Sony trusts Heavy Rain's risky 'return to the single player adventure'

by Ludwig Kietzmann on Feb 1st 2010 1:56PM

While Xbox 360 and PC players are gallivanting across the galaxy in BioWare's latest, single-player only adventure, the PlayStation 3 is preparing for its own solitary storytelling in down-to-earth thriller Heavy Rain. Speaking to CVG, Sony product manager Lucy Duncan offered some comforting words to those who'd rather traverse a dialogue tree than a multiplayer map.

"... we strive to offer a broad set of experiences and a return to the single player 'adventure' format but with a state of the art graphical presentation, a terrific noir narrative and an hugely innovative interface seems like a compelling proposition for the discerning gamer," she explained. A lack of online play may strike some as an odd move -- even Rapture's making room for more residents -- but Duncan reckons a trust in developer Quantic Dream will pay off. Well, that and being a big player. "Being Sony, I suppose we have a little more luxury to take a gamble on more original and innovative IP -- and Heavy Rain definitely fits that category."

With God of War 3, Alan Wake and Final Fantasy XIII also steeped in excitement, the "big single-player adventure" looks to be one of 2010's best bets.

Source

Tags: adventure, heavy-rain, Interactive-Drama, lucy-duncan, quantic-dream, SCE, SCEA, single-player, sony, Sony-Computer-Entertainment, Sony-Computer-Entertainment-America

Reader Comments (102)

fear not the single-player only experience!!

Most of my favorite games are single player only...

Then again, they are games which date before online multiplayer :p

Sorry, wish to rephrase.. i mean a lot of my favorite games

Between Dragon Age, Assassin's Creed 2, and more recently Mass Effect 2, I don't think the single player adventure ever departed in the first place.

i certainly don't. my favorite games this generation have been single-player...those being MGS4, Oblivion, Uncharted 2, Bioshock (1) and Mass Effect. CoD4 and MW2, and a few bouts of SFIV, have been my only forays into online gaming.

to me multiplayer is cool as an attachment to single-player. but as the sole-experience, no thanks.

Very true, but also true that many other games could have been waaaaay better if they either stuck with multi or single-player ONLY. Imagine if the last Call of Juarez was single-player only. They would have had the time and resources to make it a AAA game. The reality is most ppl play only a select few games online, only b/c most of their friends play it. So why invest in a multi-player mode if it won't be good/deep enough for people to keep playing months after release? GTA4 is another game which didn't need multi-player... which was decent but a few months later no one would play it online. Developers shouldn't try covering both experiences unless they can pull it off as lovely as IW has done with COD.

I pre-ordered it for $38, and buying it only because of the price and because of the hype. it's getting a lot of praise for it's graphics...but I think the graphics are pretty bad, the framerate is choppy, the voice acting is horrible, you would think all of these things would be up to Uncharteds standards. I hope it takes me by surprise.

Where did you get it pre-ordered for $38????

"buying it only because of the price and because of the hype."

Lol what? Why would you preorder anything based solely on hype?

Why would I buy something based on hype? Because usually hyped movies and games deliver.
For music that doesn't apply, but in most cases it does for other forms of media.

And I got it (as well as 10 other PS3 pre-orders :P) for $38 due to an Amazon glitch last Fall.

Come on Jason, you can honestly say you've NEVER purchased a fresh IP on it's day 1 release?

You should play Indigo Prophecy / Fahrenheit. If you like that, this game sounds pretty similar.

When ever someone says 'play Fahrenheit', I think of the Sega CD game.

lol.....Sega CD.

But yeah, Indigo Prophecy....what a game. A friend of mine is really amped up for HR and I was trying to convince him to download Indigo Prophecy from the Game Marketplace if he couldn't wait.

Anyone who's interested with an Xbox 360 should do the same.

so far, so good

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/ps3/heavyrain

it's early yet but all indications point to the fact that this will be one of the better games of the year.

You can't just say it should have this or should have that not everyone is equally talented.

To get uncharted quality you have to pay heavily for the talent. It's probably safe to say quantic dream does not have the budget of naughty dog.

They're also completely different game genres. This is also their first PS3 game and what we saw from Naughty Dog was the massive improvement from Uncharted 1 to Uncharted 2. It's not the most apt comparison.

Im going to need a demo before considering this game. I was all for it until hearing that its mostly just quick time events. I always thought QTEs was the worst thing to ever do in a game, theyre horrible and bring nothing but frustration. I would like to play a quality adventure game since they are virtually extinct these days but I just hate QTEs too much, they do them "differently" in this game but is it different enough?

@Eh

altho the catch with Heavy Rain is supposedly that even if u lose a QTE, the story still progresses. I think the major frustration with QTEs were that you'd have to keep doing them over and over if you failed. Hopefully the story is so engrossing it won't be an issue... but this is looking like a quality game. Even if the gameplay is utter garbage, I can expect the presentation, voice work, graphics, and story to garner this game at least an 8.0..

@Eh

Demo is coming on Feb 11th.
http://www.joystiq.com/2010/01/28/heavy-rain-demo-lands-worldwide-february-11/

"Fearless" is the last thing I think of probably when I think of Sony.

They had the guts to launch a game console at 600 dollars.

Bradwart, you've got 'fearless' confused with 'clueless.'

Marty, you'd have to be insane if you think Sony didn't know the price would hurt them. They did it to push Blu-ray as THE HD media standard, and it worked in the long run. Now that the company and the PlayStation division are returning to profitability...

They had the foresight to throw heaps of money into Fumito Ueda's projects, knowing they won't set sales records but knowing they are funding the development of one of the greatest living creative mind's games.

That's fearless enough for me.

