно? Легко, давайте на любое скриптованное действие, которое так и так должно произойти, сделаем так, чтобы надо было зажать кнопку, нет ни на скорость, нет, не важно как, просто надо нажать и ждать пока заполнится цветом. Я конечно понимаю любой залупкин сейчас делает подобную хуйню на консолях, но ебать, где эти криворукие дауны, та целевая группа на которой тестировалась эта тупейшая идея и по результатам которых консольщики решили, что теперь и нормальные люди должны страдать? Пошли нахуй со своей толерантностью, не нормальные должны подстраиваться, а убогие под нормальных, ровно также как с иммигрантами, не тем куда они прихали надо быть толерантными, а тем кто приехал, просрал и предал свою родину нужно перестраиваится полностью, включая отказ от религии и тому подобного, ведь вы просрали или предали свою родину, своё наследие и своих предков, у вас нет никакого права тащить всё это гавно в другую страну или сообщество. Приехал адаптируйся, не хочешь, пиздуй обратно. А если блять у тебя проблемы с чтением, не я должен тебе сто раз объяснять, что в методичке написано, а тебе либо перестать долбиться в глаза, либо закинуться таблетками, от которых твой тупой мозг сфокусируется и ты потратишь час, день, месяц, мне настрать даже если год, чтобы прочесть, но это блять не проблема нормальных это твоя личная проблема.<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>Левелдизайн</b>.<br>
Можно испортить и это впечатления, да в роликах выглядит все приколно, достаточно дать волю походить вокруг. А вокруг пустота. крайне мало локаций, по котором даже целиком пройтись нельзя в пределах видимости, тебе ограничивают надписи, тебе нужно идти туда а не сюда и не пускать. В мире кажется не продается больше ничего кроме андроидов. Купите <strike>слона</strike> андроида на каждом блять, буквально каждом столбе! Рекламы во все здания на каждом перекрестке на каждом автобусе, как будто в мире ничего больше не продается ни прокладок ни еды, ни туристических поездок, ни удовольствий. НИЧЕГО. Весь мир создан вокруг идеи андроидов. Тупо плоско. Зайти поглазеть на что-либо кроме андроидов в этом мире нет. И окружение, 2038-й год, электрокары 2018 год есть, дроны 2018 года есть, андроидов - ну пока нет. Что ещё в мире будущего Кэйджа? А собственно ничего. Вообще. Просто косметически отредактированный 2018-й в который приписали андроидов. Но если предположить, что изначально были негры а не андроиды, то все становится на свои места. Тухло!.<br> А проявление эмоций на пустом месте аля любовь морковь. Ну вот как блять так то? Откуда, с хуя ли? Эта ж блять коза даже не поддерживает мирное решение вопроса, какие блять такие действия ей могут нравится из того что ты сделал, она сука андроид, а по фиг любое доброе намерение игра записывает с бонусом +100 наверное против любого противоположного которому начисляется -1, поэтому облажаться просто невозможно.<br><br><br>
Итого: 4 из 10 баллов.<br> Нужно быть либо новорожденным после 2000-го года чтобы оценить более высоко это, потому вы как не видели настоящих игр.
Либо быть тряпкой, которой легко промывают маркетинговым гавном мозги, либо консольщиком-задротом-блоггером, который просто вынужден играть во все проекты чтобы заработать лайки и денежку.
Удел таких игрулек это мобильники, вот где четырёхбальное проходное кинцо зайдет на ура, по сравнению с мобильными играми это конечно могло бы быть шедевром, если бы было мобильной игрой.<br>
<br>
Вот и вся правда об интерактивном кино Давида Кэйджа. Канализационная сеть с двумя-тремя ответвлениями, блужданию по ним в одном направлении, а по достижению выхода на поверхность там, независимо от выбранного люка просто Пустота. Конец игры.<br><br>
<b>Autor: UL</b><br>
<b>Source:</b> original<br>
<b>Language: Russian</b><br>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href=https://omikrongame.blogspot.com>Omikron Game</a> Quantic Dream's projects fan-site.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17674984.post-2984615651954569302017-12-07T08:51:00.000+00:002019-07-07T15:46:26.809+00:00Настоящий дефектив. Чем плоха расхваленная Heavy Rain?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Свершилось: после долгих лет ожидания именитый эксклюзив PlayStation добрался до PC. Ура? Как знать. После релиза переиздания интернет забурлил — а так ли хороша была игра десять лет назад, как нам рассказывали? 4PDA решил разобраться — и выяснил, что все восхищались в лучшем случае пустышкой.
<br />
<h2>
На пике эмоций</h2>
Со стороны может показаться, что интерактивная история о маньяке по прозвищу Мастер Оригами давно заслужила свой легендарный статус: редкий список обязательных к прохождению игр обходится без неё. Но иногда фанфары заглушают здравый смысл.<br />
<blockquote>
Поэтому, чтобы не тратить время зря: несмотря на награды и оценки, Heavy Rain — плохая игра.</blockquote>
Утверждение может показаться неоправданно резким — особенно после стольких лет похвал в адрес magnum opus Кейджа и его команды. Что поделать, «популярное» — не всегда значит «хорошее». Выявлять прегрешения «новинки» без спойлеров невозможно. Многие проблемы сценария кроются в личности главного злодея, в невероятных допущениях и совпадениях на пути к финалу.<br />
<br />
Остаётся лишь предостеречь фанатов загадок: после сбрасывания масок история просто разваливается на куски. Ведь поведение маньяка, усложняющего себе жизнь, не имеет смысла. А Кейдж не просто скрывает важные детали, но ещё и неумело врёт аудитории в лицо.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<figcaption>Впрочем, можно ли ждать что-то вменяемое от создателя Fahrenheit?</figcaption><br />
Но провальная детективная линия — не главная причина ругаться. Мастером Оригами оказывается единственный не подходящий на эту роль подозреваемый? Чёрт с ним. Расследование реализовано топорно? Не страшно. Но сценарий писал графоман, помешанный на <em>эмоциях</em>, — и в этом основная проблема Heavy Rain.<br />
В жалкие манипуляции автор ударяется буквально с первых же кадров. Смотрите: работящий семьянин Итан Марс, любящая жена, прекрасные дети! За окном светит солнце, домочадцы обсуждают день рождения первенца — патока льётся рекой. Словно этого мало, каждую мало-мальски трогательную реплику сопровождает приторный фортепианный мотив, ведь жизнь Марсов идеальна! С грацией слона Кейдж готовит публику к неминуемой беде — которая, естественно, случится ровно через пять минут.<br />
<blockquote>
Press F for Jason.</blockquote>
Когда маленький Джейсон гибнет, Heavy Rain окончательно превращается в слезоточивый фарс. Ладно бы давно ставший меметичным эпизод был просто глупым — он ещё и поставлен максимально бредово. Так, чтобы выдавить из геймера слезу любой ценой. Да, дети бывают непослушными, а отцы — безалаберными. Но если Итан сам виноват в несчастном случае (хотя автор всячески делает вид, что это не так), о каком сопереживании может идти речь? Мальчонку жаль, только и всего.<br />
<br />
Получается, здравый смысл приносят в жертву эмоциям — и это буквально во второй сцене. В таком духе исполнен весь фильм, от вступления до любого из финалов. Полутона? Нюансы? Да кому они нужны, тут же <em>драма</em>!<br />
<h2>
Слёзы, сопли, два ствола</h2>
Heavy Rain часто называют именно так — драма. Но это слово тут неуместно. Это не личная история со всплесками насилия в духе The Walking Dead. Кейдж всеми силами пытается выдать своего монстра Франкенштейна за нечто осмысленное и серьёзное. Но получился у него просто боевик с претензией.<br />
Почему? Потому что на самом деле Heavy Rain ничем не отличается от очередной картины с Лиамом Нисоном, спасающим похищенную дочь. В ней нет сложных идей и мыслей, мало психологизма и человечности. Зато много истерик и громких утверждений. Персонажи редко останавливаются поговорить о чём-то путном, толком не меняются, предпочитая кидаться штампованными репликами и подчёркнуто эмоциональными фразами — как будто это адекватная замена.<br />
<blockquote>
Чего в Heavy Rain полно, так это драк, картинных страданий и погонь. Пустых, как квартиры Итана Марса и Мэдисон Пейдж.</blockquote>
Как игра творение Quantic Dream тоже бездарно — даже если отбросить сценарий. Вместо того, чтобы использовать мощь необычного формата и рассказать о действующих лицах с помощью окружения, разработчики просто нагородили однообразные экшен-сцены с навязчивыми QTE.<br />
Откуда у Мэдисон бессонница? Что она за человек, через что прошла, почему ей снятся кошмары? Неважно, ловите мужиков в масках и беготню по квартире в одних лишь белоснежных трусиках — ведь именно так работает пост-травматический синдром в представлении одиозного француза.<br />
<blockquote>
В этом и заключается главная трагедия Heavy Rain — в титрах красуются имена одарённых программистов, композиторов, аниматоров. Но командовал парадом Дэвид Кейдж, — человек с идеями, но лишённый таланта и чувства меры.</blockquote>
Он не в состоянии проверить, как взаимодействуют копы и федералы. Ему лень перечитать свой 2000-страничный том, чтобы удостовериться, не пропадает ли из истории астма одного из героев. А самое жуткое — Кейдж, у которого есть жена и дети, совершенно не представляет, как выразить на экране любовь. Вместо неё здесь пошлое воркование и позорное QTE-совокупление под сопливый мотив. Как тонко. Как глубокомысленно.<br />
<h2>
Как в кино</h2>
Если всё настолько плохо, то откуда такая слава? Всему виной желание некоторых геймеров казаться умнее и взрослее. Интерактивный опус Quantic Dream идеально вписался в нишу «не такого» хита. Не шутер, не типичный квест — а <em>серьёзная</em> драма с реальными актёрами в главных ролях!<br />
Отличный повод заявить, что игры — это искусство. Потому что искусство в понимании фанатов Дэвида Кейджа — не великолепные приключения вроде The Last Express, не удивительные экскурсы в неизведанное на манер Oddworld, не потрясающая Shadow of the Colossus, а жалкие потуги копировать Голливуд.<br />
<blockquote>
И в этом — весь Heavy Rain, интерактивный фильм, которому даже до простецкой Dragon’s Lair как до луны пешком. Спасибо за бета-тест, дорогие консольщики, но это кинцо могли бы и себе оставить.</blockquote>
Source: <noindex><a href="http://4pda.ru/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">4pda.ru</a> </noindex><br />
<noindex>Аuthor: Игорь Ерышев</noindex><br />
<noindex>Language: Russian</noindex>
</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href=https://omikrongame.blogspot.com>Omikron Game</a> Quantic Dream's projects fan-site.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17674984.post-32955945000261260352013-10-08T03:45:00.000+00:002019-07-14T13:59:34.293+00:00Beyond: Two Souls review: Beyond awful<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><h1><i>Beyond: Two Souls</i> review: Beyond awful</h1><h2>Quantic Dream's <i>Heavy Rain</i> follow-up is an unforgivable step back for storytelling.</h2><br />
<ul><img alt="This was approximately what my face looked like when trying to make sense of <i>Beyond</i>'s story." src="https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/BEYOND_SCREEN_09-640x271.jpg" /><br>This was approximately what my face looked like when trying to make sense of <i>Beyond</i>'s story.</ul><br />
<strong>Developer:</strong> Quantic Dream<br />
<strong>Publisher</strong>: Sony Computer Entertainment<br />
<strong>Platform</strong>: PlayStation 3<br />
<strong>Release Date:</strong> October 8, 2013<br />
<br />
In 2010, <i>Heavy Rain</i> changed the way I looked at game narratives. For all the problems with its characterizations and story structure (and there were quite a few), the game was notable for a free-flowing narrative that responded and adapted to player choices well past the point that other games would have forced a "Game Over" and a reload from the last checkpoint. Few other games before or since have combined such cinematic storytelling with so many meaningful choices, with consequences that echo heavily through the game even to the point of allowing for the death of one or more of the multiple protagonists. The result of this sprawling-but-never-out-of-control narrative structure was a game that gave a real sense of tension to even small decisions, one where I frequently paused and carefully considered my options before choosing what to do next.<br />
I rarely if ever stopped to consider a choice in <i>Beyond: Two Souls</i>, Quantic Dream's much-anticipated, PS3-exclusive follow-up to <i>Heavy Rain</i>. Instead, I mainly sleepwalked through a seemingly endless sequence of practically preordained story beats, struggling to care as I was dragged through a clichéd plot with no sense of meaningful agency. This would be somewhat acceptable in a game where tight gameplay is the focus and where the story acts as nothing more than a glorified excuse to set up the next action scene. For a game as story-focused and gameplay-free as <i>Beyond</i>, though, it's downright unforgivable.<br />
<br />
<h2>A mess of a story</h2><i>Beyond</i> is the story of Jodie, a "special" young woman (as we're told many a time), and Aiden, the invisible, ghostly companion that she sort-of-but-not-really controls (the game stresses that Aiden makes his own decisions, but Jodie is frequently seen directly controlling him). Their story is told in a series of disjointed flashbacks to Jodie's memories, jumping backward and forward in time in a way that slowly fills in a complete backward-looking story arc where we see her as an emotionally abandoned young girl, scientific test subject, (somewhat hard-to-believe) elite CIA agent, and incredibly predictable savior of the world.<br />
The time-jumping structure is an interesting concept. In better hands, I could see it being used to create a strong sense of dramatic irony, giving the player information that the characters don't have or creating intrigue by showing characters reacting to moments the player has yet to experience. As it stands in <i>Beyond</i>, though, the narrative jumps seem random and meaningless, never adding up to more than a series of disjointed and barely connected vignettes throughout Jodie's life. Each new scene is a melodramatic set of events that get thrown at Jodie with little to no organic connection to what came before. One moment you're helping someone give birth. The next you're escaping from a fire. The next you're working on a ranch, setting up your apartment for a dinner date, overthrowing an African dictator, or saving the world from an accidentally apocalyptic machine (this last one shows up a few times, actually). There's usually only the thinnest of segues connecting these highly disparate set pieces, and you'll struggle to assemble them into anything greater than the parade of storytelling clichés and badly rendered tropes that they are.<br />
It doesn't help that the story is written and presented with all the subtlety and artificial gravitas of a high school freshman trying to write something Important-with-a-capital-I. Through it all, there's a sense of explicit emotional manipulation. There are constant moments where the music swells, characters' faces get scrunched up, and the game practically throws up a big metaphorical sign saying "Feel something, dammit!" Only you feel nothing, because the plot and writing are way too overwrought and earnestly direct, and because the game never really succeeds at making Jodie a relatable and believable character with interesting motivations or reactions.<br />
<br />
<ul><img alt="This is the part where you're supposed to feel something. FEEL SOMETHING!" height="271" src="https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/BEYOND_SCREEN_14-640x271.jpg" /> <br>This is the part where you're supposed to feel something. FEEL SOMETHING!</ul><br />
There's a disappointing lack of growth to Jodie as a character; she just kind of pinballs from one manipulatively melodramatic moment to the next, expressing a literal grab bag of vaguely correct emotions at the right times (and I mean literally: you often get to choose the emotion from an on-screen grab bag). Jodie never really develops any new traits or wrinkles to her character based on past experiences. On the contrary, there are quite a few moments where Jodie seems to absolutely forget deeply held beliefs she held relatively recently in story time in favor of a narratively convenient amnesia. And she's by far the most fleshed-out character in the game; the few ancillary characters that dart in and out of her life are pure ciphers whose motivations and reactions often beggar belief.<br />
Through it all, it's abundantly clear that you can only affect the outcome of the disjointed story in the most perfunctory ways, and you're simply being dragged along by a narrative that has been almost completely set for you. In one dramatic moment, I intentionally failed the (almost laughably easy) timed button-press tasks the game threw at me, only to trigger a cut scene where Jodie is somehow saved and her original objective is achieved off-screen by military explosives. In another instance where I was steering a motorcycle, I stopped steering with the analog stick and simply held down the accelerator, only to find that the game piloted me safely to the end of the "dramatic" chase anyway. I can think of no better metaphor for the barely interactive nature of <i>Beyond</i>'s storytelling and gameplay than that.<br />
The game tries its best to offer up a few moral and personal dilemmas, but most of them are akin to a choice between doing something blindingly obvious and simply ignoring the situation by leaving it. These few decision points quickly lose any assumed sense of import when you realize everything will more or less shake out the same way regardless of which path you choose. In the end, the game shoehorns a few relatively important choices into its final scenes, but they come out of nowhere rather than feeling like major decisions that the game has been building toward.<br />
<br />
<h2>Find-the-dot gameplay</h2>There's no sense of tension to even the most over-the-top dangerous moments the game throws at you. That's partly because you know Jodie is going to survive until she's able to give the "flashback" that starts the story and partly because Aiden acts as the ultimate Deus Ex Machina the moment things get even the least bit out of control. Your ghostly companion can travel through walls and ceilings and transmit visual and audio information to Jodie from meters away. He can push things over or mess with electronics to attract attention. He can choke people to death or take control of their brains and bodies for an indeterminate amount of time. He can call up living memories from a corpse. He can even create a force field that protects Jodie from absolutely all harm. In the end, he's the ultimate answer to pretty much every narrative or gameplay problem the game has (the few moments where he's taken out of commission feel forced).<br />
Theoretically, I could see being able to control Aiden being a heady power trip for the player, who would have to learn how to use his powers creatively to aid Jodie in solving some wide-open puzzles and direct how the story unfolds. Instead, Aiden's powers are forced into strictly proscribed situations that feel like they're just there to fill story holes. The game practically tells you outright specifically what to do with Aiden and when to do it, sometimes even switching the player from Jodie's perspective to his ghostly point of view automatically. At these points, you have to float around until you find one of the pieces of the environment highlighted with a blue dot (or a person with a distinct orange aura) and interact with them however the game tells you to. There's no creativity or even basic puzzle-solving skill needed to complete the vast majority these tasks; it's just a bit of find-the-dot interactive busywork before you can get on to the next cut scene.<br />
<br />
<ul><img alt="The glowy particle effect is how you know Aiden has done what the game expects of him." height="272" src="https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/BEYOND_SCREEN_02-640x272.jpg" /><br>The glowy particle effect is how you know Aiden has done what the game expects of him.</ul><br />
The glowy particle effect is how you know Aiden has done what the game expects of him.The idea that you're simply hunting for the next highlighted environmental bit to push the story forward extends to the portions of the game where you're controlling Jodie. Yes, you can walk around somewhat freely through some intricately detailed environments, but it feels like walking through a film set, a place where the world will fall apart if you step off a very narrow path. Indeed, the game constantly uses short cut scenes to push you in the right direction if you wander off somewhere you aren't supposed to go. In one particularly frustrating section, Jodie gets to ride a horse through a beautifully rendered desert, but any attempt to ride off the beaten path is met with a quick correction back to the shortest point between two story beats. It's a familiar feeling by that point in the game: feel free to look at the pretty scenery, but don't touch it in any meaningful way.<br />
When you're not walking directly from white dot A to white dot B as Jodie, you're taking part in extremely clunky action scenes. These are choreographed well enough, but the gameplay boils down to waiting for a cutscene to go into slow-motion, then flicking the analog stick in the direction Jodie is already moving in an extremely generous window of two seconds or so. These sections play out like a glorified version of <i>Dragon's Lair</i>, only dumbed down so that it's almost impossible to fail—and with no significant penalty if you do (and without the expressive animation, either).<br />
It's a shame that <i>Beyond</i> fails so utterly at providing a convincing story or any engaging gameplay, because it does a lot of things right as far as presentation. Ellen Page in particular does the best she can to save the weak material she's given, and her every face-twitch and body movement is rendered beautifully through some excellent motion capture (though there are a lot of awkward animation transition points, often badly masked by cut scenes or camera jumps). The game is a visual feast, drawing quite a bit out of the aging PS3 hardware and rendering some truly breathtaking environments (though there is a bit of a waxy, uncanny valley effect on some of the character close-ups). There are even a few bits of genuine emotion that somehow wriggle their way out of the clunkiness, too, particularly in the few scenes that show how Jodie's special powers ostracize and distance her from other kids.<br />
<ul><li><img height="272" src="https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/BEYOND_SCREEN_13.jpg" /><br />
Oh, did I mention Aiden can create a force field to protect Jodie from all harm? 'Cuz he can.</li>
<li><img height="272" src="https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/BEYOND_SCREEN_12.jpg" /><br />
Jodie tries out being a badass. It's... not a great look for her.</li>
<li><img height="272" src="https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/BEYOND_SCREEN_11.jpg" /><br />
