PlayFrance: interview David Cage
Autor: staff
Source:
Language: French
Labels: David Cage, Heavy Rain the Origami Killer, interview
Wednesday, September 23, 2009[FJV 2009] Heavy Rain : Interview exclusive P3L de David Cage
need translation?C'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.
Sans plus attendre, voici l'interview confectionnée par nos soins, et comme d'accoutumée de la part de David Cage, sans concession :
P3L : Quand a débuté le processus de création de Heavy Rain ?
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.
D'où te vient ton inspiration ? Quelles sont tes influences ?
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.
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 ?
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.
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 ?
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.
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 ?
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.
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 ?
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.
Lors du GamesCom tu t'étais justement un peu énervé sur la place des cinématiques et surtout des QTE ...
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.
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 ?
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.
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 ?
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.
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 ?
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.
Vous avez voulu un titre résolument adulte, avez-vous une idée de la classification PEGI ?
Heavy Rain sera classifié M (18+).
Quantic Dream a développé trois jeux depuis 1995, comment le studio fait-il pour « vivre » dans un environnement économique difficile ?
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.
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 ?
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.
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 ?
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 …
Comment Sony a t-il contribué au développement du jeu (Outils ? Part financière ? Savoir faire ?)
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.
Que penses tu de l'évolution des consoles (reconnaissance faciale, PS-mote, 3D) et comment t'inscris-tu dans cette évolution ?
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.
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 ?
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.
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 ?
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.
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.
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.
Autor: moz
Source: Play3-Live
Language:French
Labels: David Cage, Heavy Rain the Origami Killer, interview
CVG: Heavy Rain delayed because it "needs space"
need translation?
Autor: CVG Stuff
Source: CVG
Language: English
Labels: David Cage, Heavy Rain the Origami Killer, interview
IGN: new video and interview
Autor:
Source:
Language:
Labels: David Cage, Heavy Rain the Origami Killer, interview, Video
EDGE Online: An Audience With: David Cage
need translation?David 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.
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.
What would be your response to the reaction to the game so far? Do you think everyone completely understands what you’re making?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Do you think it’ll be difficult to sell Heavy Rain, because it’s so unlike other games being produced today?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
So what sort of sources have you used for inspiration while making Heavy Rain?
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
What about other challenges you’ve faced while making the game?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
This article originally appeared in E205.
Autor: Edge Stuff
Source: EDGE
Language:English
Labels: David Cage, Heavy Rain the Origami Killer, interview
PlayStation.Blog: Heavy Rain’s David Cage And I, Tellin’ Stories
need translation?I’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.
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.
Autor: James Gallagher – Content Producer, SCEE
Source: PlayStation.Blog
Language: English
Labels: David Cage, Heavy Rain the Origami Killer, interview, Video
Games Radar: Heavy Rain: the David Cage interview
need translation?Auteur talks permanent death, emotional buildup and what went wrong with Indigo Prophecy
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
DC: Heavy Rain was never announced for 2009, however, recently at E3 we did talk about the game becoming available in early 2010.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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?
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?
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. ;-)
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?
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.
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?
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…
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?
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.
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.
Autor: Mikel Reparaz
Source: Games Radar US
Language: English
Labels: David Cage, Heavy Rain the Origami Killer, interview
Kikizo: Heavy Rain: David Cage Interview
need translation?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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Kikizo: How would you sell your "branching storyline" approach to people brought up on more traditional game plotting?
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.
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.
Kikizo: What's changed between last year's E3/Leipzig presentation and what you showed at this year's E3?
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.
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.
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?
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.
Kikizo: How many people will we encounter in these crowd scenes, max?
Cage: The scene in the night club is really crowded, maybe 200 people on screen dancing.
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...
Cage: Thank you.
Kikizo: It's always interesting to hear how these things are accomplished.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Kikizo: So the quality of the acting...
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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 answer 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.
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.
Kikizo: Can you tell me anything more about that particular meeting of minds?
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.
Kikizo: Had you met him before?