Blu-ray won the ward against HD-DVD, but in the end, it's way too early to say it'll truly be the successor to DVD. I still think digital / streaming will win out.

Blu-ray won the war against HD-DVD, but in the end, it's way too early to say it'll truly be the successor to DVD. I still think digital / streaming will win out.

That's probably what he's referring to. They fund quite a bit of risky IP.

Streaming isn't going to take off as fast as you think. Broadband adoption is still too low, ISP's are encroaching bandwidth caps more and more, movie studios are pushing away from it...not to mention Blu-ray has a higher adoption rate than DVD, despite the slumping economy.

They've launched a lot of ambitious games that will have trouble profiting but offer some of the best gaming experiences.

Comparing adoption rate is silly. Sales of discs is where the meat of the argument is at, and I don't think we'll be seeing Blockbuster or Best Buy changing over to go all Blu-Ray for years, if ever.

"I don't think we'll be seeing Blockbuster or Best Buy changing over to go all Blu-Ray for years, if ever."

You think they're going to change to digital streaming instead?

Sony takes some of the most bizarre risks out of any company (not just with games). They have more failures than successes and they just dont give a shit about public opinion. While all companies are arrogant Sony takes arrogance to a new height, thats pretty fearless to me.

Marty, you sound like someone who said DVD would never replace VHS, or that DivX was the future...

@Vidikron - why couldn't they? Apple is making a fortune on the digital model right now, and I doubt XBL / Zune and PSN are having a bad time with it either.

Marty, one look at Apple TV should tell you how well the market for streaming works...

just off the top of my head, heavy rain, the last guardian, patapon, echochrome, LBP, flower...

didn't david jaffe say that was one of the things that he didn't like about sony? that they are too worried about innovative new titles

@Marty

Digital format and streaming isn't going to replace a physical format. That physical format is BluRay.

If you think Sony was clueless in their decision to put very advanced hardware in a gaming console then you are clueless. Sony is a big picture company.

HD digital downloads are several years away, so many years its not even worth looking at, internet infrastructure as a whole is nowhere near capable of streaming 1080i/p video. On Demand is the only threat to Bluray, most people have cable instead of satellite and as far as I know all cable providers offer HD On Demand, the only major downside is being limited to new movies for a limited time.

HD is gaining grounds fast and DVD is on its way out, commercials for movies have stopped even mentioning DVD now, they just advertise bluray. Nobody wants to watch SD on hdtv's, I know a lot of people who refuse to watch SD channels even when theres nothing interesting on the HD channels to watch. People are finally realizing that SD is crap thanks to their favorite shows in HD looking dramatically better.

@tomlinson - I'm not saying they weren't looking at the big picture here. I just think that sometimes thinking about the big picture is costly.

Imagine how different the "console wars" would be right now if Sony had forgone Blu-ray and released the PS3 without it. They would have gotten the machine out much sooner (probably at almost the same time as 360), and probably around $300-$400, or with much beefier hardware inside.

After the monster success that was PS2, they would have dominated the market again. Xbox 360 would have been a distant third, and PS3 would probably have been approaching Wii numbers by now, if Wii even took off the way it did.

In the long run, this gave Blu-ray the momentum it needed to defeat HD-DVD, but who knows if it will be worth the damage it did to the PlayStation brand.

Considering that right now I pay around $20-25 a month for a max-speed of 160kb/s from AT&T (I stuck with the cheapest option, and it works beautifully for me).

I can't stream HD content, and sometimes even SD content will slow down and start buffering mid-video. Until our entire country decides to buckle down and replace a lot of the existing cables with higher quality ones, don't expect HD streaming to take off much. Things like Netflix work fine, but most of that is DVD quality at best.

Now what's really funny is that Japan has the best speed to cost ratio for their internet speeds, and even their slowest speeds are often times faster than what most of our companies offer, but as far as I understand as a culture they haven't really embraced digital media or distribution yet.

I'm not saying HD streaming will be a reality soon. I don't think streaming / digital distribution will trump Blu-ray in terms of quality. I just think that things are almost to the point where people don't care if they watch a movie in a slightly lower quality than 1080p, if it means they can rent it and queue it up in a few seconds. This is the YouTube generation we're talking about, after all.

Don't get me wrong though - I'm not saying that our AV technology has hit its zenith in 2010, or that Blu-ray will be the last physical media for movies... I'm just saying that for many, the streaming we can do now is of high enough quality that we don't need to go rent / buy physical media as often as we used to.

I know that for me, Netflix streaming, XBL, and Hulu have kept me from going to Blockbuster many times. It's just too convenient, even if not the highest quality.

3d will be the next big thing and bluray is the only way to do that since the size requirements are much larger (not to mention studios wont do 3d dvd's even if it was possible). Bluray is going to be around for a long time, DVD's are already being pushed to the side by retailers and movie studios.

Obviously bluray and digital will coexist, bluray offers quality while digital offers convenience. DVD offers neither.

Is that shot IN GAME? If so...damn!

I had to do a double take myself. That looks AMAZING.

Yeah for a few seconds there I thought it was some Sony PR person. Let's hope it's in game ^^

Looks like a young, impressionable G-man. Before being sucked into all that resonance cascade conspiracy nonsense.

As do I.

In the words of Tyrese Gibson:

"Bring the Rain!!"

well thats nothing new

i personally don't mind the single player experience every once in awhile. It wont get the acclaim that mass effect did but im pretty sure it'll hold its own.

Don't speak too soon vask and certainly don't underestimate what the Heavy Rain team is capable of. They may not have the portfolio that BioWare does but I personally believe that they're MORE than capable of delivering a game that can compete with Mass Effect both in terms of gameplay and in story.

Only time will tell though.

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Sony trusts Heavy Rain's risky 'return to the single player adventure'

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