Virtual Page conveys a lot through subtle facial expressions. Too bad the content she's conveying is so awful.</li>
<li><img height="272" src="https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/BEYOND_SCREEN_10.jpg" /><br />
If I gave review sub-scores, the "Making a 3D model of Ellen Page" score would be 10/10.</li>
<li><img height="272" src="https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/BEYOND_SCREEN_08.jpg" /><br />
The game is at its worst when its trying to imitate an action game, minus the actual action</li>
<li><img height="272" src="https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/BEYOND_SCREEN_07.jpg" /><br />
Lens flare!</li>
<li><img height="272" src="https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/BEYOND_SCREEN_06.jpg" /><br />
A lot of Jodie's costume changes seem like excuses to show Ellen Page in different outfits.</li>
<li><img height="272" src="https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/BEYOND_SCREEN_05.jpg" /><br />
This is an actual screenshot provided by Sony. I didn't turn down the brightness or anything.</li>
<li><img height="272" src="https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/BEYOND_SCREEN_04.jpg" /><br />
That's your cue to tap the analog stick to the right. You did it? Hooray!</li>
<li><img height="272" src="https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/BEYOND_SCREEN_03.jpg" /><br />
Say what you will about this game, but it really makes wet things look wet.</li>
<li><img height="272" src="https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/BEYOND_SCREEN_01.jpg" /><br />
I wonder if that dog is going to kill Jodie. Oh, wait, I don't, because I know this is her flashback.</li>
</ul><br />
Those few good bits can't save the utter storytelling mess of <i>Beyond</i>, though, especially when the ending descends into a farce that combines out-of-left-field character motivations, irrational and pointless personal sacrifice, and a lazy feel-good fantasy cosmology that would make Deepak Chopra blush. In <i>Heavy Rain</i>, I couldn't wait to see what happened as the story slowly moved toward its thrilling conclusion. In <i>Beyond</i>, I simply couldn't wait for the story to end so I could get on with something else. The game represents a huge step back from its predecessor, and the lost potential could single-handedly set back the cause of interactive storytelling a great deal.<br />
<h2>The Good</h2><ul><li>Beautiful environmental design and character animation</li>
<li>Ellen Page proves she can salvage bad material</li>
</ul><h2>The Bad</h2><ul><li>Disjointed story that barely holds together through time-jumping structure</li>
<li>No sense of agency or ability to meaningfully change the story</li>
<li>A parade of overwrought, clichéd plot points straight out of high school creative writing class</li>
<li>An utter lack of tension or anything resembling real drama</li>
<li>Characters that can't hold together coherent motivations</li>
<li>Insultingly easy quick time events</li>
<li>Gameplay mostly boils down to "find the dot to continue the story"</li>
</ul><h2>The Ugly</h2><ul><li>The fact that, somehow, David Cage took the lessons of <i>Heavy Rain</i> and created this</li>
</ul><b>Verdict:</b> Stay far, far away.<br />
<br />
<b>Autor:</b>Kyle Orland<br />
<b>Source:</b> <a href="https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/10/beyond-two-souls-review-beyond-awful/" target="_blank">arstechnica.com</a><br />
<b>Language:</b> English</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href=https://omikrongame.blogspot.com>Omikron Game</a> Quantic Dream's projects fan-site.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17674984.post-77918811403832567602013-06-11T09:33:00.000+00:002019-07-18T07:59:23.281+00:00The Dark Sorcerer – a next gen comedy from Quantic Dream<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><h1>The Dark Sorcerer – a next gen comedy from Quantic Dream</h1><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/playstationblogeurope/9012201439/" title="SORCERER_TAKE01_2602 by PlayStation Europe, on Flickr"><img alt="SORCERER_TAKE01_2602" src="https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5327/9012201439_ccae937bd9.jpg" width="240" /></a> <br />
<br />
<h3>We love prototypes. </h3><br />
In 2005 Quantic Dream started working on a short film in real time 3D called The Casting, using the PS3 graphic engine we had just developed. Our initial objective was to make a technical prototype to test the limits and performance of this new engine, but Sony, with whom we had not yet started working, quickly encouraged us to present it publicly at its booth at E3 in order to illustrate the graphic potential of the PS3 that was launched that same year. <br />
<br />
Everything we learned from making the short, particularly the immense difficulty of creating emotion in real time, but also the importance of the actor’s performance, facial Motion Capture, the challenge of lip synchronisation and especially eye animation, would enable us to develop Heavy Rain. <br />
<br />
After this somewhat fortuitous first effort (but which succeeded in attracting the attention of the press and players and largely contributed to creating interest in the small French company that is Quantic Dream), the idea of making it a recurring principle quickly developed.<br />
<br />
After all, our prestigious and infinitely more talented big brother, Pixar, had taken the same path before we did by testing ideas and technologies in short films that later went public, which is, after all, much more fun than making austere technological prototypes. <br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/playstationblogeurope/9013387674/" title="SORCERER_TAKE01_1009 by PlayStation Europe, on Flickr"><img alt="SORCERER_TAKE01_1009" src="https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7388/9013387674_1820077bfe_m.jpg" width="240" /></a><br />
<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/playstationblogeurope/9012202071/" title="SORCERER_TAKE01_2010 by PlayStation Europe, on Flickr"><img alt="SORCERER_TAKE01_2010" src="https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5331/9012202071_bbb87e1f6a_m.jpg" width="240" /></a> <br />
<br />
We therefore decided, with the support of Sony, to work between each two games on a technical prototype that is destined to be shared with the public. Each time a small crew of ten people maximum would work on a demo lasting a few minutes for a period of four to six months in order to test ideas, technologies and concepts, while using the real time technology of our next game. <br />
<br />
<h3>Real time emotion</h3><br />
Our second technical prototype was presented for the first time at the GDC in 2012. This prototype, called Kara after the main character, used our second-gen 3D engine (which would be used to develop our new game, BEYOND) and was supposed to enable us to experiment with Performance Capture for the first time. This movement capture technology can simultaneously capture the actor’s body and facial movements, as well as their voice. <br />
<br />
To test our ability to reproduce different emotions in real time, I quickly wrote the story of this young android woman designed to be a multi-functional object and which becomes human before the eyes of the spectator. <br />
<br />
This was an immense discovery for me and the team, a demonstration of something we had believed for a long time: it was finally possible to create strong and subtle emotions, to create empathy, to read a look, with game characters. Each time this short is projected, I observe the public as they watch it, hold their breath and share the emotions of the character on the screen. At long last, a new world had opened up before us, the end of the pantomime, the end of exaggeration and over-acting in order to make up for gross technology. <br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/playstationblogeurope/9013387088/" title="SORCERER_TAKE01_2081 by PlayStation Europe, on Flickr"><img alt="SORCERER_TAKE01_2081" src="https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7434/9013387088_633c3b3ea9.jpg" width="240" /></a> <br />
<br />
We would finally be able to start using this medium to say something. <br />
<br />
The other lesson that Kara taught us was the importance of the actor’s performance. The young actress, Valorie Curry, who lent her features and her immense talent to the main character put in an extraordinary performance that was rich in nuance and subtlety. She succeeded in giving a soul to a character made up of pixels. <br />
<br />
Kara confirmed our desire to work with exceptional actors, which played a role in our determination to approach Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe for BEYOND. This also made us more confident in our ability to faithfully transcribe the emotions that these actors would create through their performance in the studio. <br />
<br />
The other great discovery was that although we had the feeling that we were setting the bar very high each time in terms of the graphics for these short films, by working several months on a few minutes, the quality improved automatically in the game that followed. Heavy Rain is much more accomplished than The Casting, BEYOND is much more accomplished than Kara, although it presents nearly 300 characters in more than 10 hours of play. <br />
<br />
The lessons drawn from the prototype, the experience acquired and the rationalisation of the process enabled us to improve the graphic quality while simultaneously reducing the production time. <br />
<br />
<h3>The Dark Sorcerer: An attempt at a next-gen comedy</h3><br />
When we started working on PS4 the question of the next short film arose. What could we do this time? What new field should we explore? Of course we were going to have a new Next-Gen graphic engine that would significantly improve the graphic quality. Of course we were going to try to push back the limits of performance capture, a technique that we are beginning to master after one year of intensive shooting for BEYOND. <br />
<br />
For me, the most important question was what kind of new emotion could we test? Kara (then BEYOND) had demonstrated, for me, that it was possible to create dramatic emotion. It didn’t seem to be particularly interesting to recount another Kara-style story based on the same emotions and the same mechanisms. We had to test another limit, something radically different. We had to try comedy. <br />
<br />
Making people feel fear is actually fairly simple. Creep up behind someone without a sound and suddenly shout, and you’ll startle them. Moving people by telling a sad story is more difficult, but if you have a moving story and you tell it the right way, you can manage to move your listeners. <br />
<br />
The problem with comedy is that you need a good story, pacing and talented actors in order to get even a smile from your audience. <br />
<br />
The other challenge is cultural: although we can frighten or move a Japanese person, an American or a German with more or less the same things, laughter is eminently cultural. People in different countries don’t laugh at the same things. What is hilarious in one country may be considered to be sinister or vulgar in another. <br />
<br />
My first task thus consisted in trying to find a subject that would amuse any kind of public of any nationality. The idea of a film shoot that backfires is a fairly well-known subject, and talking about a video game shoot particularly in an environment that is familiar to all players should guarantee us a universal subject. I also wanted to work with several actors in the studio (which we greatly enjoyed doing for BEYOND), because comedy is essentially a question of pacing between the actors. <br />
<br />
I also wanted to test a character that, morphologically, would be not quite human in order to see how facial Motion Capture would adapt to a different morphology. <br />
<br />
Lastly, and most important of all, I wanted to know if it was possible to make people smile with a real-time technology. I was certain my colleagues in the industry would vie to surpass each other with warriors, zombies, soldiers, aliens and next-gen orcs to great effect. <br />
<br />
Better not to compete and try something radically different. <br />
<br />
And that’s how I ended up in the studio with David Gant, a wonderful 70-year-old Scottish actor (in a kilt) as a Sorcerer, Carl Payne, who used to be in The Cosby Show in the role of Maurice (the first black Goblin in the history of Heroic Fantasy), and the hilarious Christian Eriksen (who has been in all my games since OMIKRON) as a demon, not forgetting David Gasman (another oldie, Paco in Heavy Rain and the policeman who questions Jodie in BEYOND) as the Voice Off Director. <br />
<br />
<iframe allow="encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="240" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BqeuHGESZBA" width="400"></iframe><br />
<br />
<h3>PlayStation 4: Let the hardware shine</h3><br />
After a particularly trying shoot (it’s hard work making people laugh…), the implementation period began and it was time to start playing with version 1.0 of our new PS4 engine. <br />
<br />
Then came the first surprise: the graphic quality obtained with relatively little effort was a spectacular improvement on PS3. We obviously expected this, going from the tech specs, but it’s one thing comparing the number of polygons per second, and it’s quite another seeing it on the screen. <br />
<br />
What surprised us first off was the global quality of the images. We are so used to seeing games in 720p (the standard on PS3) that we had forgotten how much Full HD (1080p) changes life. If we add an anti-aliasing HD, HD textures, a real 3D depth of field and of course an avalanche of polygons and lights, we get an idea of the emotion that PS4 can produce in any normally constituted computer graphics artist. <br />
<br />
On PS4 everything looks great because the machine offers power that was totally inaccessible up until now. We can feel that we are closing in little by little on the kind of graphic quality we find in CG films. <br />
<br />
(NB: and now a very boring technical part, except if you’re a developer for the competition. Skip this paragraph if you’re like me and you find technical parts boring) <br />
<br />
<i>In the current demo, there are about a million polygons in the set, and a little less than a million per character on the screen (i.e. a total of 4 million when the three characters are on the screen). Each character has about 350 MB of textures and about forty different shaders. It’s all managed with Physically Based Shaders, volumetric lights, full HDR, Color Grading, Physical Lenses (particularly useful for chromatic aberrations and 3D depth of field), and translucence for more realistic rendering of the skin.</i> <br />
<br />
<i>The change of set and all the lighting (and the behavior of the shaders) between the dramatic version of the set and the “studio” version is done in real time. The same holds true for all pyrotechnical particle effects.</i> <br />
<br />
(End of technical details, you can now continue to read normally) <br />
<br />
Creating interactive images on PlayStation4 is fascinating, but to maintain the same level of quality throughout a game all the studios in the world would have to reinvent themselves from the bottom up. New skills will appear (Director of 3D Photography, for example), the size of server infrastructures will have to be seriously reviewed in order to be able to deal with the size of the new full HD data and, most of all, we are going to have to rethink this medium and the games we create, because the technology now allows us to achieve a level of quality that was previously available only in the cinema. <br />
<br />
The PS4 engine used for The Dark Sorcerer is only in its first iteration and most of the features scheduled for the final version of the engine haven’t yet been implemented. This demo is only a first test that is well below the visual quality we hope to achieve in our next game. The next game… which will not be based on this demo, obviously (I know, we’re a bit weird…), but on an idea that is completely different from what we’ve done to date. It’s incredibly exciting, and I wish I could tell you more… but I can’t. <br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/playstationblogeurope/9013386932/" title="SORCERER_TAKE02_429 by PlayStation Europe, on Flickr"><img alt="SORCERER_TAKE02_429" src="https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5466/9013386932_276f4f5dc1.jpg" witdh="240" /></a> <br />
<br />
<h3>To be funny or not</h3><br />
As I write these lines I have absolutely no idea what the reactions to The Dark Sorcerer will be. What I can say is that it is certainly the script that gave me the hardest time. The idea came very quickly, but then I had to fight with doubts up until it was too late to change my mind. I was ready to rewrite something completely different, something serious and dramatic like Kara rather than run the stupid risk of writing something that wasn’t funny. <br />
<br />
And in the end of the day, I stuck with it. Life is too short to waste time doing boring stuff. Better to take risks and do something you believe in. Both the team and I had enormous fun developing these eleven minutes and transcribing as well as we could the performances of these four totally wacky actors. <br />
<br />
In a few months we experienced something between Monty Python and Terry Pratchett (obviously without claiming to match their talent), and we laughed at each projection of the Goblin’s antics and the growing annoyance of the Sorcerer. We learned how attempting to produce beautiful images with such computing power is painstaking, how each second has to be worked out in minute detail, how light and shade became essential, how difficult it is to raise a smile. <br />
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And there was also, somewhere in all this, a desire to distance ourselves from the clichés of video games with their stereotyped themes where the bad guys are really evil, where sorcerers summon up demons, where heroes have big muscles and girls have big boobs. A little distance from our tendency to take ourselves seriously and believe that we are saying something original or important, whereas the stories and universes of many video games are no more than the echoes of things that have been done better a thousand times before us. Howard created Conan the Barbarian in 1932, and Tolkein wrote Lord of the Rings in 1954, and nothing our industry has created so far can even hold a candle to the genius of Frazetta or the visionary talent of someone like Peter Jackson. <br />
<br />
The Dark Sorcerer is also about what video games are like today, an extraordinary and fantastic world where anything is possible, but also a world where everything remains to be invented. <br />
<br />
<h3>Famous last words</h3><br />
To conclude, the whole team and I hope you like The Dark Sorcerer. We put our hearts and souls into it and we are happy to share the result with all those who keep track of and appreciate our progress. I hope you enjoy those eleven minutes as much as we enjoyed creating them. <br />
<br />
If you smiled even once while watching this short film, our work has been worthwhile.<br />
<br />
One last word: if you liked The Dark Sorcerer, don’t forget to have a look at our next game, BEYOND. Although it’s a totally different genre, the game was made by the same team, with the same passion and unreasonable enthusiasm for trying to do something different. I hope that like me, you will be bowled over by the performance of Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe. <br />
And lastly, a big thank you to all those who have stayed with us, write to us, come to meet us at conferences and fairs, to all those who buy our games. It’s your support that enables us to continue to create and experiment. <br />
<br />
<b>Autor:</b> David Cage<br />
<b>Source:</b><a href="https://blog.eu.playstation.com/2013/06/11/the-dark-sorcerer-a-next-gen-comedy-from-quantic-dream/" target="_blank">PlayStation.blog</a><br />
<b>Language: English</b> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href=https://omikrongame.blogspot.com>Omikron Game</a> Quantic Dream's projects fan-site.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17674984.post-89190663424764385962013-06-11T01:00:00.000+00:002019-07-18T09:39:12.143+00:00The Dark Sorcerer<img src="https://live.staticflickr.com/7434/9013387088_633c3b3ea9.jpg" /><br />
<b>Name</b>: The Dark Sorcerer<br />
<b>Developer</b>: Quantic Dream<br />
<b>Publisher</b>: <br />
<b>Genre</b>: A Next Gen Comedy/Game Prototype<br />
<b>Mode</b>: Single player<br />
<b>Platform</b>: PS4<br />
<b>Description</b>: Play as the Dark Sorcerer in a world where magic is illegal and goblins and Demons rule the land.<br />
<br />
<h3>
2015</h3>
<br />
<br />
<li><i>2015/01/28</i> The Dark Sorcerer Making-of<br />
<iframe allow="encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="240" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/T6qKp0RVgEA" width="400"></iframe></li>
<br />
<br />
<h3>
2013</h3>
<br />
<br />
<li><i>2013/07/13</i> PlayStation 4 next gen tech demo at E3 2013<br />
<iframe allow="encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="240" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BqeuHGESZBA" width="400"></iframe></li>
<br />
<br />
<li><i>2013/06/11</i> <a href="/2013/06/the-dark-sorcerer-next-gen-comedy-from.html">The Dark Sorcerer – a next gen comedy from Quantic Dream</a> (Author: David Cage, Language: English)<br />
As I write these lines I have absolutely no idea what the reactions to The Dark Sorcerer will be. What I can say is that it is certainly the script that gave me the hardest time. The idea came very quickly, but then I had to fight with doubts up until it was too late to change my mind. I was ready to rewrite something completely different, something serious and dramatic like Kara rather than run the stupid risk of writing something that wasn’t funny...</li>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href=https://omikrongame.blogspot.com>Omikron Game</a> Quantic Dream's projects fan-site.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17674984.post-85878383534829115132013-02-02T09:29:00.001+00:002017-11-09T12:32:13.947+00:00QD stories and projects not interesting anymore<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Heavy Rain,... Beyond: Two Souls, I'm experienced gamer, and fan of Omikron: The Nomad Soul waiting for years for something like that, but not anymore interested in collecting info about other projects. Next is why.<br />
<br />
QD calling genre "interactive story". It's marketing/lie BS. It is just another casual adventures with "press X to win". Even cannot be stand in pair comparing with L.A.Noire, Mass Effect, even Uncharted and many other games. If not all games with plot are interactive stories. So, interactive story genre is a fake.<br />
