Heavy Rain interview - Page 2

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.

"Heavy Rain is much more of a journey rather than an investigation where you need to connect clues and blah, blah, blah."

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.

"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."

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?

"Let's stop making games for kids and teenagers."

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.

"At no point did I wake up one morning and say, 'Oh my God. I can't do this anymore. This story is silly.'"

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.

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