Cage: No, it was the first time.
Kikizo: And are you a fan of his games?
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.
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?
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.
Kikizo: Have you had a chance to look at Project Natal and Sony's new motion-sensing wand? I was quite convinced by Natal.
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.
Kikizo: So what are you thoughts on the new PS3 controller, then?
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.
Kikizo: OK. And Heavy Rain is coming out next year?
Cage: Early next year.
Kikizo: What are your remaining priorities as you finish the game?
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.
Kikizo: We're looking forward to seeing more. Thanks for your time, David.
Autor: Kikizo Staff
Source: Kikizo
Language: English
Labels: David Cage, Heavy Rain the Origami Killer, interview
OverGame: Tribune David Cage : Une histoire d'émotions
need translation?En 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.
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.
"Je suis évidemment totalement en phase avec les déclarations de Ray Muzyka et Greg Zeschuk. 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.
Deux choses me surprennent particulièrement dans les déclarations de Bioware : 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).
La deuxième chose qui m'interpelle est le fait que la plupart des jeux reposent sur des mécaniques répétitives (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.
Même constat pour raconter une histoire : difficile de développer un scénario sur la base uniquement de coups de hache et de démembrement. 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.
Comme ce sont des valeurs que je défends (avec parfois un certain sentiment de solitude, je dois l'avouer…) 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
Autor: Francois BLISS DE LA BOISSIERE
Source: Overgame.com
Language:
Labels: David Cage, interview
ButtonMasher: Heavy Rain Interview with David Cage
need translation?Wugga 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.
Autor:
Source: ButtonMasher
Language: English
Labels: David Cage, Heavy Rain the Origami Killer, interview, Video
NOW Gamer: David Cage Interview
need translation?
We talk to David Cage, writer and director of the upcoming PS3-exclusive Heavy Rain
So, where did the original seed of the inspiration of Heavy Rain come from?
David Cage: In my personal life, actually. You must have had a pretty strange life then. Well, yeah. The first thing we wanted to show, we wanted to be easy to understand. Easy to grasp. For example, you get a lot of combat, and a lot of action, but this is not what the game is all about. The way we’re promoting [Heavy Rain] is a little bit weird, actually. We’re showing you stuff that is individual to each scene.
How do you feel the three things you’ve shown so far? The Casting, The Taxidermist and this level are related then?
I felt that Fahrenheit really was the basis of our work on virtual actors, The Casting really showed what we wanted to do with them. The Taxidermist was more about how we could play with expanding stories. Mixing action and exploration. This is about the interactions in general: the result of three or four years of technical stuff.
You mentioned Fahrenheit as being a part of Heavy Rain’s process. Was that a kind of tech demo for Heavy Rain?
Oh, not really. We had no plan for Heavy Rain at the time. I actually thought Fahrenheit would be a disaster. It was so weird. We’re going back five years here, and at the time I was talking about emotions, interactive storylines, no guns and no cars. As I was pitching the game to journalists they were saying, “There’s no gun, no puzzles, no enemies? That’s not a game.” I tried to explain again and again, but no one could get it. I mean try to explain the concept to someone who hasn’t played the game. It’s hard. It sold really well, and got scores of around 85 per cent, it was at the top of the UK charts for a couple of weeks. We made money from it, for sure.
What games influenced you?
Honestly, only Fahrenheit. I don’t take my inspirations from watching games, because I try to think of a different way of interacting. I think people have used the traditional game conventions as much as they can and there has to come a point where there’s not much more you can do with it. When each button has a specific action and animation and depending on where you are, something happens – what kind of story can you tell with that? What kind of game can you produce apart from shooter games? You can play around and try to produce some nice cut-scenes, but can you really rethink entirely what games are about? No! I thought I had to go away and rethink the interface into something entirely contextual. I wanted an infinite amount of options, and I wanted to tell a story through gameplay, not cut-scenes.
How close is Heavy Rain to the original concept?