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"Press X to win". This is definitely not a way how I wish to interact with game. Is the same "genius" as to press "pause" in multimedia player and select another chapter of the film, you just making it more boring. Is like you get outdoors, walking in park and boom, pigeon poops on yours shirt. Not worth to remember and rather disturbing interruption.<br />
<br />
Let's talk dialogue system. That suffers like absolutely any other dialogue systems in world, from guessing what script will do next on scene depends on words you choose in dialogue, that usually very different on meaning from further voicing this choice. It maybe not clear for devs why it is so, as you know further plot, but for player, who have no idea it is way different. And hey, lets be honest, you not gives option to not let pigeon poop at all, difference only in consistence of shit, and maybe not pigeon but seagull. Not talking about selecting another root to avoid this accident at all. You receive no stars for failed absolutely standard dialogue system, and it even worse, cause it is a huge part of "interactive story" meaning in yours marketing. So, corridor interactivity.<br />
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Plot? You says tons of script pages, works for marketing I guess, but after Omikron, only Fahrenheit have something to think and only once about at 5'o clock tea. All titles after, phew, clear as f.ck.<br />
Do you think I really interest if main actor or neighborhood stays alive or die? Absolutely wash-full color characters, stereotypes over stereotypes. Who is murderer? Seriously, thats a question that goes wide road through all game on surface! Yeah you claimed it is not about who, but why, but it fails here. You talking about deep psychotic thing. But from my point of view it's so far even from "Hannibal line" for example, so if it would be TV series I have doubts it came out from pilot at all (good you claimed it new genre "interactive story" and play in gaming area not TV). Let's be honest you doing some reverences to "explain" murderer actions, but so primitive. No moral choices, every f.king second, between very bad and awfull bad, is only one two moments between good and bad, and for some reason they failed to choose good, that is where it's become pathetic, theatrical, fake.<br />
Let's go to robotics theme, gee-sh, for anyone who even touch science-fiction of most rumored authors it is already cliché. Not talking about more deeper second line sci-fi. Yeap, waving to yours 2018 game title plot. Pathetic, cliché, stereotype. <br />
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Other thing is... consoles only supports. Well. I understand of making exclusive titles under wing of Sony Entertainment, its good money, using own engine that linked to current console hardware. But well, do I care about it instead of having product on platform I use? Nope. Good example Apple making OS for very few own devices comparing to Android that works over thousand configurations and still bug result is the same if not worst for Apple.<br />
And it may thunder from clear skies, but absolutely ALL games made on PC's, so f.ck off with yours console shit that it not possible to move to PC. In addition to not wish wasting hundred bucks every time new console appears console do not get any better image then on PC that is years more old, that I already have and that works great with gaming pad, with VR that will work even if devs far ago forbidden game support, with big TVs. Yours console choice limited for absolutely discomforting 30 fps instead of 60 and 120 limited by computer display or progressive TV's, limited to use any third-party shaders, that helps greatly with enough old game to look more modern, limited to inconvenient saves with strict console policy, false of edit settings etc, not talking about mods option at all, that can be made again only on PC. I would understand excuse if only David self do all work, from scripting to modeling and coding, but nope, it always a team. You may say making engine working on all PC configurations is pretty hard work. BS, just safe money for exclusive and/or not enough qualified workers (in most cases only first factor, though trying to run Omikron on modern hardware still makes it very far from smooth like it supposed to be for old games running native, not excludes second). So, youtube walk-through works with all yours titles after Omikron even better, as not wasting time on bad interactivity, even works as spent time TV show without need any specific hardware. Not talking about I can increase speed to 1.3 from original video speed without wasting any detail but spent even less time with the same "wasting time" result.<br />
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I would say also about model beauty as main characters, but it is matter of taste of course. Rubber ugly dolls with empty eyes. My best guess this is poor result of applying real model on animation skeleton (though original models as I saw them on photos are absolutely normal if not cute looking). With adjustments it become opposite to normal looking person, unnatural and weird. Just another spoon of shit in general vision of where it brings QD.<br />
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If something positive I may say? Yeap, level design still nice. Although modern 3D scanners easily grab convert real object into mesh with correct texturing just click button, so no hard work in drawing from scratch, but composition of things at screen is nice as well as areas made.<br />
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I understand you QD, really understand being in yours shoes. but being in mine, no way, nope, no my money or interest for yours work, is only way to get both if you enter Mobile market even with current titles, that will definitely be win to won<b>, </b>cause mobile gaming is very bad in quality this days, so even with all this titles QD you shall glorifying there. Even I will praise then, but for stationery gaming it sucks<b>. </b>Good bye, but not farewell<b>.</b>
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<b>Autor</b>:UL<br />
<b>Source</b>: original<br />
<b>Language</b>: English (not native)</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href=https://omikrongame.blogspot.com>Omikron Game</a> Quantic Dream's projects fan-site.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17674984.post-45896436526964139692009-09-23T20:14:00.001+00:002009-09-23T20:16:13.597+00:00PlayFrance: interview David Cage<div><object width="420" height="339"><param name="movie" value="http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/xajki1" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><embed src="http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/xajki1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="420" height="339" allowFullScreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always"></embed></object><br /><b><a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/xajki1">interview David Cage PlayFrance</a></b><br /><i> <a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/kensama">kensama</a></i></div><br /><br /><br /><b>Autor:</b> staff<br /><b>Source:</b> <a href="http://www.sysmaya.net/apps/video/play/477544/Heavy%20Metal:interview-David-Cage-PlayFrance" target=_blank></a><br /><b>Language:</b> French<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href=https://omikrongame.blogspot.com>Omikron Game</a> Quantic Dream's projects fan-site.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17674984.post-8826066157199930412009-09-19T12:09:00.002+00:002009-09-23T20:28:25.467+00:00[FJV 2009] Heavy Rain : Interview exclusive P3L de David CageC'est grâce à la présence sur les lieux de notre éminent collègue et rédacteur Drummerbart (et bien évidemment de Grégory Delfosse, RP Sony France qu'on ne cessera de remercier pour l'attention qu'il porte à notre site), que la rencontre a pu être, après celle de l'E3, encore une fois possible entre la rédaction P3L et David Cage, le papa de Heavy Rain, et évidemment de Quantic Dream.<br />Sans plus attendre, voici l'interview confectionnée par nos soins, et comme d'accoutumée de la part de David Cage, sans concession :<br /><br /><b>P3L : Quand a débuté le processus de création de Heavy Rain ?</b><br /><br />David CAGE : C'est vraiment sur la fin de Fahrenheit, j'étais un peu déprimé et un peu partagé : on avait travaillé longtemps sur ce projet dans lequel on croyait beaucoup, ça a été un peu chaotique pour des raisons indépendantes de notre volonté, on a été pris dans la tourmente Vivendi et surtout, lors de l'E3, j'ai vu Fahrenheit présenté au milieu de jeux qui n'avaient rien à voir et je me suis senti complètement étranger à tout ce que tout le monde faisait à l'époque, du coup j'étais vraiment convaincu qu'on s'était trompé de voie et que ce n'est pas ça qu'il fallait faire. On commençait à parler d'autres projets à d'autres éditeurs et c'est à ce moment là que sont sortis les premiers tests, qui furent dithyrambiques et les premiers chiffres de vente furent également très bon, puisque le titre entrera en tête dans les charts Anglais et Allemand. Donc ça c'est finalement plutôt bien passé. On arrivait face à des éditeurs en leur proposant un Nomad Soul II et eux nous répondaient qu'ils avaient joué à Fahrenheit, qu'il l'avaient trouvé super et nous demandaient donc de poursuivre plutôt dans cette voie là. On s'est donc dit que finalement on n'avait peut-être trouvé quelque chose, qu'on ne s'était pas si trompé que ça et nous avons donc choisi la continuité.<br /><br /><b>D'où te vient ton inspiration ? Quelles sont tes influences ?</b><br /><br />L'inspiration on ne sait jamais d'où elle vient vraiment, sans doute de films ou autre mais parfois c'est un truc que tu as vu il y a 20 ans qui te revient alors que tu es en pleine écriture. Donc c'est toujours difficile à expliquer d'où viennent les influences. Mais en tout cas, c'est le premier jeu que j'écris dans lequel il y a des choses personnelles et vraiment une envie de raconter des choses qui me rendent plus proche que ce qu'on fait traditionnellement.<br /><br /><b>Tu as parlé, en cours de développement, d'un début et d'une fin immuables, seules nos actions entre les deux rendraient la progression différente, mais avec le même point final. En est-il toujours de même à l'heure actuelle, ou peut-on s'attendre à plusieurs « fins » possibles ?</b><br /><br />Il y a toujours une logique de fin différente mais de toute façon Heavy Rain c'est bien plus que ça. Ce n'est pas un ligne droite avec au bout 3 fins différentes, il y a vraiment différentes manières, différentes routes pour atteindre différentes fins. Mais cette fin est vraiment la conséquence logique de tous les actes du joueur, pas simplement d'une action, puisque certaines ne vont pas avoir de conséquence directe, ou alors limitée dans le temps ; alors que d'autres auront vraiment un impact fort sur le cheminement. Ce n'est pas un choix qui va donner un chemin, mais la narration que choisira de donner le joueur à l'histoire qui le conduira vers une de la quinzaine de fin possibles.<br /><br /><b>Heavy Rain étant avant tout une histoire qui se prend dans sa globalité et une expérience personnelle, est-ce un jeu facile à présenter dans un salon ?</b><br /><br />Le problème c'est qu'Heavy Rain n'est justement pas un jeu de salon. Un jeu d'action c'est facile, tu prends le pad et en 5 minutes tu sais si tu aimes ou pas. Heavy Rain est un jeu qui repose sur la narration, sur l'émotion, on a besoin de temps pour apprendre à connaître les personnages. Qui sont-ils, d'où viennent-ils, où vont-ils, pourquoi sont-ils là, quels sont les enjeux ? Là on a rien de tout ça, ce sont vraiment des samples, ce sont des échantillons du jeu qui sont un peu jetés en pâtures et on ne sait jamais vraiment ce que les gens en retirent en mal ou en bien.<br /><br /><b>Entre 2 entretiens tu observes peut-être les réactions des joueurs, qui parfois semblent un peu déstabilisés par le mode de contrôle du jeu. Quel est ton ressenti par rapport à ces réactions ?</b><br /><br />Heavy Rain est un jeu dans lequel on change le mode d'interaction, on avance de manière inhabituel, le switch de caméra n'est pas classique, c'est un jeu qui nécessite de rentrer dedans. C'est pas comme un shooter dans lequel on connaît les codes parce qu'on a joué à une dizaine de jeux similaires. On teste le jeu comme il doit être testé, c'est à dire que nous organisons des cessions avec des gens qui n'ont jamais joués, on leur fait découvrir le jeu chronologiquement et on a vraiment des retours extraordinaires sur la manière dont le jeu se joue. C'est pour ça qu'il ne faut pas se baser sur les réactions dans un endroit comme celui-ci, même si globalement on se rend compte que le contrôle du jeu devient vite spontané après quelques minutes de jeu.<br /><br /><b>Beaucoup de joueurs ont peu apprécié le « renforcement » des cinématiques du dernier Metal Gear. Doit-on s'attendre à une omniprésence des cinématiques aussi sur Heavy Rain ? Ou ces dernières seront-elles distillées avec parcimonie tout au long du jeu ?</b><br /><br />Il n'y a pas de cinématiques dans Heavy Rain, où alors elles sont très courtes puisqu'elles ne durent pas plus de 20 secondes. Tout l'intérêt du jeu, on ne l'a peut-être pas assez expliqué, c'est justement de ne pas raconter l'histoire à travers des cinématiques mais bien à travers des actions du joueur.<br /><br /><b>Lors du GamesCom tu t'étais justement un peu énervé sur la place des cinématiques et surtout des QTE ...</b><br /><br />Jusqu'à maintenant, nous avons montré 4 scènes du jeu et 2 trailers, il y a peu de jeux qui se donnent autant de mal. Sur ces 4 scènes, il y en a une qui comprend des QTE qui représentent 1/3 de la scène en question et c'est la proportion qu'on retrouve à peu de chose près dans le jeu. Mais ce n'est en tout cas pas un jeu à la Dragon's Lair ou je ne sais quoi, Heavy Rain est très rythmé, dans lequel on a un retour immédiat sur ses actions et que nous voulons spectaculaire. Pour le moment nous avons de très bons retours , notamment aux USA où il y a beaucoup de hardcore-gamers qui étaient dubitatifs avant de prendre le pad en main et qui, une fois aux commandes, ont pris pleinement plaisir à jouer.<br /><br /><b>Penses-tu que, justement, certains joueurs sont dubitatifs parce qu'ils ont moyennement appréciés l'expérience Fahrenheit, s'attendant peut-être à plus d'action ?</b><br /><br />Les séquences d'action sur Fahrenheit ne fonctionnaient pas comme nous le voulions. Nous avons essayé beaucoup de choses et n'étions pas particulièrement heureux du résultat final, mais justement, on apprend de ça, il ne faut pas jeter le bébé avec l'eau du bain. Nous sommes repartis d'une page blanche sur ce point et je pense que nous avons trouvé une solution qui me donne beaucoup plus de satisfactions sur Heavy Rain.<br /><br /><b>Quoi que fasse le joueur, pourra-t-il toujours finir le jeu ? S'il fait une succession de très mauvais choix, pourra t-il se retrouver en game over ?</b><br /><br />C'est un jeu dans lequel il n'y a pas de game over, j'ai vraiment voulu me débarrasser de cette notion qui sous entend que, puisque le joueur n'a pas joué comme le développeur l'a pensé, il doit recommencer jusqu'à ce qu'il réussisse. D'un point de vue narratif, ça n'a pas de sens, ça crée une rupture temporelle qui fait revenir en arrière et revivre les mêmes choses. J'ai donc souhaité que la mort des personnages soient un événement du scénario, le joueur à perdu le personnage, a perdu sa piste mais ça ne doit pas être vécu comme une sanction. Ok, le personnage est mort mais en même temps ça permettra sans doute au joueur de découvrir des scènes qu'ils n'auraient pas vu de son vivant.<br /><br /><b>Heavy Rain est sans doute l'aboutissement du croisement entre jeu vidéo et cinéma. Penses-tu à ce titre qu'une adaptation soit possible ? Pourrais-tu en prendre les commandes ?</b><br /><br />Non, honnêtement non et ce n'est pas quelque chose qui me fait rêver particulièrement. Il faut beaucoup de temps pour apprendre à faire un film et on ne s'improvise pas réalisateur du jour au lendemain. Je suis content d'être ici et de faire ce que je fais, comme je le fais. Bien sur, si demain quelqu'un proposait de faire un film d'Heavy Rain, j'en serais heureux mais ça ne sera pas moi qui le dirigerait, ce n'est ni un rêve, ni une envie, ni un aboutissement.<br /><br /><b>Vous avez voulu un titre résolument adulte, avez-vous une idée de la classification PEGI ?</b><br /><br />Heavy Rain sera classifié M (18+).<br /><br /><b>Quantic Dream a développé trois jeux depuis 1995, comment le studio fait-il pour « vivre » dans un environnement économique difficile ?</b><br /><br />On vit très bien, on vit même mieux. A une époque, au moment du développement d'internet, plein de monde me disait « pourquoi tu ne fais pas des sites internet ? », les gens qui me disaient ça ne sont plus là pour en parler, ou encore « pourquoi tu fais pas des jeux Wii ou DS ? », les gens qui me disaient ça, souffrent aujourd'hui parce que le marché est en train de changer. J'ai la chance depuis le début de l'aventure Quantic, de trouver des gens qui me donnent les moyens de développer mes idées et qui me donnent le temps de le faire. Au nom de quoi je devrais faire la course et me dire « il faut que je sorte 10 jeux par an » ? En quoi faire 10 jeux par an serait mieux que faire 1 jeu tous les 4 ans comme je le fais actuellement ? 4 ans, c'est le temps qu'il faut pour développer une technologie propriétaire, développer un nouveau concept, avoir le temps de l'écrire, de le développer et de le réaliser. C'est le temps jusqu'à présent qu'on m'a donné, donc j'ai pris. Honnêtement, je n'en tire pas de fierté, je n'en ai pas honte non plus, c'est simplement comme ça que je vois mon travail.<br /><br /><b>Le studio consacre t-il 100 % de ses ressources à HR ou a t-il d'autres projets en cours, un Nomad Soul 2, par exemple ?</b><br /><br />A Quantic nous sommes des artisans, comme dans un atelier nous avons l'amour du travail bien fait, en tout cas nous avons une vraie implication, une vraie envie. Nous n'avons pas vocation à devenir demain une usine à jeux, nous n'avons pas derrière nous des actionnaires qui nous menacent si ça ne va pas. Nous sommes juste des gens passionnés. Donc toutes les ressources de Quantic -nous sommes actuellement une centaine- sont concentrées sur Heavy Rain et y sera tant que ça sera nécessaire jusqu'à la dernière minute. A aucun moment il n'y aura un calcul pour envoyer une partie de l'équipe travailler sur un jeu DS ou un jeu Wii pour rentabiliser je ne sais pas quoi, nous ne sommes pas du tout dans cette démarche là.<br /><br /><b>En parlant de rentabilité, quel regard portes-tu sur le marché du jeu et plus particulièrement sur les déclarations d'un Kotick, qui montre peu d'estime pour les joueurs et pour la créativité ?</b><br /><br />Je crois que dans toutes les industries il y a différentes manières de faire son métier, différentes logiques. Il y a des gens aujourd'hui pour qui faire du jeu vidéo est un placement financier comme un autre et c'est respectable en soit quand on est clair dans sa démarche, et il y en à d'autres qui ont des ambitions plus artistiques, à chacun de se positionner clairement en fonction de ce qu'il a envie de faire. Quantic est une entreprise dont le but est aussi de gagner de l'argent, nous ne sommes pas une association de bienfaisance non plus. Mais nous pensons que le meilleur moyen d'y arriver c'est en faisant des jeux originaux et en explorant de nouvelles voies. C'est un vrai projet d'entreprise de penser que nous arriverons à la profitabilité en faisant de la qualité, plutôt que de se comporter en esclavagiste ou de déménager les studios dans je ne sais quel pays …<br /><br /><b>Comment Sony a t-il contribué au développement du jeu (Outils ? Part financière ? Savoir faire ?)</b><br /><br />Sony a énormément contribué au projet d'abord en nous faisant confiance, ce qui n'est pas rien par les temps qui courent. C'est un projet qui à un coût élevé, comme tous les projets next-gen, qui a un risque à la fois industriel et éditorial parce qu'il sort des sentiers battus. Ils ont également bien sur totalement financé le projet, en tant que producteur et éditeur exclusif sur PS3. Sur le plan technique, notre technologie est totalement propriétaire mais l'avantage de travailler avec une entreprise comme Sony est d'avoir accès à des pré-kits et surtout nous avons la possibilité de donner notre avis sur des features software ou hardware et ça, c'est un vrai bonheur.<br /><br /><b>Que penses tu de l'évolution des consoles (reconnaissance faciale, PS-mote, 3D) et comment t'inscris-tu dans cette évolution ?</b><br /><br />Tout ça est très intéressant mais tout ça va très vite, on a pas encore eu le temps de digérer la PS3 et on a déjà des nouveaux « devices » qui arrivent alors que nous n'avons pas du tout fait le tour de la console, nous avons encore beaucoup de marge pour progresser. On regarde bien sur tout ça avec beaucoup d'intérêt, y a des choses très intéressantes, notamment le contrôleur motion de Sony que nous suivons depuis les premiers prototypes avec beaucoup d'intérêt. Pour l'instant nous restons concentré sur Heavy Rain et nous nous pencherons sur tout ça quand le moment viendra.<br /><br /><b>Pour finir, à l'approche de la sortie du jeu, ressens-tu une pression particulière autour de la sortie d'Heavy Rain ? Quelles sont tes craintes ou, au contraire, es-tu plutôt optimiste et pourquoi ?</b><br /><br />Ni l'un ni l'autre … Je suis très concentré sur ce que nous faisons actuellement, je suis très attentif à l'équipe qui travaille très dure depuis très longtemps, cent personnes c'est quand même une grosse machine. Surtout, ce sont des humains, il faut gérer la fatigue, la pression et les échéances. Tout ça sans perdre de vue la qualité du jeu pour faire en sorte d'arriver au niveau que nous nous sommes fixés. Je ne suis pas quelqu'un d'ultra confiant pour me dire « c'est bon, c'est gagné, ça y est c'est dans la poche », il ne faut pas être comme ça dans notre métier. Mais en même temps je ne suis pas quelqu'un de défaitiste non plus, j'ai confiance en mon produit, je sais que nous faisons le jeu que j'avais envie de faire et maintenant ma tâche est de le terminer. Après, mon travail est fini quelque part, une fois que j'ai remis mon master, les gens pensent ce qu'ils en pensent, écrivent ce qu'ils veulent écrire et c'est un peu à chacun de se positionner par rapport à ça.<br /><br /><b>A Los Angeles tu avais dit à nos lecteur de rester connectés, qu'il y aurait des nouveautés à voir. Effectivement, ils ont vu. A l'entrée de la dernière ligne droite, quel message souhaites-tu leur adresser ?</b><br /><br />Avant de répondre je voudrai ajouter que j'ai le sentiment qu'il y a eu un déclic à Cologne, c'est en tout cas vraiment le moment dans la longue campagne que nous nous sommes donnés avec Sony, où nous nous sommes dit « ça y est ! Les gens comprennent vraiment ce que nous sommes en train de faire ! ». Nous avons montrés de nouvelles scènes et des teaser et les gens ont vraiment compris que nous étions sérieux quand nous parlions d'émotions, de mis en scène, d'ambiance etc. C'est un moment vraiment important et charnière dans la campagne du jeu.