Heavy Rain - Playing a Story

Edge Magazine is running a piece about Heavy Rain, a thriller by Quantic Dream that's been in development for a few years now. Edge spoke with David Cage, the game's writer and director, about using graphics technology not simply for breathtaking landscapes or realistic lighting, but to bring the characters to life and make them more believable. Cage walked the folks at Kotaku through a demo, and they provided details on how the controls will work. From Edge: "'We worked very hard on motion capture, especially facial motion capture,' explains Cage. 'As you know, eyes are incredibly hard to do: the minute movements they constantly make mean you can tell whether something is human or not. We created a technology to motion-capture that from actors.' The shaders applied to the lead character's eyes and the skin that surrounds them also conspire to nudge Heavy Rain's characters closer to believability. The 'deadness' that so often afflicts such digital mannequins has been significantly chipped away, and we are presented with Madison, a character whose facial features, though attractive in an expectedly unnatural sort of way, also carry blemishes that succeed in breaking down her artificiality."

Re:So realistic you'll feel like you are in a meet

[Dripdry]

Agreed.

However, looking at the development of art history, the masters first worked toward realism. Caravaggio with his tenebrism (dramatic shading, where 3D games begin to take off with better shading and lighting) really began to bring things to life. When they reached that pinnacle of realism, other forms began to emerge. I imagine gaming will do something similar as we become bored of perfectly realistic games, even if they are masterpieces of both art and game design.

Anybody else with a more extensive art background have any other comments on this?

Re:So realistic you'll feel like you are in a meet

[mckinnsb]

Titian is often considered the master of "old school realism". In the end, however, realism gave way to Van Gogh, Impressionism, and alternative "representations" - which ultimately culminated in abstract art, and afterwards, representation became mixed. Indeed , the choice of representation became art itself. It is similar to how we had a realistic push in gaming for a few years, and then suddenly cel shading became very popular. I don't think we have come full circle yet, however.

Italic Headline

[Anonymous Coward]

How many other stories have an italic proportion in the headline?

Re:So realistic you'll feel like you are in a meet

[Simon Brooke]

Agreed.

However, looking at the development of art history... I imagine gaming will do something similar as we become bored of perfectly realistic games, even if they are masterpieces of both art and game design.

Anybody else with a more extensive art background have any other comments on this?

Interesting thought, but not one that persuades me. Many games have already made a virtue of deliberately non-photo-realistic visuals. Molyneux [lionhead.com]' games, for example, have cartoonish visuals not because he doesn't have the graphic sophistication to go for near photo-real but because he chooses not to.

I think the visual aesthetic has a lot to do with the entire experience the director is trying to impart. I really love The Witcher [thewitcher.com] (my review here [jasmine.org.uk]) for its immersiveness, and part of that immersiveness is the beautiful visuals which are clearly aiming towards (although not, at least on my hardware, quite achieving it). You really can, in The Witcher, just stop and watch the moon rise and be blown away by the beauty of the scene.

Photorealism also suits stories which build on the 'film noir' genre, as it's clear that Heavy Rain does - but black-and-white might work better (it's noticeable that the palette in those Heavy Rain screenshots is pretty subdued).

However, in the game I'm trying to work on I want to end up with a 'charcoal and wash' visual - very little colour and not a lot of detail. I don't - yet - know how to do this - near photo real would be a lot easier and may be what I eventually end up with. But the reason for that choice is partly to make the game look distinctive, but it's also to comment on the culture of the people I'm trying to tell a story about.

Re:Short summary;

[deek]

If it's a quality game with innovative gameplay or great design, it's almost guaranteed to be a retail failure.

Some of my favourite games of all time fall into this category, e.g ICO and Psychonauts. Oh well, it just goes to show that game sales are not a reliable indication of game quality.

Re:So realistic you'll feel like you are in a meet

[DrXym]

All this realism stuff gets on my nerves. Sure it looks more realistic but is it actually a better game?

Why don't you wait and see? Producing a compelling game is a fine art and it might suck for a multitude of reasons, but I fail to see why you pour hate on it because it strives for realism and a strong narrative.

Re:So realistic you'll feel like you are in a meet

[Das Modell]

Now, granted, Crysis was mostly about pretty pictures and who's got the bigger dic^Wvideo card. But that doesn't mean this particular game is going to be another Crysis.

This is really just a myth. Crysis has very good gameplay, and the narrative is quite engrossing too. The large environments and foliage aren't just there for appearance, they actually affect the gameplay. Enemies can see you from far away, and you can hide in bushes and behind trees, and crawl through tall grass to remain unseen. There's also a sense of distance and scale because going on foot to the next objective can often take a very long time.

Re:So realistic you'll feel like you are in a meet

[quadrox]

I have to respectfully disagree. While I will admit that the nostalgia effect you describe is real and affects me too, it is not the whole explanation.

Far too many games have way too bland gameplay nowadays. Anyone having played assassins creed will know what I mean, although the story was quite intriguing. F.E.A.R. also suffered from shoot-the-same-guy-a-hundred-times-in-some-hallway-syndrome. Absolutely boring rubbish, although the paranormal events made it quite intriguing at the beginning. Half-life 2 had absolutely shitty gameplay in spite of an intriguing story and good graphics. I could go on and on, but you get the point.

But I also recognize some real good titles, which almost disprove your nostalgia effect theory. Portal was absolutely stunning for example, or Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy was very interesting, and most importantly: different. They stand out from the crowd.

But too many games nowadays focus on graphics and being "epic" and whatever, and the gameplay and/or story suffer as a result. It pisses me off.

Re:Photorealism

[chenjeru]

Sorry to reply to my own post, but I meant to say that the previous statements apply primarily to facial capture. Full body capture is dramatically easier and pretty close to as realistic as it's going to get since you're already capturing movement close to the skeleton. Facial capture is trying to capture all the skin and muscle and fat sliding around on top of the skull, which is the primary reason it's much more complex.