I think it’s quite close. In fact, it’s probably a little early to tell. We’re still at the alpha stage and there’s a whole lot of work to be done. There’s so much fine-tuning in the game left to do. Everything has to be perfect. If there’s one thing wrong in a scene, it’s the only thing you’ll see. There are many things that don’t work right now. We need to have everything in place, from facial animations, to score to work out the final result.
What do you think the response to Heavy Rain will be? What are your greatest fears and hopes for it?
My greatest hope is that it will be copied. I know why Fahrenheit wasn’t copied: it was so difficult to write and produce. Just in terms of the amount of data is insane. Everything you do has a success and a failure and a result on the rest of the story. It’s not just in writing, but it affects the art direction, the lighting, and everything to do with the game. To give you an idea of how crazy we are, we do specific lighting for all the dialogue, like in movies, we give you the best angle and light. We’re the only company to do facial motion capture.
We shot about a year of motion capture, every day. That’s about the same as three or four movies. We worked with 70 actors, we spent a year doing casting sessions and interviewed over 300 actors for the roles, because we wanted real actors and we wanted to use everything about them: their face, their body movements and voices.
Back to your question, my greatest hope is that people will see this as a possibility for this industry. I’m not saying everything would be like that, but for some to say, “Okay, this is a game about emotion, and storytelling for a wider audience.” I want to open the door for other publishers and developers and make them see the opportunities.
My greatest fear is very basic. Mostly that people may not like it. When you try to do something different, you can’t please everyone. If you do something like a shooter, you can make a game better than the other ones. It’s obvious and everyone can have their opinion. When you try to do something that’s a bit different, you’ll have people that love it and hate it. I always feel people can be a little unfair sometimes because we are very sincere about the way we make games.
We’re not here for the money, we spend three or four years of our lives doing something we strongly believe in and trying to share our vision. We’re not trying to make the same games over and over again. It’s always a little cruel when people just slash you sometimes without even thinking. Look at Fahrenheit – it did many things wrong, but there were a couple of new things and ideas that people should look at.
What feedback from Fahrenheit was applied to this?
After Fahrenheit we spent a lot of time reading reviews and talking to gamers and trying to work things out. Also we had a lot of things that within the team, we wanted to change. The quality of the story was one of those things. The first two thirds of Fahrenheit went very well, and at some point I became a little overwhelmed by the technique of writing – the fact that you need to step back and get some inspiration. At some points I was managing the team, directing the game and producing it, and I didn’t pay as much attention to the story as I should have. With Heavy Rain it was different. We got script doctors from Hollywood working on it, asking me for changes and suggesting things to improve characterisation, which has been very useful.
We learned the importance of the story, and to be careful of the ending. The main thing I learnt was that you don’t need to have supernatural powers to tell a story. The parts that work the best are the parts that are grounded in reality. The scene with Tyler Miles in Fahrenheit where you wake up, take a shower, drink coffee and chat to your wife was one of the greatest inspirations for Heavy Rain. You don’t do anything spectacular, you’re just living someone’s life. I thought with Heavy Rain that you don’t need to save the planet to do something meaningful.
We were also frustrated with the technology on Fahrenheit; it was on three platforms, it was our first console game, so we had a lot of work and no experience. Here we’ve got the time, on one fantastic platform and all the proprietary technology is really dedicated on this platform, so it’s a big change.
For the full interview with David Cage check the latest issue of Play, out now.
Autor: Play Magazine
Source: Play Magazine
Language: English
Labels: David Cage, Heavy Rain the Origami Killer, interview
Joistiq: Interview: David Cage of Quantic Dream and Heavy Rain
need translation?We recently had our precipitation-sodden paws all over Heavy Rain: The Origami Killer, and then chatted with David Cage, a man who wears plenty of hats at developer Quantic Dream. In addition to founding the studio, he's also the head game developer, writer, co-CEO, director, and chief bottle washer. So, who better to walk us through the trippy thriller that goes where Indigo Prophecy feared to tread?