<br />Ce que j'ai à dire aux lecteurs de Play3-Live c'est qu'il va y avoir encore au moins une annonce et qu'il faut donner sa chance à ce jeu qui est intrigant, qui est décrit comme risqué, je ne sais pas ce que ça veut dire exactement, c'est un jeu ambitieux, différent et il faut donner leur chance à ce type de jeux. Je crois qu'on peut soutenir les gens qui ont un jeu de foot tous les ans, qui vous revendent le même jeu tous les ans, mais il faut aussi soutenir les gens qui font des choses différentes, nous en l'occurrence, mais c'est aussi le cas d'autres créateurs et c'est le cas de Sony qui sait prendre des risques et je pense que cette expérience vaut la peine d'être vécue. Donc voilà, restez branchés et guettez les prochaines news.<br /><br /><i>Toute la rédaction Play3-Live remercie encore une fois David Cage pour sa disponibilité, la passion qu'il porte en lui et qui se dégage à chaque interview. Et Merci à Grégory Delfosse pour nous avoir permis cette première rencontre au FJV mouture 2009.</i><br /><br /><b>Autor:</b> moz<br /><b>Source:</b> <a href="http://www.play3-live.com/news-ps3-fjv-2009-interview-exclusive-p3l-de-david-cage-16820.html" target=_blank>Play3-Live</a><br /><b>Language:</b>French<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href=https://omikrongame.blogspot.com>Omikron Game</a> Quantic Dream's projects fan-site.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17674984.post-59337011342398750472009-09-18T01:41:00.001+00:002009-09-23T20:35:12.619+00:00Podcast: Kombo Breaker - Episode 45: Heavy Rain InterviewThis week's show is all about Heavy Rain. Sony Producer Petro Piaseckyj joins us to talk about the project. We cover everything from gameplay, characters, script size (2000 flippin' pages) and all that's in between. <br /><br />If you're a PS3 owner or you plan to pick up the Slim, this episode is for you. Heavy Rain will be hitting retail at the onset of next year, download this episode for a taste of what's to come. <br /><br />As usual, once you've gotten your fill of Kombo Breaker goodness please head over to iTunes and write up a review of the show. Tell us we're awesome, tell us we suck, we just want to hear what you think. Also, if you're one of those tweeting types then please follow the show (@KomboBreaker). That's the place where we announce new guests, solicit questions from the fans and let you know when the show goes live. You can also shoot us an email at kombobreaker@kombo.com.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.kombo.com/kombobreaker/kombobreaker_episode_45.mp3" target=_blank>Download directly</a> 30.9 MB<br /><br /><b>Autor:</b> Joey Davidson<br /><b>Source:</b> <a href="http://www.kombo.com/article.php?artid=13624" target=_blank>Kombo.com</a><br /><b>Language:</b> English<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href=https://omikrongame.blogspot.com>Omikron Game</a> Quantic Dream's projects fan-site.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17674984.post-35700810415665220772009-09-02T08:22:00.000+00:002009-09-04T20:46:21.624+00:00CVG: Heavy Rain delayed because it "needs space"<iframe src="http://www.computerandvideogames.com/video_embed.php?id=3028" width="418" height="378" border="0" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe><br /><br /><br /><b>Autor:</b> CVG Stuff<br /><b>Source:</b> <a href="http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=222366&site=cvg" target=_blank>CVG</a><br /><b>Language:</b> English<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href=https://omikrongame.blogspot.com>Omikron Game</a> Quantic Dream's projects fan-site.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17674984.post-14462936376914250012009-09-01T20:53:00.000+00:002009-09-04T20:57:12.114+00:00IGN: new video and interview<embed src='http://videomedia.ign.com/ev/ev.swf' flashvars='object_ID=811232&downloadURL=http://ps3movies.ign.com/ps3/video/article/102/1020123/heavyrain_intv_083109_flvlowwide.flv&allownetworking="all"' type='application/x-shockwave-flash' width='433' height='360' ></embed><br /><br /><br /><embed src='http://videomedia.ign.com/ev/ev.swf' flashvars='object_ID=811232&downloadURL=http://ps3movies.ign.com/ps3/video/article/102/1020123/heavyrain_intv_083109_flvlowwide.flv&allownetworking="all%"' type='application/x-shockwave-flash' width='433' height='360'></embed><div style='width:433;'><a href='http://ps3.ign.com/objects/811/811232.html'>More Heavy Rain News & Previews</a></div><br /><br /><br /><embed src='http://videomedia.ign.com/ev/ev.swf' flashvars='object_ID=811232&downloadURL=http://ps3movies.ign.com/ps3/video/article/102/1020099/heavyrain_gmp_memories_83109_flvlowwide.flv&allownetworking="all%"' type='application/x-shockwave-flash' width='433' height='360'></embed><div style='width:433;'><a href='http://ps3.ign.com/objects/811/811232.html'>More Heavy Rain News & Previews</a></div><br /><br /><embed src='http://videomedia.ign.com/ev/ev.swf' flashvars='object_ID=811232&downloadURL=http://ps3movies.ign.com/ps3/video/article/102/1020123/heavyrain_intv_083109_flvlowwide.flv&allownetworking="all%"' type='application/x-shockwave-flash' width='433' height='360'></embed><div style='width:433;'><a href='http://ps3.ign.com/objects/811/811232.html'>Heavy Rain at IGN.com</a></div><br /><br /><br /><b>Autor:</b><br /><b>Source:</b> <a href="" target=_blank></a><br /><b>Language:</b><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href=https://omikrongame.blogspot.com>Omikron Game</a> Quantic Dream's projects fan-site.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17674984.post-22505591371991388852009-08-30T20:34:00.002+00:002009-09-04T20:40:03.766+00:00EDGE Online: An Audience With: David CageDavid Cage has a sombrely held desire to push the industry to new artistic heights – but are his methods those of a videogame visionary or a more Quixotic figure? Here, the windmills in question could be labelled ‘narrative’ and ‘maturity’, goals that some might argue are often overvalued by our nascent medium, imported from older art forms simply out of a sense of insecurity. With Heavy Rain, Cage hopes to prove detractors wrong, offering a rich, story-driven experience that sets the player in pursuit of a serial killer through control of multiple characters, any of whom may die and be written out of the ongoing tale.<br /><br />Like its predecessor, Fahrenheit, it describes the player’s interactions partly through QTEs – success or failure potentially leading the story in a dizzying number of directions, all of them significant. We spoke to Cage to discover how an adult, murky thriller will hook our emotions and haul us towards gaming’s future.<br /><br /><b>What would be your response to the reaction to the game so far? Do you think everyone completely understands what you’re making?</b><br /><br />Describing the experience we’re creating with Heavy Rain is something challenging. It’s probably easier to talk about a firstperson shooter or a fighting game because we’ve all played one at least once. When talking about narrative and emotional involvement, there are less obvious common references, and it even seems that these words mean very different things depending on who you talk to.<br /><br />I remember having pitched Fahrenheit about a year before the game was released and I got a clear sense that no one had a clue of what I was talking about until the game could be played. <br /><br />The approach taken by Heavy Rain is quite unique: it is a narrative-driven and fully interactive experience, it features four playable characters, the interface is entirely contextual, the story itself is unusual for a game – and we don’t want to reveal too much about it.<br /><br />If you add the fact that the game has a very unusual approach to interactivity, not based on challenges but on the journey, not relying on traditional mechanics but on contextual actions, with no Game Over but a continuity in the story when characters die, you can understand the challenge of explaining this game before anyone can actually play it.<br /><br />Showing only select scenes is another difficulty: in Heavy Rain, each scene is different and unique, and features bespoke and contextual gameplay triggering different emotions. Also, like in a movie, emotional involvement emerges when you play the game in its entirety, something that is difficult to communicate just by showing pieces of the game in isolation.<br /><br />In spite of all this, I’m really happy with the feedback so far. It seems there is a high level of expectation. The game was heavily applauded during Sony’s E3 conference, which is always a good sign. I don’t think it is yet possible to understand the scope of what we work on and how different it is going to be, but I think there is a growing awareness that Heavy Rain is a truly ambitious and unique experience. The game received many awards at E3 and is now regularly listed amongst the five most anticipated upcoming titles. When I was working on Fahrenheit, no one paid attention to us until the game was released, so I think we are making some progress here.<br /><br /><b>Do you think it’ll be difficult to sell Heavy Rain, because it’s so unlike other games being produced today?</b><br /><br />Being different has pros and cons. You obviously need to spend more time explaining what your game is and why gamers are going to like it. If you work on a shooter, you just need to show a screenshot and announce the number of levels, weapons, enemies, and everybody knows more or less what you are talking about. But at the same time, there are many shooters made every year by very talented teams, and there are only a limited amount of them that will be commercially successful. When your product is unique it is easier to stand out from the competition and explain that you are the only one to offer this type of experience. If the promise sounds exciting and the game holds it, you have a chance to be successful.<br /><br />I never asked myself what was easier to make or sell, I just work on ideas that I strongly believe in. This is what has driven my work so far. It is also why I go to the studio every morning with the same excitement and enthusiasm as on the first day. Having said that, I must confess that I am always very surprised to see how conservative our industry can be regarding new ideas. CPU power doubles every 18 months according to Moore’s law, but new ideas seem to follow a much slower curve. It seems computers evolve faster than minds. Suggesting that certain rules established 20 years ago in a certain context may not be fully relevant today is still a considerable challenge.<br /><br />I can give you a concrete example. The first videogames were coin-ops. The objective of the coin-op manufacturers was to make a game that would be more and more difficult level after level so that players would have no other choice but to insert more coins to complete the game. It was also based on the idea that people would want to reach the next level to see a new set, which would be their reward. Today, games are available at home and you don’t need to put in a coin to play, but the logic driving the design of many games remains identical: the difficulty ramps up continuously until the end, reaching the next stage is the objective, losing means dying, dying means starting again. There is no longer a reason for all of this, but ramping still remains for many a golden rule of game design.<br /><br />There is no necessity for a game to become more and more difficult to the point sometimes of discouraging gamers. Maybe the time has indeed come for us to explore new ways of making games, and it’s our responsibility as designers to imagine new answers and to dare taking risks. Heavy Rain is an attempt at changing some of these old rules and to see if it is possible to interact differently based on new paradigms.<br /><br /><b>Gaming as a medium has its own unique qualities, and it’s often said that it shouldn’t be relying on film or television for its inspiration – what’s your take on this particular view?</b><br /><br />There is no example in the history of mankind of a new medium created from scratch and not getting inspiration from anything else. The first photographers were inspired by painting, the first movie makers by photography and theatre, the first TV series by movies, and you can take every single creative art and find its roots in other arts. There is nothing wrong about that, just a simple and logical rule: nothing is created from nothing.<br /><br />This idea about games existing by themselves and not getting inspiration from anywhere else is a little bit naïve. Interactivity, like literature or cinema, is a platform to trigger human emotions. Human emotions don’t belong to any medium, and if there are effective ways discovered by a medium to trigger specific emotions, I cannot see why I should not use them. The visual language developed by movies is very effective and complex. The narrative structures they have developed – inspired by storytelling rules established from the Antiquity, as demonstrated by Campbell’s Hero With A Thousand Faces – contain some valid answers beyond movies.<br /><br />When I work on a game like Heavy Rain, I don’t try to copy movies, I try to create something original and unique for our medium. I feel free to borrow codes from movies, comics or TV series, but most importantly, I try to invent a language allowing us to tell stories and to trigger complex emotions through interactivity. <br /><br /><b>So what sort of sources have you used for inspiration while making Heavy Rain?</b><br /><br />Inspiration comes from everywhere – comics, painting, theatre, novels, movies, TV series, music, poetry. Most of all, it comes from my everyday life: what I think, what I feel, inner fears I have – in short, who I am. Like for any art form, inspiration comes from life.<br /><br /><b>The game contains mature content, including sexual scenes: do you expect players to be aroused by these sections, or do you think their reaction will be more like an appreciation that you’re handling subject matter more commonly associated with movies and books?</b><br /><br />Heavy Rain is a dark story about real people in the real world. Sex, violence, empathy, love, hate, sadness are parts of our lives. I can’t see why as a writer I should not use any of these if they tell something about my characters, their feelings and who they are. Why should I refrain myself from talking about a specific aspect of human nature? Are there things that you are allowed to do or not to do when you are a game designer? Why should there be subject matters that are improper for videogames? Why are such questions asked only to game designers and never to novelists or directors? What’s wrong with games?<br /><br />The answers are simple: through their history, videogames were attached to childhood and some people still think that only ten-year-old kids play games, although all surveys show that the average age of gamers is between 30 and 35 years old. There is also this idea that because games are interactive, they could have a greater impact on the audience. As far as I know, there exists absolutely no study demonstrating this fact. To be honest, I must say that some videogames have gone very far in a quite stupid way, and they gave good reasons to politicians to believe we are a bunch of immature teenagers who must be kept under control. That being said, the rule I give to myself in the matter is very simple: whatever serves the story and triggers complex emotions can be used; whatever can be done in a movie should be allowed in a game, with the appropriate rating.<br /><br />I am prepared to face issues with Heavy Rain because the game tells a very strong and controversial story, but I hope people will understand that everything in the game serves the purpose of telling the narrative. Nothing in Heavy Rain is gratuitous – everything is done to tell a strong story that I hope will leave a long- lasting imprint in players’ minds.<br /><br />Game creators should be treated the same way as movie creators or book writers, with the same level of creative freedom, because interactivity is now a creative medium and should be treated as such.<br /><br /><b>When we played the game at E3, there didn’t appear to be many ways for the scrapyard scene to play out differently. We now understand that there were three or four different points at which the player character, Norman, could die, so is this the sort of narrative branching involved in the game? Will it be mostly a selection of different ways to die?</b><br /><br />This is a good example of how difficult it is to explain this game. There are two types of consequences to your actions: some are local to the current scene and won’t have any other consequence beyond that point, others have long-term consequences. Short-term consequences will alter the way you play one specific scene, will allow you to see or miss specific actions or sequences, or do things your way. Long-term consequences will be decisions that will greatly impact the story itself. One of the events having long-term consequences will be that your character can die, which will of course greatly impact the rest of the story. It is the most spectacular long-term consequence, but there are many others in the game I can’t really talk about now. It will be impossible for people playing one scene to draw conclusions about Heavy Rain because the game is not based on mechanics. Each scene works differently and holds a surprise for the player.<br /><br /><b>What happens if you let all four of the playable characters die? Does this finally represent Game Over? How quickly could a game finish in this way? And are all of the possible endings satisfactory in terms of narrative?</b><br /><br />When all of the characters die, the story ends – that’s quite a sad ending. There are movies with happy endings and sad endings. In Heavy Rain, it is up to the player to tell his own story and decide what story he wants to tell. This kind of ending cannot happen before the last third of the game, so the experience won’t be too significantly shortened.<br /><br />We have been particularly careful about the fact that every single route and ending offers a satisfactory story. That was in fact one of the challenges – not only to tell one good story, but many different ones, all being consistent and interesting.<br /><br /><b>What do you think of the criticisms that are often aimed at QTEs? And what about the danger, in a narratively driven game like this, that taking direct control from the player with QTEs is going to have a detrimental effect on that narrative?</b><br /><br />Traditional game mechanics are based on repetitive patterns, and stories hate patterns. Our action sequences are fully contextual. I am not limited to ten different moves in shooting sequences that I will have to fit in my story – even if it becomes absurd at some point that my character finds people to shoot at on his way every three minutes – I can create any type of action sequence I can think of, knowing I have a unique interface allowing me to do whatever I can imagine.<br /><br />What I like about it is the fact that it is entirely contextual, spectacular, with a sense of cinematography. It is not like in many videogames where you always do the same thing the same way with the same animations. In Heavy Rain, each action is unique, each action sequence is different, and you allow the player to focus on what is important in the scene. This is the dream of any interactive storyteller – not to have to force unnatural action sequences. Many games have killed their stories precisely because of that.<br /><br />As with any interface, everything is about implementation. We don’t use QTEs as they were implemented in old games; we tried to rethink the system, keep the good parts and improve them to make the player really feel in control. The first thing we changed is the pacing: instead of having one symbol appearing in the middle of the screen every five minutes between two cutscenes, we propose a control for every single action. Each time your character does something onscreen, you triggered it. We gave an immediate consequence to every single move: if you succeed or fail, you see the result immediately onscreen, and each consequence uses a unique animation. Of course, missing a move won’t make you fail the entire sequence – it is just an event in the course of action letting you create an action sequence that is unique to you.<br /><br />We integrated symbols in 3D and animated them with what they relate to, which adds to the immersion by merging the interface with the action. We also got a real feeling that they were strongly supporting the narrative because of their contextual nature. We got rid of the repetitive action sequences and offer sequences that perfectly fit the narrative needs. These sequences are really varied, spectacular, fast paced and surprising, and I think that players will really enjoy them.<br /><br /><b>Will there be difficulty levels so that absolutely anyone can play the game, or do you think it won’t be suitable for very casual players?</b><br /><br />We have implemented difficulty levels to adapt the game to different profiles of gamers: some gamers are more interested in the challenge, and others more in the journey. I don’t make games for a specific type of players, I want anyone who owns a PS3 and is interested in thrillers to be able to enjoy the game and find a challenge corresponding to their aspirations. Making the game accessible to a wider audience is something important to me. I believe anyone can enjoy the story we tell in Heavy Rain, and I don’t want anyone to be pushed back by the inappropriate difficulty of the game.<br /><br />With Fahrenheit, we discovered that buyers were mainly males but that almost all of them played the game with their wife or girlfriend. It’s even become a joke now: whenever someone tells me he played Fahrenheit, I say he played it with his wife before he tells how he played the game, and I’m rarely wrong. Women enjoyed the game because there was a story, because it was based on characters and not on shooting. They watched their husband play but most of the time did not play themselves. With Heavy Rain, I hope we will see more women take the controller and play. That’s a difficult challenge but I think it is an interesting one.<br /><br /><b>Your partner at Quantic Dream, Guillaume de Fondaumière, has said that this is the biggest motion-capture project attempted in a game to date – what are the implications of this from a development perspective?