Eurogamer Expo 2009 Developer Session: Quantic Dream (Heavy Rain)

An in depth look at one of the most graphically stunning games in the pipeline for PS3.

You may have already read Moosehound’s hands-on impressions of Heavy Rain yesterday.  But the second day of the Eurogamer Expo also brought a  chance to find out more details about the game itself from the director, David Cage, who was clearly very enthusiastic about the game and people’s reactions to it.

In Heavy Rain, you take control of 4 very different characters who are on the trail of the Origami Killer, who has killed several people and leaves some origami with his victims.  The four characters are private detective Scott Shelby, FBI profiler Norman Jayden, journalist Madison Paige and architect Ethan Mars.

Cage stated that there would be a total of over 70 playable scenes in the game, however you would not play through all of them on a single playthrough.  Also, the four main characters can all die over the course of the game, but losing one of them doesn’t end the game.  Instead, it has an effect on the storyline at some point in the future.  It could potentially be the following scene, or could be 10 scenes further on in the game.

Cage then demonstrated the idea of different choices in the game by playing a scene involving Shelby.  He walks into a store to question the owner, whose son was a victim by the Origami Killer.  The store owner is in no mood to answer questions about the situation.  Shelby decides that, rather than leave the store empty handed, he could do with an inhaler for his asthma.  The store owner points him into the far corner of the store, where the inhalers are.  Once you actually go to the back of the store and pick up the inhaler, an armed robber comes in to hold up the store and take all the money.

It’s at this point the viewpoint of the game changes into a 3 way split screen.  There are two CCTV style screens of where the robber and the shop owner are on the left hand side, and Shelby is on the right hand side.  Now you get the choice of what you want to do.  Cage pointed out that you could choose to just stand by and do nothing.  However, he didn’t demonstate what happened if you did nothing.  Instead, he showed 3 other ways of playing the scene.

For the first, he slowly creeps down the aisle right behind the robber and grabs a glass bottle from the shelf.  He then continues to walk down the aisle and knocks a box of washing powder off a display, but manages to catch it and slowly puts it back on the display.  He then manages to sneak up on the robber and smash the bottle over his head, knocking him out cold.  The shop owner is grateful to Shelby for stopping the robber and gives him some information and a box that may have clues to stop the Origami Killer.

Cage then played through the scene again from the point in which the robber comes in.  This time, he creeps around the middle aisle, but steps on some spilled crisps on the floor, alerting the robber to his position.  The robber than tells Shelby to stick his hands up.  At this point, there is a choice of ways to try and persuade the robber to stop what he’s doing and walk away.  This time, he went for a reasoning approach, trying to calm the robber down and getting him to talk about his family.  He then managed to persuade the robber to put down his gun and walk out of the shop.   Another replay saw Shelby grab a frying pan, but drop it, again alerting the robber.  This time he was more aggressive, ordering the robber to put the gun down.  When he doesn’t, Shelby goes to grab the gun and manages to disarm the robber and punch him out.  There will be many other ways to play through the scene, although Cage wasn’t certain exactly how many options there were.

Cage also stated that harder difficulties will result in having to use more buttons on the controller to do things, because they want lesser skilled gamers to be able to experience the story as well.  In addition, they could only achieve what they wanted to achieve on the PS3.

Up until now, Heavy Rain hasn’t really been on my radar.  Having seen the various ways to play the game and heard about what’s in store, I’m now quite excited for this one.  Heavy Rain is out in early 2010.

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