Read on to find out some new tidbits about the game, how Fight Club inspired the interface system and why his favorite ending to the game is when all four characters die. Plus why, like Guillermo del Toro, he believes that the interactive entertainment industry is long overdue for a Citizen Kane (or in Cage's case, a Slumdog Millionaire) of games.
Let's jump right in and start hammering you with questions. We have seen a lot of this new character, Jayden. He has specific tie-ins with gadgetry, with the Augmented Reality interface and so on. Will the other characters have similar gadgets or will they each have their own focus?
Each one has their own focus. I mean it is not like everyone has a gadget. Again, what you see with Jayden is not the template. There will be four other characters like this. Each one is very different. People will be very surprised by who they are.
They will each have their own strength or what they are known for? Their gameplay will be intrinsically different from the previous or the next person?
There is no real archetype in like those sexy games were you have the sexy girl, the strong guy and the fast guy. It is not that way. Each one is just a different character with a different background, different personality. They can do what makes sense given who it is.
Although having said that, we see Madison in her underwear in the teaser. Her ability is not just to appear in her underwear?
No, you will be surprised.
So what was the inspiration behind the game? It sort of feels a bit like the X-Files. You have the CSI tie-in with the evidence that Jayden can detect.
There is no supernatural element to the game. It is really grounded in reality. There are no aliens, no zombies, nothing special. There is just real people in real life in real situations.
So the inspiration really comes pretty much from ... it is always difficult to say really where it comes from. But what I know is Heavy Rain is probably the most personal thing I have done so far, which is maybe not apparent from the scene you have seen this morning.
But the real topic of Heavy Rain is in the tagline, "How far are you prepared to go to save someone you love?" That is really the real subject and is something that is really personal. And I think that will talk to players as individuals and will push them to ask questions.
When you were loading the demo it was at like Act 38, is there going to be a really high number of acts in the game? You said that was about midway through, right?
Yes.
And that still ties into the 8-10 hours it may take an average player?
The scenes are really short to be honest with you. They are really short. We are trying to stay away from a really slow and boring experience.
We were wondering about the moment we saw where Mad Jack and Jayden were fighting. Will that be the same each time if you play that level? Will they fight or scramble around the same way, the scripted moments like that where you are following the instructions? You know, dodge, jump left, etc?
The controllers are scripted because they relate to the move that is made. We really want to have a real connection between what you do on the controller and what is happening on the screen. But at the same time, the result depends on what you do and you have different branches that you can go into.
It's pretty bold to have a character with a drug addiction in the game. Is there going to be some sort of ultimate payoff with his drug struggle or will there be an anti-drug message, or do you battle it throughout the game?
Yes, you need to battle with it and it will give you some very strange scenes because there is some kind of very strange interaction between the ARI and the drug.
Is that a drug that you can take at any point in the game or is it just keyed in specific moments? Like where we saw he was confronting Mad Jack and he started having the symptoms. His nose was bleeding ...
No. It is triggered at certain moments.
Okay, so you can't just take the drug. How does he actually administer it? Is it an injection?
Actually, it is through the nose. It's in a tube.
Ah, hence the nose bleeds.
Right. Obviously.
You mentioned that his drug use, there is an element of hiding it from people he knows or his co-workers or something like that. Is it possible to get caught using it and have a different ramification on the main story?
Your actions have consequences. I don't want to say too much, but ...
So, if a character dies, do you lose that character and the game continues on and you just don't get that one character's perspective or those two characters' perspectives? I am guessing that would affect the overall length of the game. Does it?
Yeah. In fact, you cannot die in the first one fourth or so of the game. It wouldn't make sense if in the first scene Jayden dies. I mean what would happen? But what we really do is we build empathy for these characters. We want to give you the feeling that you really care for them. This is really the feeling that we tried to create. So when you really care for his life, when he dies it is going to be a shock for you. So yeah, this is really what we tried to create.
Will the story continue if all four of them are killed?
That will be the conclusion of the story. It won't be a game over like you are starting and you know what happens. It will be the conclusion of the story.