</b><br /><br />We bought our in-house mo-cap system in 2000 and we’ve had a full-time team working with it since then. We developed proprietary technologies, tools and pipelines to produce high-quality data in a very limited time frame. Heavy Rain was more than 170 days of shooting with more than 70 actors and stuntmen, plus 60 days and 50 actors for facial animations. We recreated most props on the set to allow actors to know what’s around them and to have the right contacts with their environments.<br /><br />Given the amount of animations to shoot, we had a very strict production pipeline and a very effective team on the set knowing exactly what they had to do. It has been a long, exhausting and fascinating process. Without an in-house mo-cap set and a very experienced and effective team, Heavy Rain would have been impossible to make. Investing in mo-cap was a major strategic decision for the company ten years ago. I’m glad it now participates to make Quantic Dream’s products unique.<br /><br /><b>What about other challenges you’ve faced while making the game?</b><br /><br />It seems to me that I had one impossible challenge at each stage of the development. The first one was to write the game, finding a way to tell this complex story in a fully interactive way, trying to get a good idea for every single scene both in matters of narrative and interactivity. Then came the burden of producing the massive volume of assets in all departments that was required while keeping the consistency of the overall vision in a team of 200-plus people.<br /><br />Now that I reach the last stages, my two last challenges are the importance of details and the difficulty of having contextual scenes. Every single scene is unique in the game, which means that there are almost no recurrent mechanics. In short, it means that each new scene offers a new and different challenge that requires specific answers. The level of details we need in this game is another challenge – nothing should distract the player from the emotional experience. And it is true that the more details you add, the more details you need to add.<br /><br />Art direction becomes key in every single department because every aspect of the game contributes to trigger emotion. It means everything needs to be consistent and to pull in the same direction in order to create emotional involvement. This is definitely the most challenging aspect of the game, but also the most exciting and interesting. <br /><br /><b>Does Heavy Rain have anything in common with your first game, Omikron: The Nomad Soul? What were the things you were looking to achieve back then that you’re finally able to realise nowadays?</b><br /><br />I was always interested in emotions. In Omikron, if you’re old enough or geeky enough to remember it, in the first scene, you were in the body of someone else, and the wife of this character wanted to make love to you, thinking you were her husband. You could be reincarnated in the body of someone else, you could have access to many different actions such as exploring, talking, using weapons. Most of these themes are still present in Heavy Rain: I’m still obsessed with schizophrenia and multiple personalities, I don’t want to be limited to repetitive patterns in what I can do, I love to create situations involving the player on an emotional level and questioning him as an individual. The difference is that I am now 15 years older than when I designed Omikron and my approach to these topics is different. I understood that I did not want to make toys but journeys with games, that I was not interested in creating games for kids but for adults, and that I wanted to explore new areas that most people consider impossible. Of course, there is better technology today at all levels, but technology is just the pen to write the book. No one cares about pens – all they judge is the quality of the book.<br /><br />I may come back to some ideas of Omikron in the near future, revisiting them with what I learned and who I am today. But that’s a different story.<br /><br />This article originally appeared in E205. <br /><br /><br /><b>Autor:</b> Edge Stuff<br /><b>Source:</b> <a href="http://www.edge-online.com/features/an-audience-with-david-cage" target=_blank>EDGE</a><br /><b>Language:</b>English<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href=https://omikrongame.blogspot.com>Omikron Game</a> Quantic Dream's projects fan-site.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17674984.post-80597496927674240122009-08-24T20:07:00.002+00:002009-08-24T20:10:07.616+00:00PlayStation.Blog: Heavy Rain’s David Cage And I, Tellin’ StoriesI’ve always wanted to write a videogame – it’s on my list of things to do before I lose interest in writing videogames. Therefore, I look forward to interviews with the Heavy Rain writer and director David Cage and I’m always keen to listen to his storytelling philosophies. I managed to catch up with him outside the showfloor at gamescom, away from the gunfire and heavy metal that is still ringing in my ears.<br /><br />I didn’t get to play the new scene in the end, partly because I acted like a headless chicken and partly because I want to take in the whole game in one sitting when I get hold of a copy, but it looks stunning. If you want to check it out for yourselves, head on over to US PlayStation.Blog to see David Cage walk you through the new level.<br /><br /><object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="437" height="265" id="viddler"><param name="movie" value="http://www.viddler.com/simple_on_site/841da404" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><embed src="http://www.viddler.com/simple_on_site/841da404" width="437" height="265" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowScriptAccess="always" allowFullScreen="true" name="viddler" ></embed></object><br /><br /><b>Autor:</b> James Gallagher – Content Producer, SCEE<br /><b>Source:</b> <a href="http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2009/08/24/heavy-rains-david-cage-and-i-tellin-stories/" target=_blank>PlayStation.Blog</a><br /><b>Language:</b> English<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href=https://omikrongame.blogspot.com>Omikron Game</a> Quantic Dream's projects fan-site.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17674984.post-9234452982574630912009-08-22T20:42:00.001+00:002009-08-24T20:44:48.371+00:00Gamescom: Heavy Rain developer walkthrough<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=8,0,0,0" id="gtembed" width="480" height="392"> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" /> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /> <param name="movie" value="http://www.gametrailers.com/remote_wrap.php?mid=54810"/> <param name="quality" value="high" /> <embed src="http://www.gametrailers.com/remote_wrap.php?mid=54810" swLiveConnect="true" name="gtembed" align="middle" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" allowFullScreen="true" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="480" height="392"></embed> </object><br /><br /><object 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<param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /> <param name="movie" value="http://www.gametrailers.com/remote_wrap.php?mid=54814"/> <param name="quality" value="high" /> <embed src="http://www.gametrailers.com/remote_wrap.php?mid=54814" swLiveConnect="true" name="gtembed" align="middle" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" allowFullScreen="true" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="480" height="392"></embed> </object><br /><br /><br /><br /><b>Autor:</b> Unknown<br /><b>Source:</b> <a href="http://www.thatvideogameblog.com/2009/08/22/heavy-rain-developer-walkthrough/" target=_blank>Gamescom</a><br /><b>Language:</b> English<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href=https://omikrongame.blogspot.com>Omikron Game</a> Quantic Dream's projects fan-site.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17674984.post-29922811722648242912009-08-21T20:28:00.000+00:002009-08-24T20:30:36.559+00:00Gamescom Heavy Rain Live DemoQuantic Dream's Guillaume de Fondaumiere demos a brand new character and game sequence from Heavy Rain -- a convenience store holdup.<br /><br /><object id="flashObj" width="486" height="412" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,47,0"><param name="movie" value="http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9/22881388001?isVid=1&publisherID=22717159001" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /><param name="flashVars" value="videoId=34939667001&playerID=22881388001&domain=embed&" /><param name="base" value="http://admin.brightcove.com" /><param name="seamlesstabbing" value="false" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="swLiveConnect" value="true" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><embed src="http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9/22881388001?isVid=1&publisherID=22717159001" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" flashVars="videoId=34939667001&playerID=22881388001&domain=embed&" base="http://admin.brightcove.com" name="flashObj" width="486" height="412" seamlesstabbing="false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowFullScreen="true" swLiveConnect="true" allowScriptAccess="always" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash"></embed></object><br /><br /><b>Autor:</b> Unknown<br /><b>Source:</b> <a href="http://gamevideos.1up.com/video/id/26069/bigger" target=_blank>1UP</a><br /><b>Language:</b> English<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href=https://omikrongame.blogspot.com>Omikron Game</a> Quantic Dream's projects fan-site.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17674984.post-75454786273682892282009-08-20T14:31:00.009+00:002009-08-20T21:13:47.952+00:00Joistiq: Heavy Rain features 13 voiced languages, subtitles in 5 moreHeavy Rain will be fully voice acted in 13 languages, with subtitles also available for all spoken languages, plus five more languages. These details were disclosed during a presentation at GamesCom this afternoon, when Quantic Dream founder David Cage introduced Pascal Langdale, the actor playing the English-speaking version of Heavy Rain's Ethan Mars (pictured right), and talked about the extensive voice work necessary for the game's many branching scenes.<br /><br />Knowing a single Blu-ray disc can store language data in bulk, we were curious about how many language options would be available in the game. As it turns out, if Cage had brought out all of Mars' voices the the room would have gotten pretty tight. Check out the confirmed list of languages after the break. (We're still waiting for official confirmation on a couple -- the Quantic Dream team couldn't name them all off the top of their heads.)<br /><br />Voice acted:<br /><br /> * English<br /> * German<br /> * Italian<br /> * Spanish<br /> * Portuguese<br /> * Dutch<br /> * Japanese<br /> * Korean<br /> * Mandarin<br /> * Russian<br /> * French<br /><br />Note: A Polish language option is unconfirmed. (We'll update the list as needed.)<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So27LrH-VZI/AAAAAAAAAjM/taNmxTYYysI/s1600-h/SSH.jpg"><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So27LrH-VZI/AAAAAAAAAjM/taNmxTYYysI/s320/SSH.jpg" alt="Game Convention 2009"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5372155739751994770" /></a><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So27IWXIWvI/AAAAAAAAAjE/7vguJVLPXCs/s1600-h/SSh+with+the+GUN.jpg"><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So27IWXIWvI/AAAAAAAAAjE/7vguJVLPXCs/s320/SSh+with+the+GUN.jpg" alt="Game Convention 2009"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5372155682638813938" /></a><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So27IIOMGII/AAAAAAAAAi8/ptPcMO6NxMM/s1600-h/SSH+SCAN.jpg"><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So27IIOMGII/AAAAAAAAAi8/ptPcMO6NxMM/s320/SSH+SCAN.jpg" alt="Game Convention 2009"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5372155678843213954" /></a><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So27HkREEII/AAAAAAAAAi0/T33qFQNMK9U/s1600-h/SSH+HEAD.jpg"><img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So27HkREEII/AAAAAAAAAi0/T33qFQNMK9U/s320/SSH+HEAD.jpg" alt="Game Convention 2009"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5372155669191594114" /></a><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So27HVbAagI/AAAAAAAAAis/1l8i2DWZ6ac/s1600-h/SSH+FACIAL+EXPRESSION.jpg"><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So27HVbAagI/AAAAAAAAAis/1l8i2DWZ6ac/s320/SSH+FACIAL+EXPRESSION.jpg" alt="Game Convention 2009"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5372155665206766082" /></a><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So27GyT1fHI/AAAAAAAAAik/EznWdex4V6Y/s1600-h/SSH+ACTOR.jpg"><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So27GyT1fHI/AAAAAAAAAik/EznWdex4V6Y/s320/SSH+ACTOR.jpg" alt="Game Convention 2009"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5372155655781448818" /></a><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So269IDJcmI/AAAAAAAAAic/HLC_rl4HSg4/s1600-h/PASCAL+LANGDALE+AS+ETHAN+MARS.jpg"><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So269IDJcmI/AAAAAAAAAic/HLC_rl4HSg4/s320/PASCAL+LANGDALE+AS+ETHAN+MARS.jpg" alt="Game Convention 2009"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5372155489818341986" /></a><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So268mKPGAI/AAAAAAAAAiU/tAJZMoTofDA/s1600-h/PASCAL+LANGDALE+AS+ETHAN+MARS+FACIAL+EXPRESSIOn.jpg"><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So268mKPGAI/AAAAAAAAAiU/tAJZMoTofDA/s320/PASCAL+LANGDALE+AS+ETHAN+MARS+FACIAL+EXPRESSIOn.jpg" alt="Game Convention 2009"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5372155480721266690" /></a><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So268epPgCI/AAAAAAAAAiM/JTK7YRgFbTk/s1600-h/PASCAL+LANGDALE+AS+ETHAN+MARS+ASCAN.jpg"><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So268epPgCI/AAAAAAAAAiM/JTK7YRgFbTk/s320/PASCAL+LANGDALE+AS+ETHAN+MARS+ASCAN.jpg" alt="Game Convention 2009"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5372155478703833122" /></a><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So268BWEEgI/AAAAAAAAAiE/xMUzrgaz2Bc/s1600-h/PASCAL+LANGDALE+AS+ETHAN+MARS1.jpg"><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So268BWEEgI/AAAAAAAAAiE/xMUzrgaz2Bc/s320/PASCAL+LANGDALE+AS+ETHAN+MARS1.jpg" alt="Game Convention 2009"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5372155470838764034" /></a><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So267mc4LtI/AAAAAAAAAh8/J6v-ql0-X0A/s1600-h/GROCCERY+SHOP_ICED+3D+SET.jpg"><img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So267mc4LtI/AAAAAAAAAh8/J6v-ql0-X0A/s320/GROCCERY+SHOP_ICED+3D+SET.jpg" alt="Game Convention 2009"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5372155463619587794" /></a><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So26yTxoIaI/AAAAAAAAAh0/kbCIqDgsjuk/s1600-h/GROCCERY+SHOP.jpg"><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So26yTxoIaI/AAAAAAAAAh0/kbCIqDgsjuk/s320/GROCCERY+SHOP.jpg" alt="Game Convention 2009"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5372155303987519906" /></a><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So26x0Vm4QI/AAAAAAAAAhs/o8-fbYLAb4c/s1600-h/GROCCERY+SHOP+view.jpg"><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So26x0Vm4QI/AAAAAAAAAhs/o8-fbYLAb4c/s320/GROCCERY+SHOP+view.jpg" alt="Game Convention 2009"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5372155295548498178" /></a><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So26xpGu_1I/AAAAAAAAAhk/7vydbTO2shw/s1600-h/GROCCERY+SCENE.jpg"><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So26xpGu_1I/AAAAAAAAAhk/7vydbTO2shw/s320/GROCCERY+SCENE.jpg" alt="Game Convention 2009"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5372155292533325650" /></a><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So26xLad_DI/AAAAAAAAAhc/tEJy9Zhbec4/s1600-h/GROCCERY+SCENE2.jpg"><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So26xLad_DI/AAAAAAAAAhc/tEJy9Zhbec4/s320/GROCCERY+SCENE2.jpg" alt="Game Convention 2009"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5372155284563033138" /></a><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So26w_BNASI/AAAAAAAAAhU/fD230POiDUM/s1600-h/Four+Characters.jpg"><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So26w_BNASI/AAAAAAAAAhU/fD230POiDUM/s320/Four+Characters.jpg" alt="Game Convention 2009"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5372155281235837218" /></a><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So26oH7h_UI/AAAAAAAAAhM/lUaX6bOwo0k/s1600-h/Ethan+Mars.jpg"><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So26oH7h_UI/AAAAAAAAAhM/lUaX6bOwo0k/s320/Ethan+Mars.jpg" alt="Game Convention 2009"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5372155129009143106" /></a><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So26n1s_8AI/AAAAAAAAAhE/chk0-H9zEAo/s1600-h/ETHAN+MARS%27+HOUSE+-AFTER_3D+ICING.jpg"><img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So26n1s_8AI/AAAAAAAAAhE/chk0-H9zEAo/s320/ETHAN+MARS%27+HOUSE+-AFTER_3D+ICING.jpg" alt="Game Convention 2009"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5372155124116353026" /></a><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So26njCXy0I/AAAAAAAAAg8/yQWe3YYN_M4/s1600-h/ETHAN+MARS%27+HOUSE+-AFTER_3D+ICING2.jpg"><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So26njCXy0I/AAAAAAAAAg8/yQWe3YYN_M4/s320/ETHAN+MARS%27+HOUSE+-AFTER_3D+ICING2.jpg" alt="Game Convention 2009"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5372155119105723202" /></a><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So26nNBDHGI/AAAAAAAAAg0/bnwStkwcqcI/s1600-h/ETHAN+MARS%27+HOUSE+-+AFTER_KITCHEN_DESIGN+BENOIT+.jpg"><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So26nNBDHGI/AAAAAAAAAg0/bnwStkwcqcI/s320/ETHAN+MARS%27+HOUSE+-+AFTER_KITCHEN_DESIGN+BENOIT+.jpg" alt="Game Convention 2009"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5372155113194593378" /></a><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So26m7i-1UI/AAAAAAAAAgs/S3bgkHLcoe8/s1600-h/ETHAN+MARS%27+HOUSE+-+AFTER_DISTRICT.jpg"><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So26m7i-1UI/AAAAAAAAAgs/S3bgkHLcoe8/s320/ETHAN+MARS%27+HOUSE+-+AFTER_DISTRICT.jpg" alt="Game Convention 2009"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5372155108505081154" /></a><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So26Zj_0suI/AAAAAAAAAgk/FcBtCO5XctU/s1600-h/ETHAN+MARS%27+HOUSE+-+AFTER+LIVING+ROOM.jpg"><img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So26Zj_0suI/AAAAAAAAAgk/FcBtCO5XctU/s320/ETHAN+MARS%27+HOUSE+-+AFTER+LIVING+ROOM.jpg" alt="Game Convention 2009"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5372154878845301474" /></a><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So26ZW_aTII/AAAAAAAAAgc/l51MKrTQbM8/s1600-h/ETHAN+MARS+at+the+RAIN.jpg"><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So26ZW_aTII/AAAAAAAAAgc/l51MKrTQbM8/s320/ETHAN+MARS+at+the+RAIN.jpg" alt="Game Convention 2009"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5372154875353910402" /></a><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So26Y7FE59I/AAAAAAAAAgU/b8a3t5jTNKM/s1600-h/ETHAN+MARS+and+the+son.jpg"><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So26Y7FE59I/AAAAAAAAAgU/b8a3t5jTNKM/s320/ETHAN+MARS+and+the+son.jpg" alt="Game Convention 2009"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5372154867861481426" /></a><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So26YkH4SHI/AAAAAAAAAgM/lS3FdKmpbmc/s1600-h/ETHAN+MARS3.jpg"><img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So26YkH4SHI/AAAAAAAAAgM/lS3FdKmpbmc/s320/ETHAN+MARS3.jpg" alt="Game Convention 2009"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5372154861699221618" /></a><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So26Yfk3P5I/AAAAAAAAAgE/EcxdLD1iZw4/s1600-h/ETHAN+MARS2.jpg"><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_XQja9jYHNBg/So26Yfk3P5I/AAAAAAAAAgE/EcxdLD1iZw4/s320/ETHAN+MARS2.jpg" alt="Game Convention 2009"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5372154860478611346" /></a><br /><br /><object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="437" height="265" id="viddler"><param name="movie" value="http://www.viddler.com/simple_on_site/6a6e935e" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><embed src="http://www.viddler.com/simple_on_site/6a6e935e" width="437" height="265" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowScriptAccess="always" allowFullScreen="true" name="viddler" ></embed></object><br /><br /><b>Autor:</b> Alexander Sliwinski <br /><b>Source:</b> <a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2009/08/20/heavy-rain-features-13-voiced-languages-subtitles-in-5-more/" target=_blank>Joistiq</a><br /><b>Language:</b> English<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href=https://omikrongame.blogspot.com>Omikron Game</a> Quantic Dream's projects fan-site.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17674984.post-36762724481244685782009-08-12T17:13:00.001+00:002009-08-17T17:15:42.532+00:00Play: Heavy Rain interviewQuantic Dream’s PS3 exclusive Heavy Rain has slipped back until early next year. That makes us sad. Emoticon sad. Still, we can all be cheered up a bit by watching this interview with Guillaume de Fondaumiere, CEO at Quantic Dream where he tells you all about this extraordinary game. Film. Game. Filmgame.<br /><br />Oh, just check it.<br /><br /><object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="437" height="288" id="viddler"><param name="movie" value="http://www.viddler.com/player/a4f4cf73/" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><embed src="http://www.viddler.com/player/a4f4cf73/" width="437" height="288" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowScriptAccess="always" allowFullScreen="true" name="viddler" ></embed></object><br /><br /><b>Autor:</b> Nick Jones<br /><b>Source:</b> <a href="http://www.play-mag.co.uk/interview/video-– heavy-rain-interview/" target=_blank>Play</a><br /><b>Language:</b> English<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href=https://omikrongame.blogspot.com>Omikron Game</a> Quantic Dream's projects fan-site.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17674984.post-54335510019817919222009-08-12T12:28:00.000+00:002009-08-17T12:34:42.132+00:00Games Radar: Heavy Rain: the David Cage interview<b>Auteur talks permanent death, emotional buildup and what went wrong with Indigo Prophecy</b><br /><br />Of all the games on display at E3 this year, few sparked as much curiosity as Heavy Rain: The Origami Killer. The PS3-exclusive story of four characters in search of a serial killer, Heavy Rain was dark, moody and prettier than most of the other games on the show floor. But the two things that drew the most attention were its apparent reliance on quicktime-style action sequences, and the news that its main characters can die permanently, thereby altering the flow of the story. The man who revealed it all was David Cage, writer and director of Heavy Rain and Chief Executive Officer of its developer, Quantic Dream.<br /><br />Cage is a proven auteur, having also helmed the critically acclaimed Indigo Prophecy (Fahrenheit in Europe) and Omikron: The Nomad Soul, and both he and Sony have been tight-lipped on a lot of the details surrounding Heavy Rain (which was recently confirmed for release early next year). In order to claw our way closer to the heart of the mystery, we caught up with Cage via email to glean a few new insights into the project.<br /><br /><b>GamesRadar: Now that it’s been more than a month since Heavy Rain was shown at E3, what kind of feedback have you received on the game since then? Do people seem to understand and appreciate what you’re trying to create, or do you feel that there are still some misconceptions?</b><br /><br />David Cage: When you try to create something different, there is always a mix of enthusiasm and skepticism, and I think this is fair. Many designers claimed they have invented something revolutionary in the past, and if it was true for some of them, it was sometimes also a source of disappointment.<br /><br />With Heavy Rain, we’re creating something that changes many traditional game paradigms. We try to invent something that is almost not a video game in the traditional sense (adrenaline, obstacles, levels, die-and-retry), but something that is closer to an emotional journey. When you pretend this, people may think that it won’t be interactive or exciting, because no one has tried this direction before, so there is no point of reference.<br /><br />I spend a lot of time going against preconceived ideas, saying that a story could be told through gameplay and not through cut scenes, that more complex emotions can be triggered in an interactive experience, and that yes, video games can be more than just toys for teenagers. Believe me; it is not always easy, because preconceived ideas are difficult to change. Videogames are based on the same concepts for twenty years. I believe (and it seems I’m not the only one anymore) that time has come for a change.<br /><br />I don’t pretend that Heavy Rain will be a revolution and I don’t know if people will love it or hate it. All I can say is that it is definitely going to be different.<br /><br /><b>GR: The news of the game’s delay until 2010 came as a shock to some, given that a lot of people seemed to be under the impression that Heavy Rain’s trailers had promised a 2009 release date. Can you talk a little about why the game was pushed back?</b><br /><br />DC: Heavy Rain was never announced for 2009, however, recently at E3 we did talk about the game becoming available in early 2010.<br /><br /><b>GR: Part of the title’s meaning – The Origami Killer – has been made clear, but does Heavy Rain refer to anything specifically in the game? Is it foreshadowing something, like Fahrenheit and its ice-age doomsday scenario? </b><br /><br />DC: Rain plays a very important role in the story. It constitutes the background of most scenes, but it is also an important part of the drama. We used rain like a character, trying to characterize it and give it moods supporting the ambiance and the narrative.<br /><br /><b>GR: Heavy Rain’s control scheme – in which you move your character’s head to direct him or her in a specific direction – is unusual. What inspired that decision?</b><br /><br />DC: My obsession is to detach controls and the camera, make them as independent as possible. Most games use a chase cam, which is very convenient for controls but was not satisfying for an experience trying to use the camera to tell the story.<br /><br />Changing the control scheme was the most obvious thing to do to free the camera. Moving forward like in a racing game and controlling the head of your character quickly became quite a logical decision.<br /><br />I know it is always difficult to change conventions, but I got the feeling that with controls and other things, we have gone as far as possible with the current conventions. If you want to go further, you have to break something and start again from scratch with new ideas. I am excited by this possibility to try new options and investigate new ideas.<br /><br /><b>GR: While we’re on the subject of control, are all of the action sequences in Heavy Rain going to be Quick Time-style, with timed button presses? About what percentage of the game do you think will be spent exploring, versus participating in the more tense action bits?</b><br /><br />DC: Heavy Rain is a game of exploration, interaction with the environment and decision-making. It also features some spectacular action sequences using a different control scheme that I would not exactly describe as Quick Time Events. I need to explain a little bit what I mean by that.<br /><br />Many games fall into categories of “shooter” or “fighting game.” Some games feature both styles with some limitations. What does this mean, exactly? In short, it means player actions will be limited to a certain type of action scene, that he will play through different levels using repetitive mechanics and a limited set of animations. I think this genre is great for a certain audience, but it was definitely not the type of game we wanted to create. It is also very difficult to tell a story with repetitive action sequences. We believe the audience that will be drawn to Heavy Rain will want something different. <br /><br />So we made the decision to have a more generic type of interface, inspired by the QTE system used by Yu Suzuki in Shenmue, but trying to make them evolve to make them a truly immersive control scheme.<br /><br />We have done many things to make the sequences very enjoyable moments: we created very spectacular action scenes, each one being unique, and featuring unique movements instead of generic animation banks. We integrated controls in 3D and animated them with their target. We also entirely changed the pacing of these sequences: it is the player makes every single move of the character, he is really at the heart of the action, with very spectacular animations, a real sense of directing, and a strong sense of immersion. The player will immediately see the result of his action, failure or success, with a specific sequence. Last but not least, we fully use the controller, including sticks and Sixaxis, which provides a very intense experience.<br /><br />We are very pleased with the feedback these scenes received so far. Even hardcore gamers told us they really felt they were really immersed in the action. I think players will be surprised by some action sequences in the game, how diverse, immersive and, of course, interactive they are.<br /><br /><b>GR: Heavy Rain’s been described as a “film noir thriller.” What do you see as the key elements of film noir, and how do you plan to replicate them in the game? Are there any specific films that influenced the production?</b><br /><br />DC: I am sure players will find many references to movies, TV series or novels in Heavy Rain, but there was no conscious influence. This script is the first thing I write for a game, [and it] comes from my personal experience, things I have lived or felt. It made for me a huge difference in the creative process as I was writing about things I knew instead of trying to imagine what it is like to be a hero saving the world.<br /><br />I hope more and more interactive writers will see themselves as “authors” instead of “level builders,” and try to tell about their own lives, their emotions, their visions. I am convinced that it would generate much more interesting games. I work on emotion using narrative, but there are of course many different ways of creating interactive emotional experiences. The future of this industry may very well be in writing about emotional experiences.<br /><br /><b>GR: So far we’ve seen two of the four main characters, FBI profiler Norman Jayden and journalist Madison Paige. Without revealing too much, is there anything you can tell us about the two characters we haven’t seen yet?</b><br /><br />DC: The last character we are going to reveal is the first one to appear in the game. It is his story that really drove me in the writing of Heavy Rain. He is not your typical main character; rather, he is a more complex individual with doubts and weaknesses, and a strong emotional arc through the story. If the tag line of the game, “how far are you prepared to go to save someone you love?” applies to all four characters, he is the one having the strongest take on this. The other character is not the typical video game hero, either… but this one may well be a player favorite.<br /><br /><b>GR: How will the game be structured, in regard to the four characters? Does each character one simply get their own undivided “chapter” of the game, or will players revisit characters (assuming they’re still alive) after a different character’s story has begun?</b><br /><br />DC: The game is structured like a movie, telling the interlaced stories of four characters. The player will play with these characters scene after scene. What I like about this system, that I started to experiment with [in] Indigo [Prophecy], is the fact that the experience is quite varied: you leave a scene and you discover a new set with a new character and something else to do taking advantage of who you are. It makes the game richer and more surprising by allowing you to tell the stories of several characters at the same time. You are sad to leave them, but glad to play with the next one.<br /><br /><b>GR: The idea of ending a character’s story after they die is a bold one; what made you decide to structure the game that way?</b><br /><br />DC: Game Over is a very frustrating game convention. In short, it means “if you were not good enough or did not play the game the way the designer intended you to play, you should play again until you do it right.” What kind of story could a writer tell where the characters could play the same scene ten times until the outcome is right?<br /><br />I wanted to solve both issues, the gameplay frustration and the narrative dead end, by seeing if I could get rid of these sequences and treating death like an event in the story that would not prevent it from continuing. Some movies and novels have done that in the past, I thought it was worth a try. ;-)<br /><br /><b>GR: Some gamers are guaranteed to cry foul if they can’t go back to “rescue” dead characters and conclude the story the “right” way; with that in mind, what do you see as the benefit to the player from taking the “die and that’s it” approach? Is there one?</b><br /><br />DC: Interacting means making a decision. Making a decision means opening a door and never knowing what was behind the other one. There is no “right way” of playing the story, as there is no “wrong” story. There are just different stories, telling different things in different ways. There will be a benefit for the player to play with the consequences of his actions: he will create a story that is really unique to him. Even if he dies, he will see things that someone who has kept the four characters alive will miss.<br /><br /><b>GR: If a character dies, will that make the investigation more difficult or differently structured for the other characters? Or will it just close off that part of the story to the player?</b><br /><br />DC: I try to propose a good and interesting story whatever happens, including if some characters died. The story changes depending on what is going on, as each character has a specific way to discover the Origami Killer and some specific information about him. It will also very differently structure the game for other characters. I cannot really say much more…<br /><br /><b>GR: You talked about this a bit during E3, but I’d like to revisit it for the benefit of our readers: When it was released in 2005, a lot of criticism was leveled at the final act of Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy and what many saw as a sharp departure from the tone that the game set early on. Looking back, what, if anything, do you think went wrong? Are you doing anything to avoid similar criticism with Heavy Rain?</b><br /><br />DC: Indigo did some things well, I think, some others not that well. I am a little bit frustrated that some people only remember what did not work. The end was rushed, because the rest of the game required so much effort and attention that we spent less time on the last scenes. The story I wanted to tell required more scenes to be developed and explained in a satisfying way, and time was just missing to do that.<br /><br />I also felt, towards the end of the writing, that I was not doing a videogame: there were no super powers, no evil guy, no world to save, so I added all in the last scenes. I realized later that we don’t need that anymore. So when I started writing Heavy Rain, I took all the time I needed to write the script, I got rid of any supernatural elements and decided to write only about real people in real life having real problems. I accepted the fact that I was not doing videogames anymore, and I feel much better about it. <br /><br /><b>Autor:</b> Mikel Reparaz<br /><b>Source:</b> <a href="http://www.gamesradar.com/ps3/f/heavy-rain-the-david-cage-interview/a-200908121043067045" target=_blank>Games Radar US</a><br /><b>Language:</b> English<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href=https://omikrongame.blogspot.com>Omikron Game</a> Quantic Dream's projects fan-site.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17674984.post-1233666771001018912009-07-14T12:55:00.002+00:002009-08-17T13:03:36.138+00:00Kikizo: Heavy Rain: David Cage Interview<b>Quantic Dream founder spills beans on QTEs, Project Natal versus PS3 motion control, "primitive" emotions in gaming and a private tête-a-tête with Hideo Kojima.</b><br /><br />Despite three years of steady press coverage, we know surprisingly little about Quantic Dream's PS3 exclusive Heavy Rain. We know that the game's multi-threaded plot purports to offer terrifying levels of player choice and consequence, even making space for the demise of central characters. We know that its gaunt, harrowed cast of serial killers, strippers and drug-addled detectives own penthouse apartments in the Uncanny Valley, thanks to some stunning proprietary tech.<br /><br />But as to how the thing will play, moment to moment, we're still largely at sea. Aspects of Heavy Rain incline towards the classic point and click adventures of LucasArts, while other elements owe something to Sega's sadly defunct Shenmue series, and still others recall games as thematically disparate as God of War, Resident Evil 4 and Mass Effect. <br /><br />This elusiveness has to do less with fickle publicity than Quantic Dream's desire to transcend calcified forms of play, founder David Cage told Kikizo when we stopped by for an interview. In a very tightly crammed nutshell, Cage wishes to make interaction much more relevant to its dramatic context, tailor-making gameplay concepts to each part of a game's story rather than relying, as most developers do, on certain default mechanics and an associated control scheme.<br /><br />It's a bold aim, and one that will probably play merry hell with Kikizo's category system when Heavy Rain hits PS3s next year. Elsewhere in our chat, Cage discussed QTEs, his scepticism for Project Natal, Quantic Dream's in-house tech-wizardry and "primitive" emotions in gaming. Tantalisingly enough, he also touched on a private tête-a-tête with Hideo Kojima.<br /><br /><b>Kikizo: How would you sell your "branching storyline" approach to people brought up on more traditional game plotting? </b><br /><br />Cage: I don't think I want people to understand how it works, I just want them to play and enjoy it! That would be the best proof that it works, actually. You know about interactive storytelling, many people said that this is not possible, because narrative is linear, in essence, where interactivity is non-linear. Many people think it's not possible to combine both. Also there are some technical issues in the writing of interactive storytelling, because when you think up tree branches, you start to add branches to your tree, and branches lead to more branches that give you more branches, and you end up with a huge tree and no control over it.<br /><br />So I developed this technique I call "banding stories", that is about considering my story like a rubber band that the player can stretch and deform based on his actions. So the story's always there, the rubber band is still the same, but you can change its shape and length based on what you do. So this is my solution. I tried to experiment on Fahrenheit, and it worked in many aspects, and I think Heavy Rain will go much further in the same direction.<br /><br /><b>Kikizo: What's changed between last year's E3/Leipzig presentation and what you showed at this year's E3? </b><br /><br />Cage: The difficulty with Heavy Rain is that everything is contextual and everything is different. So it's not like in a shooter game where you show one level and then you pretty much understand everything about the game. In Heavy Rain every scene is unique - there are many different characters, many different challenges, many different things to play. So we decided with Sony to start to unveil each character at each significant trade show through the year, and each time demonstrate a different aspect of the game. So the first scene we revealed was Norman Jayden, this guy from an FBI investigation, and we wanted to show how we could have in a scene dialogue, exploration and an action sequence.<br /><br />We revealed the second scene at E3, and this is Madison Paige the second character, a female character, she's a photographer and she suffers from insomnia. And she gets in a way involved with an investigation about the Origami killer, and she wants to help another character, and she goes to this night club run by a guy called Paco, and she comes here to investigate because she knows the killer. So we showed this scene which is in a night club with, I don't know how many people dancing, but it's really crowded, and the character avoiding other characters dancing. And she will end up being forced to do a striptease for the guy depending on how you play, and there are many different endings.<br /><br /><b>Kikizo: The first demo you showcased felt quite solitary, but the new Madison Paige episode is obviously much more public. How are you managing the balance between private and public situations in the story? </b><br /><br />Cage: There are many scenes that are quite crowded. We go from one scene to another, each scene is different. Some people like Jayden are involved with the police, he works with the police. Other characters aren't.<br /><br /><b>Kikizo: How many people will we encounter in these crowd scenes, max? </b><br /><br />Cage: The scene in the night club is really crowded, maybe 200 people on screen dancing.<br /><br /><b>Kikizo: Could you go into more detail about the technology powering Heavy Rain? I thought it was one of the best-looking games of last year...</b><br /><br />Cage: Thank you. <br /><br /><b>Kikizo: It's always interesting to hear how these things are accomplished.</b> <br /><br />Cage: Well all the technology is proprietary, developed by Quantic Dream. We've worked for quite a while on PlayStation 3 - we got some alpha kits, dev kits for PS3 a long time ago, maybe before other developers. And also we worked with the full cooperation of Sony, they gave us fantastic support. And we really wanted to develop specific technologies because we were interested in more specific topics, like how the skin reacts to light, how to animate eyes, how light reflects in eyes, how to integrate body motion capture and facial motion capture, how to have a crowd - many, many topics which are not necessarily useful for other types of games, but we have some very specific needs in this one, especially with directing - the way we play with the camera, the way the camera slightly shakes all the time, etc, etc.<br /><br /><b>Kikizo: One of the big questions in this industry, of course, is how to create emotional experiences. You've played a headline role in that particular debate. </b><br /><br />Cage: I've always thought the only real next gen feature would be emotion. I didn't believe that physics, AI, or polygons, or texture maps would be a real next gen feature, OK - it's just about technology. But technology is just a tool, it's not the content. It's the tool to create the content. You know when we talk about emotion in this industry, I don't think we're always talking about the same thing. Because the some people believe that when you get a golfer smiling because he succeeded, this is emotion. Well I believe this is a very primitive emotion. <br /><br />We've got a lot of emotions in our industry - we've got frustration, competition, anger, adrenaline. But I'm much more interested in more sophisticated emotions like empathy, sadness, happiness, and the ways to trigger them. And this is really difficult to be honest with you, it's a real challenge. There are many ways to achieve this goal. The one we chose is to use narrative and actors.<br /><br /><b>Kikizo: So the quality of the acting... </b><br /><br />Cage: It's first of all the script, the story, the characters. It's the quality of the acting, the quality of the direction. Emotion is not one thing, it's not one button that you press and say OK, this is emotional now. It's the combination of all these things, including interactivity and interface - interface should be a part of the emotion.<br /><br /><b>Kikizo: Certainly for story, I couldn't agree more. I cried my eyes out recently over a film called Seven Pounds. Will Smith's in it. True fact. </b><br /><br />Cage: The first playable scene we showed is not the most emotional one. We wanted to introduce the game with a very classic action sequence of a dark thriller, you know. That was very much the idea. But the night club scene is different and we'll reveal a new scene and a new character in Cologne this year, and another one at the Tokyo Game Show, and the closer we get to release the more emotional and original we'll be about what we show.<br /><br /><b>Kikizo: Could you give me a fuller idea of the gameplay package in Heavy Rain? So far we've seen exploring the environment, the QTE-action sequence - I don't know if you're calling them QTEs or not... </b><br /><br />Cage: No, we call them "PARs" - "physical action reactions". It's difficult to describe the package, as you called it, of the gameplay - I guess we can say that there's some action, exploration, interaction with the environment, interaction with other characters, and on a purely technical point of view yes there are some action sequences. It's the idea of the QTE developed in Shenmue, except we wanted to take them to the next stage, and make them next gen. So we tried to figure out what we could improve.