Like some level of closure? You will see something.
Yeah, definitely. And to be honest that is my favorite ending.
A lot of developers are shying away from Sixaxis controls, and are not including them in the game. You guys definitely seem like you are going to be including them. Was that a specific choice or is that something that is still fluid right now and might change when the final game is done?
Well, we are still in the process of polishing the game so this is something that might be slightly adjusted based on the kind of feedback we receive. Personally I like it. I mean I wouldn't use it every single second. You know, we wouldn't want you playing like this all the time.
But as we are trying to create a sense of identification between you and your character, we do that with the system when you are controlling interactions on-screen. You really unfold the move and you really control that with the right stick. When you need to kick or punch something, having to do this (shakes hands) with the controls makes a lot of sense.
I guess it really depends on the type of game you are doing and where it fits in the general gameplay. You don't want to agitate your controller all the time.
Did you guys receive feedback from the last demo of the interface that caused you to change it?
Absolutely not.
It was just something you guys did?
Yeah. I was really happy with the demo. All the people who saw the demo were really impressed. In Leipzig, we presented it to 300 journalists in two days, and we were loaded at every single session. We said, "Well this is the first time we had seen that. That people are liking it so much and responding to it."
So the feedback was fantastic. And what people saw on stage was a 40- or 45-minute demo playing. It was real-time 3D, second to second. I was always a little bit frustrated with the interface because I thought it was a little bit old fashioned. This idea of having a 3D environment with glass on the top with symbols, and when you want to know how to interact with it you need to look at the symbols, look at what you need to do. "OK. I need to do this in order to interact with that."
It was silly in a way. So I wanted to find a solution. It is funny because you were talking about inspiration, to be honest with you, it came from Fight Club. There is this scene in Fight Club with the IKEA furniture and stuff, and everyone was so amazed when they saw that movie and said, "Wow, that is so cool!"
We wanted to find a solution. I thought again about Fight Club and I thought that this could be the solution. We wanted to find something that would be clear but that would not interfere with the environment. So that was difficult. We made many tests, but we are quite happy with the results.
How final is the voiceover we were hearing from the characters in this scene? Is that going to be the final voices or was it temporary?
It is quite final except maybe some of the accents, because most of them are English, except Mad Jack, he's American. Most of them did a very good job.
Are Scott, Ethan, and Madison going to be ... Well, I guess we have sort of seen Madison. Are they going to be different ethnicities? Is everyone white? Is it a wide range? Do you guys even know yet?
Oh yeah. We know. It is going to be quite a white game actually ... we have done previously in Indigo, we had a black character, but no. They are very different, but everyone is from the same ethnicity I guess.
And everyone, I am guessing, is not in law enforcement like Jayden is?
No.
We have seen with Jayden that it is very kind of action focused at this point, and his investigation is all done with ARi. Is there any mechanism or plan for the final game with him or any other characters for say taking notes? Will you ever do that, or taking an inventory, or selecting things?
No, not really. We didn't explore that.
So, it really fits that norm of adventure games.
Yeah. I didn't want to deal with that. I asked myself the question at some point during the design phase, like, "Do I want to take notes and connect clues and maybe find a way that this information relates to this object in the final interface?" It became very complicated and I got the feeling that it would take me away from what I was trying to achieve, which was really trying to create an emotional experience, something that would be really immersive and emotionally involving.
I didn't want the control aspect of the experience to be stronger than the emotional aspect of the game. To me, Heavy Rain is much more of a journey rather than an investigation where you need to connect clues and blah, blah, blah. I don't care ... there are so many games that do that really well. I really wanted to focus on the journey. That is unusual and it is probably difficult to see what I mean in saying that, but you will get it when you play the game, hopefully.
Was it meant to be a possible franchise? Could there be another game in the vein of Heavy Rain with different characters that are still under the title of Heavy Rain?
You know, we are not this type of company and I am not this type of designer that thinks about marketing while I design. I just tell the story that I need to tell at some point and I make the game that I absolutely wanted to make.