<br /><br />What we liked about them was that they were contextual, so instead of having a punch and a kick you could really have very choreographed scenes with a real sense of directing, and each movement being entirely unique. So we really enjoyed that and this was really something we wanted to keep. So we put the symbols in 3D in the environment, instead of having them in 2D on top of the screen they are in 3D, they animate with what you want to interact with. So if you want to interact with someone the symbol would move with them. And we tried to play with everything on the controller. We played with the sticks, we played with the buttons, we played with the triggers, and the Sixaxis motion-sensing.<br /><br /><b>Kikizo: I spoke to Hideo Kojima at last year's Leipzig show, and the final topic of discussion was the cut scene. As I'm sure you know, there are a lot of cut scenes in the Metal Gear Solid series. So my question to him was: could you think of a more interactive, less passive way of telling your story? And his <a href="http://games.kikizo.com/features/hideo-kojima-interview-2008-p3.asp?f=hideo-kojima-interview-2008-p3.asp" target=_blank>answer</a> in a nutshell was "I don't know, I'll have to think about this more. I'm not sure the technology exists for it." Right after that interview, I saw Heavy Rain. </b><br /><br />Cage: Kojima heard about Heavy Rain last year and we met, because everyone told him about Heavy Rain and he wanted to talk, discuss this topic. It was a very interesting discussion. But yeah I believe that the only real challenge is to treat the storytelling differently, not through cut scenes but directly through gameplay. As you play you tell the story. And that's the most difficult thing to do, but also the most interesting thing.<br /><br /><b>Kikizo: Can you tell me anything more about that particular meeting of minds? </b><br /><br />Cage: That was a private discussion and I can't really discuss it [laughs], but it was very interesting and I was really pleased that he heard about us and wanted to hear more. <br /><br /><b>Kikizo: Had you met him before? </b><br /><br />Cage: No, it was the first time. <br /><br /><b>Kikizo: And are you a fan of his games? </b><br /><br />Cage: I certainly respect his work, definitely, although it's not the type of game I want to make myself. But yeah he's a huge star, I guess.<br /><br /><b>Kikizo: Can you tell me a bit about Quantic Dream as a company - where it came from, where it is right now, where it's going? How has it grown to facilitate this project? </b><br /><br />Cage: So Quantic Dream is a really old company - we're 12 years old now - and we are about 100 people internally. For Heavy Rain there are about 100 people outside the company. And we have our own sound studio in-house, we have our own 3D scanner, we have our own motion capture set - that was an investment we made about 10 years ago, because we wanted to master this technology. And that's pretty much it. We believe in emotion above all, this is really what we believe in. We believe games can become - should become - a creative medium, and not just stories for kids. So we try to create more sophisticated experiences for an older audience.<br /><br /><b>Kikizo: Have you had a chance to look at Project Natal and Sony's new motion-sensing wand? I was <a href="http://games.kikizo.com/features/microsoft-natal-xbox-360-why-its-a-big-deal-p1.asp" target=_blank>quite convinced</a> by Natal. </b><br /><br />Cage: You know, it's one idea among others. I'm not sure all people want to play jumping and running in front of the television, because I think some people just want to relax and just play, enjoy and experience. It shows Microsoft wants to go the Nintendo way, probably, go casual, compete with Wii Fit, and there's nothing wrong about it - there is a market for casual gamers. But this is definitely not the direction I would like this industry to go, because I think it should go in the direction of movies - more creativity, more new ideas, more authors - rather than going in the direction of toys. And from a technical point of view I must admit I'm still slightly sceptical about what they've shown.<br /><br /><b>Kikizo: So what are you thoughts on the new PS3 controller, then? </b><br /><br />Cage: I think it's an interesting time for PlayStation and Sony, I think they revealed some very interesting new titles that start really to show what next-gen means. And when you look at titles like Uncharted 2 or God of War III, Heavy Rain and others, you start to see that we're really moving to the next stage. There are some very interesting new games coming along.<br /><br /><b>Kikizo: OK. And Heavy Rain is coming out next year? </b><br /><br />Cage: Early next year.<br /><br /><b>Kikizo: What are your remaining priorities as you finish the game? </b><br /><br />Cage: Well we're just past the alpha stage, and basically our priority right now until the game is released is just to polish everything. And it's a game requiring a lot of details to be checked, and everything should be in place otherwise it's going to distract the player from the experience itself. So we work very hard tuning the gameplay, improving the directing, improving the visuals, making it just look and play the best we can.<br /><br /><b>Kikizo: We're looking forward to seeing more. Thanks for your time, David.</b><br /><br /><b>Autor:</b> Kikizo Staff<br /><b>Source:</b> <a href="http://games.kikizo.com/features/heavy-rain-david-cage-interview-p1.asp" target=_blank>Kikizo</a><br /><b>Language:</b> English<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href=https://omikrongame.blogspot.com>Omikron Game</a> Quantic Dream's projects fan-site.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17674984.post-23758347769294545532009-07-13T08:00:00.002+00:002009-08-17T13:35:01.625+00:00GamesIndustry.biz: Catching the Rain<i>Following on from part one of this exclusive interview with Quantic Dream co-CEO Guillaume de Fondaumiere, in which he talks about his role with the EGDF and the importance of games as culture, here he talks more about the development of Heavy Rain. <br /><br />Specifically he updates us on where production is at, as well as the challenges of emotion and the maturing relationship between developers and publishers.</i><br /><br /><b>Q: How is Heavy Rain coming along - the last few miles of the marathon? </b><br /><br />Guillaume de Fondaumiere: It feels very good, we're very happy. We delivered the alpha of the game on April 15 - on time, on budget - so we're pretty happy. It's a great moment, because we now have the whole game in our hands and we can play from beginning to end. So we're now entering the most interesting part of the development, I think, which is perfecting it - making sure that all the scenes are as we expect them to be, at the same level of quality. It's a great moment to be at.<br /><br /><b>Q: "On time, on budget" - that's good, something that doesn't happen enough in the industry, one might argue. How have you managed the process to make sure that's happened? Is it as simple as just having the right management procedures in place?</b> <br /><br />Guillaume de Fondaumiere: I think we prepared for a long time, before we started production of Heavy Rain, and I think that back in 2005 when we were finishing Fahrenheit and starting to look at next-gen consoles in particular, we understood we could no longer produce games the old way, like in the old days. <br /><br />We understood we'd have to double the structure in our studio, that we'd have to rely on external resources to produce our next game. And for almost a year and a half we not only worked on technology in setting certain standards, and the quality bar on the development, but also on the organisation. <br /><br />You don't work the same way when you outsource - especially when you outsource 500 man-months of production - than if you have everybody working in the same room on a project. So it took quite some time, but it's been quite successful, and we're very happy with how we organised internally to be able to work with faraway outsourcing companies, the way the outsourced work was delivered, and the way that the whole thing integrated into the final game. <br /><br />I don't know if we found a recipe, because I think each studio and each project is a bit exceptional in a way, but for us it turned out to be a very good experience. Of course, it's extremely difficult to plan a production on a new platform and to basically create two, three, four times the amount of data that you'd have had to for previous cycles on other consoles. <br /><br />But from what I can tell, looking especially at the games I've seen at E3, a number of developers are doing this successfully. I think we've reached another stage in the industry where developers can be much more mature. <br /><br />I think it also has a lot to do with the way that publishers interact with developers. I must say that we've enjoyed a great relationship with Sony. The Worldwide Studios group in Liverpool has been really dynamic, it's been a great working relationship. This is also very important - when you don't have to worry about whether the publisher is going to pay you, whether they're going to accept this and this, whether they're going to ask you to do the same thing two, three or four times, and so on. <br /><br />Unfortunately we've all experienced that in the past, and you're using up a lot of time and resources - but thankfully we've had a great relationship with SCE and I think, from what I hear from other developers, not only are developers becoming more mature, but also publishers.<br /><br /><b>Q: There seem to be fewer horror stories around these days, that's true. Working on a platform-exclusive title brings benefits, one of which is greater visibility - Heavy Rain's now a key PS3 title on the slate - but how do you respond to the added pressure that brings? </b><br /><br />Guillaume de Fondaumiere: I think it puts positive pressure on us - it's exactly where we wanted to be when we started the project. It's extremely important for all the members of the team to know there's a point to what they're doing, that people care. Especially in a game that's emotionally driven, where emotions are at the core of the experience. It's important that the team know what they're doing will be seen, so we're very proud. <br /><br />We know this positive pressure brings responsibility, especially because I think that the promises we're making with Heavy Rain are quite important for the industry. Also because we're trying to show that it's possible to have an interactive story, that it's possible to offer players something different to just fighting, shooting and driving - that interactivity can be more than that. <br /><br />So I think there's a strong responsibility, and we're very focused - but it's a positive pressure.<br /><br /><b>Q: You mention a word there that's important for the industry - "emotion" - because adrenaline rushes are common, but the sensitive emotions are much harder to bring out. Looking back you can pick out a few games - Another World, Shadow of the Colossus to name just two - as quite sensitive titles. But how do you think people will look back on Heavy Rain in that context? </b><br /><br />Guillaume de Fondaumiere: I hope that Heavy Rain will leave an imprint in people's minds, like the best movies or books - that's really our objective. I hope it's going to be not only something that they can look back on from a gaming perspective as new and original, but maybe from a more global perspective as an entertainment form, a form of expression. <br /><br />This is where we'd like to be - Another World is my all-time favourite game, it's the game that made me decide to work in this industry, and I think that it has been for many a trigger point in realising that games can do more, can bring more, to people.<br /><br /><b>Q: Would it be the ultimate compliment for Heavy Rain to inspire a new generation of developers? </b><br /><br />Guillaume de Fondaumiere: Yes, absolutely. <br /><br /><b>Q: So the game has a 2010 release - is that because you don't want to put it out in the busy pre-Christmas period, or was that the timing planned all along? </b><br /><br />Guillaume de Fondaumiere: We've always known that we had a window to release the game, and it's important for us to finish it the right way. We've got some margin either way, to some degree, but again I think there's a responsibility, and we don't want to deceive - so it's important for the game to be polished up until the last minute. <br /><br />Also, purely from my perspective, most publishers today realise that it's not ideal to release a new IP or a new genre just before Christmas. It's a very crowded place to be, and certain games need more space to live their life. Everybody at working on the project, both at Quantic and Sony, believe this is the right time.<br /><br /><b>Q: Do you look back at releases like LittleBigPlanet and try to learn lessons? I know they have a consistent long tail on that game, so do you see Heavy Rain as a big bang or slow burn? </b><br /><br />Guillaume de Fondaumiere: I think it's a game that will probably have a longer lifespan than other games, simply because - a bit like LittleBigPlanet - we're in our own area. So one shooter could shoot another shooter out of the charts to a certain degree, and that's probably why you're seeing the high number of sales for a short period in other game categories. <br /><br />For innovative titles that stand out, that are different and almost have no direct competition to a certain degree, then you can see a longer lifespan. That's what makes publishing those titles very interesting - I think LBP has been hugely successful. You may not have seen it in the charts at number one everywhere during one particular week, but when it adds up you see that they've sold, I don't know the exact numbers, but around 2.5 million units worldwide. That's quite an achievement for a first game, definitely.<br /><br /><b>Autor:</b> Phil Elliott<br /><b>Source:</b> <a href="http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/catching-the-rain?page=1" target=_blank>GamesIndustry.biz</a><br /><b>Language:</b> English<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href=https://omikrongame.blogspot.com>Omikron Game</a> Quantic Dream's projects fan-site.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17674984.post-10862323605205076542009-07-08T18:10:00.002+00:002009-08-17T13:23:08.436+00:00Spong: Interviews// Inside Heavy RainHeavy Rain, the upcoming PS3-exclusive... we'll call it an 'interactive thriller', has a lot of people scratching their heads. On the one hand, footage makes it look moody, starkly beautiful and very intense.<br /><br />On the other hand, a lot of people are looking at it and asking, 'How much control will I actually have? Will it just be a series of quick time events?'<br /><br />...<br />I sat down with Guillaume de Fondaumière, co-CEO of the game's developer, Quantic Dream, to discuss how deep the player's control of the game really goes, what his team has done to make sure you're not just passively watching a story unfold in front of you and why it made no sense for him to slap me.<br /><br /><b>SPOnG: David Cage has talked about not giving Heavy Rain an open world because he said it would limit Quantic Dream’s ability to control the flow of the story. To what extent is a player able to create their own narrative and to what extent are you as developer controlling their progression through the game?</b><br /><br />Guillaume de Fondaumière: As I’ve said, Heavy Rain is a game in which story is core to the experience and we really want to give players the possibility to see the consequences of their actions and how it impacts the story. So, a number of actions will have consequences on a particular scene, some will have consequences in a few scenes ahead and some will have dramatic consequences on the story.<br /><br />I guess, from what we’ve shown so far, the most dramatic aspect being for instance losing one of the characters. So, it’s really a game about choices and consequences. There’s nothing right or wrong that you can do in the game, but there are choices – sometimes moral choices – that you will have to make, always contextual. You’ll always understand what the motivations of your character are, and by triggering certain actions or deciding to go into a direction or another, deciding to engage in a relationship or not, to say certain things at certain moments and not others, you’ll be able to shape your own story.<br /><br />But, of course, we are always in control of the story. As David said, it’s not an open world game, it’s story-driven and what’s very important for us is that the story is consistent and meaningful from the beginning to the end. This is something you (simply) can’t achieve today with an open world and a sandbox game.<br /><br /><b>SPOnG: You mentioned moral choices – a phrase that makes a lot of people groan because it’s used so often. A lot of the time, however, the choices are fairly meaningless. Do you think anyone has successfully worked moral choices into a game so far?</b><br /><br />Guillaume de Fondaumière: Not really. I think Peter Molyneux’s attempts in Fable 2 are interesting, but we’re trying to do something rather different with Heavy Rain. We’re not interested in clearly presenting to the player ‘do you want to be a good guy or a bad guy and see how the story unfolds from beginning to end if you’re a good guy or a bad guy?’ What interests us is how players react to certain circumstances and how – it’s a bit like in real life – we’re faced with certain choices in our lives and we’re not necessarily all good or all bad. I think we’re all in shades of grey, to a certain degree, and this is far more interesting to us.<br /><br />I think to a certain degree this is far more interesting, because again, it’s far more realistic.<br /><br /><b>SPOnG: We’ve all been playing infamous in the office and everyone has opted to play through on good in their first attempt, which is interesting. It’s pretty meaningless knocking down a virtual pedestrian in a game but still people will swing away from it. You’ve said that the decisions aren’t as straight forward as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in Heavy Rain, but presumably there are choices where you can be more or less selfish. Has anything from your testing so far surprised you in that respect?</b><br /><br />Guillaume de Fondaumière: Not really. First of all because we didn’t really enter into user tests on the whole game.<br /><br />The second thing is, we’re not in this route and I think everything is contextual and it’s really a sum of choices and sum of actions that lead you to a different story. We have a number of different endings – I don’t believe we counted them, but there are a great many. I think that the most important thing to us is that people bear the consequences of their actions and the fact that whatever they do, whatever they choose to do, they have a meaningful story that unfolds. I think the stakes are going to be very clear for the player.<br /><br />The player will know what his ultimate goal is throughout the game, but there are many ways of how to get to a… I wouldn’t even say a successful ending. David (Cage) was asked a question at E3 by one of the journalists, asking ‘what if you lose all four characters?’ Well, this is possible. There is no game-over in the game. So you can actually lose all four characters. What happens then is, you still have an ending to the story. It’s a very sad ending but, as David says, it’s his favourite ending.<br /><br />I guess that that was the philosophy behind it, really. It’s to make sure that whatever the choices, the story unfolds in a meaningful way and in a way that is satisfying to the audience.<br /><br />Maybe some will want to play it again and see how the story ends if they choose differently.<br /><br /><b>SPOnG: So you think people will want to play through again, having seen the story before? Is there enough difference in the different paths you take that people will be compelled to come back?</b><br /><br />Guillaume de Fondaumière: For us the most important element in the game is to give players the possibility to live and choose their own story. Whether players will either come back each time and try the different possibilities, it really depends on the gamer.<br /><br />We give these possibilities, the game is saving all the time, so you always have the possibility to go back and choose a different path or do something different, or talk differently to a person, or engage or not into a relationship. <br />So, there is this possibility, but we’d like very much for <br />players to bear the responsibility for their actions, play the game through. And if at one point they believe that it will be worth exploring other possibilities, maybe play through to the end and come back to that particular point and play differently, I think this would be more interesting.<br /><br />We give the possibility to players to really choose how they want to play.<br /><br /><b>SPOnG: Will there be a trophy, then, for playing through without going back to any of your saves?</b><br /><br />Guillaume de Fondaumière: We haven’t figured out, as of yet, how the trophy system is going to work. It’s not necessarily a game that is conceptually in line with what trophies should do. Again, it’s not about succeeding or failing. It’s not about doing the right thing or doing the wrong thing. It’s about the journey. The journey is the most important thing.<br /><br />So, to a certain degree, I would say we’re not rewarding the players in a conventional way. The reward is the emotional experience, is how good the story is from the player’s perspective. I guess it should be the other way around. It should be gamers giving us trophies (grins) rather than us giving players trophies!<br /><br />But we’ll of course support trophies and we’re trying to find the right way to integrate trophies into the game.<br /><br /><b>SPOnG: OK. So, you’ve got four main characters, all of which are playable and, if you die, you move onto another character. Is there a risk that, with players switching characters, they’ll become ‘de-immersed’ from the game?</b><br /><br />Guillaume de Fondaumière: I don’t think so. I think it’s not an experiment, we see it in a lot of movies. They follow different characters, and the fact that you’re following these different characters is only a way to give you different perspectives on the story. I think it only adds to the experience, and I don’t think that you’re going to lose the immersion because of that.<br /><br />I think what is very important in the story and in the characterisation is to present the characters in such a way that you get acquainted (with) them, that you understand their motivations, and if we’re successful in that, I think that players will find it interesting to be able to play the story from different angles, and to see it from different perspectives.<br /><br /><b>SPOnG: The difference between a film and a game, of course, is that in a movie you’re sat passively watching, while in a game you’re in control. When I sit down to play Heavy Rain, will I need to turn off the part of my brain that tells me I’m about to play a game? Will I have to shift my expectations about what’s about to happen, compared to another game?