Now will there be downloadable content or a Heavy Rain 2? Maybe yes, maybe not. I am not really into sequels to be honest with you. For Indigo I got the feeling that I said what I had to say with the characters in the story, and it corresponded with one phase in my personal evolution. And at some point you say, "OK. That is the past. I am glad I have done it, but now I need to move on."
I hope that Heavy Rain will reach the same stage and at some point I will want to tell a different story with different characters.
Have you had time to play any games on your own?
Oh yeah.
What do you like to play?
I play a lot of game toys. You know games that you just play to spend some time and forget as soon as you turn off the console. This is what is on the market right now. There are very few games that leave an imprint and leave something with you to think about.
My biggest frustration is I went to the theater to watch Gran Torino and I left the theater extremely frustrated. And I thought, "Oh my God. When will we be able to create experiences like that in video games?" We are just telling stories about little boys shooting and jumping. When will we be able to tell real stories with real characters and real emotions? Yeah, it was some kind of frustration.
It is not that I want to be a movie director. I don't care about movies so much. But it is about the depth of what you can do in a movie compared to the depth of what you can do in a video game right now.
Do you feel like the games haven't reached that level of emotional storytelling yet?
Certainly not. We are really, really far away. We are light years away to be honest. And this is because we don't dare stop doing what we have been doing for 15 years. I mean, let's stop making games for kids and teenagers. Let's ask ourselves the real questions. Let's change the way we see interface. Let's change some of the traditional game conventions that we have had for 15 years that we take for granted, like, you cannot make a game if there is no ramping, if there is no game over, if you don't progress in difficulty, etc.
Who cares? You want to play a game that is interesting and that is an emotional journey. It is the story. It is what you feel playing. It is not that it gets more and more difficult until to the point where you just leave the controller and say I don't want to play that anymore. I spent $70 to buy this thing and I don't want to play it because it gets too difficult at some point. I don't want to play it anymore.
Who said the game has to be more and more difficult as your progress? Who said that? I mean, there is no reason for that. I mean, you just want to create a real journey, something that you experience and you are happy to be playing. That is it. I hope that more and more games will aim to leave an imprint and not just be toys, but be a real creative experience.
You say we are probably light years away from that. Certainly you must have developed Heavy Rain with that goal in mind. Are you pretty happy with the story and what you guys have accomplished?
At this stage I am really happy with the story. It kept me excited for the past three years, which is obviously a lot. At no point did I wake up one morning and say, "Oh my God. I can't do this anymore. This story is silly." It talks to me as an individual and I think it is going to talk to players at a different level than other games. I don't think we are anyway near Gran Torino or Slumdog Millionaire or any good movies that you have seen recently, because there are still some problems and there are still more conventions to break, more courage to have, but we are definitely closer than we were.
Talking about creating an emotional experience, I wanted to ask you about the about the technology behind the characters and the surreal realism of them. Did the technology to create these very life-like looking people, did that come out of your goal for the game? Or did you go, "Oh wow. We can make these really great looking people. Let's make a really emotional game."
No. Every single technology throughout the game comes from game design. We designed the goal and then we identified the technology necessary to reach the goal. It has never been the technology driving what we were doing. It is like if you were a writer and you would say, "I have got a fantastic pen! Let's write something with it because it is so cool to write something with this pen." Who gives a shit? I don't care! That is not the way to do it!
You need to have a real story that you need to tell and then you find any pen. Maybe you will find the best pen that works for you. And that is fine. But that is not the way to work. I guess it must look weird from the outside, for you guys, to see how we came from Indigo, to The Casting, to The Taxidermist, to this scene today for Heavy Rain. But when you look at it there is a real logical progression to this.
I mean we really learned. With Indigo we learned and we prototyped technology for The Casting because we thought emotion was very important in story telling. And the vehicles for emotion are actors. So you need to provide the technology to create virtual actors, to deliver emotion.
So we used that in The Casting with some success. It worked in certain aspects, with some failures. It did not fully work. And then we came with The Taxidermist where everything became interactive and you can actually really play, and it was telling a story that was a little bit more complex and different than The Casting. And then to Heavy Rain. So there is a progression, but it is always driven by design.
Was there ever a point that you told the artists, "Well the characters maybe look a little too real or they look unusual now that they are a little too real. We need to make them look a little more like stylized?" I mean, they still look like people, but...
No, actually, because the idea behind Heavy Rain was really to recreate virtual actors. So it made our life very difficult at the beginning of the development because we spent about a year to find the right guys, the right actors, for the roles. It was not like picking one face, and one voice, and one actor for the body motion capture. We needed to have one consistent person. That is exactly like an actor for a real movie.
So that was really difficult. It was a nightmare. So this is really something that we discovered doing it. We spent a year doing casting sessions in the UK, the US, and France. We ended up with four actors where we said, "Here they are. These are really the characters." It was really funny, because when I look at the scene, I was of course in the studio with the actors and I really recognize them. I recognized the way they move, the way they talk, and the way they move their face. It is really them.
So I would say with The Casting we maybe had 50% of the performance of the actors. I would say here we are probably closer to 70 percent, maybe 80 percent. There's still room for progression, but we're getting really close.
Are these known actors or just people that you guys found?
They are professional actors but they are not known so far. But I hope they will get to be known now with the game. You know the problem with Hollywood ... we considered at some point working with famous actors, but the idea was to have someone famous for a week, give them a million dollars, and get what you could get. But that was not the way that we wanted to go with this.
Collaboration with the actors was a year of work, with the four main characters. A year working on a very regular basis to shoot motion capture, to shoot facial, to do the voices, and to do all these things. So they were really immersed in the story and they really had a real understanding about what we were trying to achieve and what the story is about. This is something you wouldn't get from anyone in Hollywood. So I guess we needed a different kind of partnership with the actors, a different type of cooperation.
I know you have talked about Gran Torino and Slumdog. You have talked about Heavy Rain and how games haven't quite gotten there yet. What if tomorrow someone comes from a studio, even Sony, and says we want to option this and make it into a movie? Do you think that is a possibility that might happen because the story is so strong?
Yeah. Of course it is a possibility. Honestly I have never reasoned Heavy Rain, thinking of a movie, and saying, "Oh it has to be a movie. That is my dream." It is not my dream. I am happy if there is a movie, but really the experience I wanted to create was a game. I don't know. It may be an interesting movie. I think it would be a different kind of movie because of the four characters and the way their stories are interlaced. It is going to be something different, but it has to be done right. There is no way we are just going to sell the license to someone and say do whatever you want. Do a shooter movie, do an action movie. Do whatever you want. It would have to be something that would really be faithful to the original idea.
Speaking about a game that takes 8-10 hours, what sort of game play mechanic is there to save your game? Do you have to interact with something or can you drop out at any moment and save the game?
That is something you don't need to care about. We really tried to work with the interface and the game mechanics behind to be totally invisible to the player. You don't need to care. At some point I want you to forget that this is a game. Just follow the story and get immersed in the emotional experience.
At any point did you look at this and say, "Oh this works really well as a serialized story that might be downloadable?"
Yes. We won't do it with Heavy Rain. But what we have developed with Heavy Rain is an interface that will allow you to tell any kind of story. So we could tell a dark thriller like Heavy Rain, but we could tell a drama. We could tell a comedy. We could do anything because all the interface is very simple, and accessible, and contextual. So you could do pretty much anything. That is something that is interesting.
The actor game engine.
Maybe.
Or Shakespeare's game engine.
I am dreaming of the day where game creators will have to think about the story they want to tell and the emotion they want to trigger instead of what technology they are going to use and how it is going to fit into the interface. That will be an interesting moment.
Cool. Well, thank you for your time!
Thank you very much.
Autor: Kevin Kelly
Source: Joistiq
Language: English
Labels: David Cage, Heavy Rain the Origami Killer, interview
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