</b><br /><br />Guillaume de Fondaumière: I don’t think so, I think that our objective was clearly to make a videogame, an interactive experience that is… Heavy Rain is certainly a new form of game, and we’ve created new gameplay mechanics to make sure that the player is always in control. You’re in real time 3D all the time, you’re all the time in control of your character’s actions.<br /><br />I think people are going to be quite surprised by the diversity of characters, by the diversity of the sets, and by the diversity of the interaction. By how interactive this game actually is.<br /><br />So, I don’t think you should set your expectations differently than other games in that respect. I guess you’d probably expect a little bit more from an emotional perspective and from a narrative perspective.<br /><br /><b>SPOnG: Harold Ramis, the writer of the Ghostbusters films and game, has recently spoken about the difficulty of writing games compared to film, because in a film you’ve got one narrative line with maybe two hours of content, where in a game you have to write for multiple paths sometimes. In Heavy Rain you’re obviously looking at multiple routes that are very heavy on narrative. How easy or difficult was it to develop or write for?</b><br /><br />Guillaume de Fondaumière: It is very difficult, because as you said, you need to write all the different threads, and you need to make sure each thread is of equal quality, so it demands a certain ability to make sure, first of all, there are strong contexts within the story. To give players real choices, and to define what possibilities there are within this context of developing other story branches that are meaningful, always, to the story. You don’t want to lead players into either dead ends, or into narrative paths that are not of the same quality in terms of story.<br /><br />You also have to be careful, because it is an interactive experience, so you have to make sure that whatever the player does, he’s always in control. He shouldn’t feel that the game is just a linear sequence of non-interactive cinematics, for instance. This is really not what we’re trying to do.<br /><br />Taking the example here of the QTEs (Quick Time Events). A lot of people – and this is one of the difficulties we have in presenting the game, when you watch it, or you watch a video of a play through, people don’t understand how interactive it actually is. When we give the controller to either journalists or users for user tests, the first feedback (is) ‘whoa, I didn’t realise how interactive it is, and I didn’t realise that I was really in control’. Now, of course, each interaction is contextual. You can’t do anything (you want). But it’s a bit like in real life, you know? It would be senseless for me now, for example, to stand up and slap you. It simply has no sense! However, there are a number of things that I can say, that I can do, decisions that I can make that have impact on the story.<br /><br />So, our job as developers is to make sure that we give enough choices and to make sure that, whatever the choice, the story is meaningful.<br /><br /><b>SPOnG: Do you have a rough number on how many endings there are?</b><br /><br />Guillaume de Fondaumière: 20 plus. But, I guess, what’s more important for us are the different journeys and I really don’t have a clue how many journeys there are to come to those endings. But it’s also in a particular scene. A particular scene may end the same way, however, the information – the experience – can be very different, depending on your choices.<br /><br /><b>SPOnG: Thanks for your time!</b><br /><br /><b>Autor:</b> Mark Johnson<br /><b>Source:</b> <a href="http://news.spong.com/feature/10109943/Interview-Inside-Heavy-Rain" target=_blank>Spong</a><br /><b>Language:</b> English<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href=https://omikrongame.blogspot.com>Omikron Game</a> Quantic Dream's projects fan-site.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17674984.post-27763996624158041932009-07-07T12:26:00.001+00:002009-08-02T12:31:57.843+00:00OverGame: Tribune David Cage : Une histoire d'émotionsEn réaction aux propos des responsables du studio Bioware qui voient bientôt l'avènement du jeu vidéo à histoires pour public adulte laissant tomber l'inutile violence, le créateur du prochain Heavy Rain confirme, à chaud, participer au même combat pacifique depuis des années.<br />Prenant une petite pause sur le développement en cours de la béta de Heavy Rain, David Cage a bien voulu réagir à chaud aux propos des deux fondateurs du studio Bioware décortiqués ici. Le directeur créatif du studio français Quantic Dream à qui l'on doit les jeux d'aventure les plus singuliers et matures de ces dernières années avec Nomad Soul, Fahrenheit et Heavy Rain à découvrir avant la fin de l'année, confirme une convergence de vue avec Bioware dont il se réjouit après avoir mené depuis des années un combat pour expliquer, tout en la cherchant, sa vision de la maturité du jeu vidéo. Rappelons au moins 2 faits notables dans le travail de David Cage, associés à son premier jeu Nomad Soul sorti en 2000 : avoir réussi à faire participer David Bowie (musique et apparition modélisée dans le jeu) et avoir créé une scène de rapports amoureux, "de tendresse" dit-il pudiquement, entre 2 personnages… Deux exemples de maturité encore à suivre.<br /><br /><b>"Je suis évidemment totalement en phase avec les déclarations de Ray Muzyka et Greg Zeschuk.</b> C'est une analyse que j'ai faite à la fin de Nomad Soul (en toute humilité…) en constatant que mes parents et beaucoup de gens autour de moi pouvaient apprécier les mêmes livres, les mêmes films, les mêmes émissions de télévision que moi, mais n'avaient strictement aucun intérêt pour les jeux vidéo en général. Les raisons invoquées par tous les adultes qui ne jouent pas étaient souvent les mêmes : « Je n'ai pas le temps, c'est trop compliqué, je n'y comprend rien, ça ne m'intéresse pas ». J'ai alors cherché à comprendre qu'est-ce qui faisait que les jeux n'intéressaient que les gens de ma génération (et encore pas tous), et qu'est-ce qu'il était possible de faire pour étendre notre public traditionnel. Je suis arrivé à la même conclusion que mes confrères de Bioware : la narration et l'émotion sont les seules réponses valables, tout simplement parce que quand on vieillit, on n'a plus envie de jouer aux mêmes jeux que quand on est adolescent. On n'aime plus les mêmes livres, les mêmes films, nos goûts changent et évoluent (enfin normalement…), mais les jeux vidéo eux ne changent pas, d'où la rupture. Passer des heures à bastonner des trolls avant de franchir le niveau suivant pour bastonner plus de trolls n'est pas une expérience satisfaisante pour un grand nombre d'adultes, qui sont le plus souvent en quête d'un peu plus de sens et d'émotion.<br /> <br /><b>Deux choses me surprennent particulièrement dans les déclarations de Bioware</b> : la première est qu'ils semblent prêts à une rupture avec leur public traditionnel de hardcore gamers. C'est une décision qui est extrêmement difficile à prendre parce qu'en terme de marché, on sait ce qu'on perd (dans leur cas, un public très nombreux de gamers avides de leurs jeux)* mais on ne sait pas ce qu'on gagne (conquérir un nouveau public est toujours un immense challenge).<br /> <br /><b>La deuxième chose qui m'interpelle est le fait que la plupart des jeux reposent sur des mécaniques répétitives </b> (tirer, sauter, courir, se cacher, etc.). C'est une structure particulièrement pratique en terme de design parce que c'est une typologie d'actions qui commence à être très bien connue (voilà vingt ans que l'industrie produit des jeux basés sur ces principes…). Si on souhaite abandonner les "batailles", il va falloir trouver de nouvelles manières d'interagir qui ne soient pas basées sur la violence.<br /> <br /><b>Même constat pour raconter une histoire : difficile de développer un scénario sur la base uniquement de coups de hache et de démembrement.</b> Une histoire demande une grande variété d'actions contextuelles, et donc une nouvelle approche de l'interface et des mécanismes de jeux. C'est une rupture particulièrement importante pour une société comme Bioware qui a établi sa réputation et sa réussite sur ces bases, et encore une fois, je trouve leur déclaration particulièrement audacieuse.<br /> <br /><b>Comme ce sont des valeurs que je défends (avec parfois un certain sentiment de solitude, je dois l'avouer…)</b> depuis quelques années maintenant, je suis heureux d'être rejoint sur ce terrain par des développeurs de cette valeur. Avec Fahrenheit et maintenant Heavy Rain, c'est une voie sur laquelle je me suis déjà résolument engagé depuis plusieurs années sur la base de la même analyse que fait aujourd'hui Bioware. J'espère que Heavy Rain démontrera de manière claire qu'il est possible de créer des jeux différemment, basés sur la narration et l'émotion à destination d'un public adulte, et qu'il contribuera à donner envie à d'autres studios de franchir le pas. Ils le feront probablement d'une manière très différente de la nôtre et c'est tant mieux. Le plus important est de sortir de la préadolescence dans laquelle notre industrie s'est enfermée et de commencer à explorer de nouvelles voies vers un média plus mature et créativement plus ambitieux." David Cage<br /><br /><b>Autor:</b> Francois BLISS DE LA BOISSIERE<br /><b>Source:</b> <a href="http://www.overgame.com/items/20748_tribune-david-cage-une-histoire-demotions.html" target=_blank>Overgame.com</a><br /><b>Language:</b><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href=https://omikrongame.blogspot.com>Omikron Game</a> Quantic Dream's projects fan-site.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17674984.post-70491902052959049482009-07-03T14:00:00.002+00:002009-08-17T14:00:08.034+00:00GamesIndustry.biz: Guillaume de Fondaumiere - Part One<i>The final session at this year's GameHorizon conference was an in-depth demonstration of Sony's forthcoming story-driven title Heavy Rain, by the co-CEO of the development studio Quantic Dream. <br /><br />But Guillaume de Fondaumiere hasn't been focusing all his time on the creation of games, having successfully lobbied the European Commission and the French government to allow tax breaks to be given to the games industry. <br /><br />That system, which began in 2008, was based on a cultural test - a phrase used in the UK's recent Digital Britain report. Here, the man himself talks about the problems with that test, why it's not fair, and what the next steps in the battle for media parity should be.</i><br /><br /><b>Q: What brings you to GameHorizon? </b><br /><br />Guillaume de Fondaumiere: It's very interesting for us, as a French developer, to come to the UK - we know that the UK is the most vibrant place in Europe for game development, so it's interesting for us to showcase what we're doing on Heavy Rain, and present this project that's very different from anything that's out there. <br /><br />We're working with Sony Computer Entertainment, based in Liverpool, so we have many friends here - it's interesting to understand what others are doing here in the UK.<br /><br /><b>Q: We spoke briefly at the Nordic Game conference about your instalment as chairman of the EGDF - one month on, with some time to reflect, what are your thoughts on the challenges now? </b><br /><br />Guillaume de Fondaumiere: Well, I've been following the work of the EGDF since it was founded in Paris back in 2006, so I'm very much aware of the issues. As I said before, when the national trade bodies started to work together, we didn't know exactly what we were doing. I think it was more a way to share best practices. <br /><br />But the more we started to work together, the more we started to realise that we have a common destiny, that each country can't do it on its own - except maybe the UK, which is certainly leading the way in Europe - but the more we were discussing topics such as tax credits and education, the cultural recognition of games and the debate on violence or addiction, we found that we had the same issues to tackle. <br /><br />So I think in the past three years the awareness of EGDF members has grown towards crafting this common destiny - making sure everyone works better together to not only share best practices but also solve some of the issues that we face. <br /><br />Today I think we're still confronted with the same critical points, the same issues. I guess the most important one at the moment is tax credits and cultural recognition, because the two come together. I think today we're in a time of economic crisis, the games industry seems be doing okay, but we all know that times are getting more difficult - and that if some are very successful still, others are struggling. I think it's high time now for governments to not only help the banks and the motor industry, but also an industry of the future - the videogame industry. <br /><br />We're still pretty fragile as an industry, especially in Europe on the development side, and it's not because we have a few studios that are very successful that we shouldn't consolidate on those successes and try to improve the framework and ecosystem that enables all of us to flourish in the next decade. <br /><br />We know that tax breaks are extremely effective in stimulating an industry, and I think again that Montreal and Quebec have shown us the way. If you listen to representatives of Invest in Quebec, they'll tell you that they've invested hundreds of million of dollars in the industry - but look at how it benefited our country, our region. I think the last time I was presented the numbers they'd invested CAD 400 million, with a return on that investment of CAD 600 million. <br /><br />So I think it's high time for governments, and the EU, to understand that money given in the form of tax breaks to the industry is not money thrown away. It's an investment with a very high return, so it's time that we had those breaks. <br /><br />We established a tax break in France on January 1 last year, so we have a whole year of projects that have been submitted and received breaks, and it's been very interesting - because for the first time we have a clear picture of what's being produced in France. I know, for instance, that out of the 110 project submitted, approximately 40 per cent passed the famous cultural test and have been granted tax breaks. <br /><br />The total of the budgets that were submitted were around EUR 170 million - the first time we know how much is being produced in France, and taking into account we probably don't have 100 per cent of the picture here, maybe that number is EUR 200 million of game development budgets. That's quite a high number, and shows how dynamic the development community is in France. <br /><br />The tax breaks for 2008 are about EUR 15 million, so that's a lot of money... but on the other hand you have to compare that number with the EUR 700 million that the French film industry is getting - those are numbers that are quite considerable.<br /><br /><b>Q: Do you think that number will go up in time, though? I wonder what the total budgets for film are in comparison to games? </b><br /><br />Guillaume de Fondaumiere: It's more than EUR 200 million, but French movies exported a total of less than EUR 400 million last year. I think this is something that's also very important to look at - how much of this production is being exported? Let's not forget, you're talking production budget on one hand and export turnover on the other. <br /><br />I can only tell from my company, Quantic Dream, but 93 per cent of the turnover generated from our games is from exports - our publishers only generate 7-10 per cent in France, which is normal, as that's about the same as France's share in the market. So we're a heavily exporting company here.<br /><br /><b>Q: We just had the Digital Britain report in the UK give some indication that a cultural tax break could be implemented, so a lot of people will be looking at France to see how it's worked out there. What's been the general consensus, is it a restriction, or are people happy to embrace it? </b><br /><br />Guillaume de Fondaumiere: The cultural test is a problem. It's definitely a problem, and when I negotiated both with the French government and the European Commission I had to give in on a number of criteria - because state aids are only allowed under EU law under the famous cultural exception. <br /><br />That was the case two years ago when I was negotiating, but I see that things have obviously changed now, because I don't believe banks are part of the cultural exception, or the automotive industry is part of it - but nevertheless those institutions and companies are getting huge amounts of funds. <br /><br />So I guess that the crisis has brought not just bad things, but opened up opportunities here. I think that what was true in 2005 may not be exactly the truth today - I'm extremely happy for British developers has now, finally, looking at this, but I'd encourage Tiga and those developers to push the envelope to a certain degree. <br /><br />When I was negotiating with the EU I basically had a two-year discussion with them about how to categorise games into boxes - those which are cultural and those which aren't. We came out at the end with this cultural test, but where does that come from? <br /><br />Actually in France all films are based on certain very light criteria. You have to be a French company, but saying that Warner Bros France could make a movie called A Very Long Engagement and receive funds... There are a number of criteria like this, but otherwise no such cultural test to receive funds. <br /><br />But those tests exist in other countries, like Holland, Britain and Germany. We've been presented those tests, and asked if we'd accept for games to pass them. Of course when I looked at them they were absolutely not adaptable to what we're doing in games. So we discussed it for about a year to try and to erase the criteria that were irrelevant. <br /><br />We now have a test that allows approximately 40 per cent of games produced in France to benefit from tax breaks, and in particular some criteria are more geared towards technology and innovation - which didn't exist in the initial film test. <br /><br />But I'm still not satisfied, and I've always said this is only a first step. I'd prefer to get a foot in the door, rather than have it slammed. We now have to go back to the EU and fight this battle again, on the grounds that many things have changed - obviously banks, the automotive industries getting funding... obviously there are new criteria. We may not need exclusively cultural criteria for our industry to benefit from tax breaks. <br /><br />Again - I think it's an investment, while I'm not sure it's wise to invest in the automotive industry...<br /><br /><b>Q: A cynical person might point to the subject of political votes... </b><br /><br />Guillaume de Fondaumiere: When you look at EU rules, you have to ask: "Actually, what is culture?" It's a national decision, so it's kind of weird that we, as the videogame industry, have to work with standards that other cultural areas don't have to follow. <br /><br />To me, all games are cultural. Videogames aren't just a form of entertainment, but a true form of cultural expression, and I think that in twenty years' time this will be a given. No one will dispute that any more. <br /><br />So we've got a rocky twenty years in front of us, and we have to make sure this recognition doesn't happen when we no longer have an industry in Europe. <br /><br /><b>Q: Is Heavy Rain within that 40 per cent? </b><br /><br />Guillaume de Fondaumiere: Yes.<br /><br />(Second part of interview name is "Catch the rain" - UL)<br /><br /><b>Autor:</b> Phil Elliott<br /><b>Source:</b> <a href="http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/guillaume-de-fondaumiere-part-one" target=_blank>GamesIndustry.biz</a><br /><b>Language:</b> English<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href=https://omikrongame.blogspot.com>Omikron Game</a> Quantic Dream's projects fan-site.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17674984.post-21665056863025855792009-06-22T17:03:00.001+00:002009-08-17T16:42:23.708+00:00ButtonMasher: Heavy Rain Interview with David CageWugga and Jason had a talk with the writer and director of Heavy Rain while at E3, he also happens to be the CEO of Quantic Dream. They talk about what he learnt from their last game Indigo Prophecy (or Farenheit in PAL areas) and where he invisions the game to be pushing the boundries of story telling.<br /><br /><object width="853" height="505"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/lO8oFY5vToI&hl=ru&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/lO8oFY5vToI&hl=ru&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="853" height="505"></embed></object><br /><br /><b>Autor:</b><br /><b>Source:</b> <a href="http://buttonmasher.co.nz/blog/2009/06/22/heavy-rain-interview-david-cage/" target=_blank>ButtonMasher</a><br /><b>Language:</b> English<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href=https://omikrongame.blogspot.com>Omikron Game</a> Quantic Dream's projects fan-site.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17674984.post-34953352319707932172009-06-18T11:45:00.000+00:002009-08-17T16:48:33.111+00:00Joistiq: Heavy Rain dev to sell ‘mo-cap packages’Quantic Dream offering a high-end collection of animations to other studios<br /><br />Quantic Dream’s famed mo-cap studio is launched the Motion Kit Collection, an “evolving library” of animations and captured motions.<br /><br />Motion Kit Collection Vol 1 will feature 2 motion kit libraries (one for both sexes), each comprising 84 generic motion animations, which totals 2 X 7 linear minutes of animation data.<br /><br />Quantic Dream – the French studio behind Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophesy) and the upcoming Heavy Rain – say that the new Motion Kit Collection is “the industry’s first high-end, off-the-shelf solution for real-time 3D character animation”.<br /><br />With each humanoid animation captured using Quantic’s 28-camera Vicon MX-F40 system, the motions can be used for building motion kits for both playable real-time characters and NPCs. Quantic has said this process will “reduce time and budget outlays for prototyping, pre and full productions.”<br /><br />The animation package is available in .fbx format, which are linkable with 3D software pipelines such as MotionBuilder, Maya, 3DS Max or XSI.<br /><br />The animations were recorded at Quantic’s Virtual Actor Studio in France.<br /><br /><b>Autor:</b> Rob Crossley<br /><b>Source:</b> <a href="http://www.develop-online.net/news/32209/Heavy-Rain-dev-to-sell-mo-cap-packages#after_ad" target=_blank>Joistiq</a><br /><b>Language:</b> English<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href=https://omikrongame.blogspot.com>Omikron Game</a> Quantic Dream's projects fan-site.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com