PTOM: What we saw at E3 last year - a woman hiding in a taxedermist's house, going through rooms, then hiding when he returned home - was very elaborate, but you've said it's not actually the game, but a sandbox to illustrate the potential of the system you're building. Is that actually true? It looks like a pretty full-featured set up to be "just" a proof of concept.
DC: It's not a part of the game. It's to show the technology, the interface, the philosophy behind Heavy Rain, but it's just not the story. Initially Sony asked us to create a slice - one scene to illustrate some of the key aspects of the gameplay. It was never supposed to leave Sony and Quantic, but they thought it was good, and it did help answer the usual questions, "Yeah, but how did it play?" So instead of having long answers we could just ahow it.
The scale of what you personally produced for this game - some 20,000 pages of detail and content - is staggering. But how much do you expect me as the player to see of that? Do you expect multiple playthroughs for us to see all you've created?
Honestly the way I expect people to play the game is in one playthrough, to play their story, and this will be unique depending on what they've done and how they've played. I wouldn't really like people to go back and try every single thing and fail on purpose to see what would happen. I think that would not be the right way to play it, but I'm sure a lot of people will, and that's fine. Just play it and see your story.
So you're cool with the thought of creating of this content that won't be witnessed or experienced?
Yes, but you've got to be clear on what you want to create with this experience. Or you can create a linear story that everyone sees, but that's called a movie. Or you create non-linearity, and branches that some will see and some will miss. Like in real life, you never know what happens down the other branches.
You have mentioned a movie script for this project?
Yes, I worked a movie script in parallel to the game design. Initially it was just an exercise to see what the difference would be, and see if I could improve the quality of the game script by having a clear understanding of what the movie script would be. I really learned a lot, and working on the movie script really made me change things in the game. Now it seems there's some interest around the script of the movie... but my focus is on the game.
You used a multiple rubber band intertwining the story arcs to illustrate how the game situations intersect. How do you organize that in to a cohesive design?
Well, it's very difficult to get all the pieces together, which is why a game like this takes so much time. You want several "best" stories, because you don't want one branch to have the best parts and the other branches weaker. You want them all to be the same quality. So you need a strong idea for the gameplay in every single scene, so that it's contextual to what's going on in the scene. It's technical to write to keep a structure, organization, and not lose a thread. It's quite an interesting exercise!
At the end of the day, it's still a game. A gamer will hear about the adult style, ambitious nature, but it also showed interesting game mechanics, using the Sixaxis, etc. How do you manage to blend telling these stories with still introducing the game mechanics to a new player?
First we tried to get the interface as simple as possible, no elaborate multiple combinations of button presses, unless it makes sense for the game. So in the taxidermist level where the girl hides behind the door, she's in an uncomfortable position so we want the player to be in an uncomfortable position with the controller. But at the same time we're not doing an RPG, with skills and points. Within minutes we hope people will forget the interface, because it's about what you do, what you think, not how you control it. Certainly with the way you interact with the environment, where you use the left stick, not a button, we need to teach people how to navigate.
I was thinking about how in Indigo Prophecy I did it in a tutorial that was totally separate from the story because I didn't want to bring the story into that learning process. With Heavy Rain we've found a slightly different solution, where the tutorial is done in a certain way that introduces you to the story and the game at the same time. it seems to be more consistent.
How about the title? Heavy Rain...and every scene we're witnessed, it appears to be raining.
Well, it takes place on the east coast of the U.S. in autumn, and it does rain in the game most of the time. In fact, rain is more than just a background, but plays a very important role. What I can say is that it's a different type of story, one that hasn't been done in games before, and it doesn't rely on aliens or zombies, but it's about life, and is emotional.
Has the story evolved over time since you started working on it, through feedback from the team or working out how the gameplay would fit with your plans?
No, in a title like this there are pieces you can iterate and reassess, but there are elements of the core essence that couldn't change. There's also part of the huge machinery of getting a production like this completed. To create all these assets, to shoot all this mo-cap, you can't just say "oh, I like this idea now..." because everyone on the team is going to kill you! So I make sure I love the story enough to keep me excited for three years.
When was the writing finished?
That was done last year [2007] but we've been in full production since January... This is a game with high expectations in terms of gameplay and ambition, and not something that can be produced in a swetashop. Everything is about consistency, so you need every person on the team to know how a piece fits into the scene, what it means. Even with outsourcing - people that are a sweatshop, where you send them stuff and just expect it to come back better - we spent a lot of time showing them details, showing them the sets, telling them the story, who the characters are, to vest them. And it was very successfull. We didn't just use them as low-cost labor, but showed them what their work would mean, where it takes place in the story, and it really changes the relationship and also the results you get.
You've mentioned that the moral decisions, the emotion of the game, will tell a story of the player themselves.
Yes, it's about asking questions of the player that are not easy to answer. Not just do you want to be nice, or evil, and know there are no consequences. But in daily life, decisions are grey, and I was looking to ask difficult questions. And this is the most challenging, exciting, and interesting part of the project, creating moments where simple actions can have huge consequences. For example, let's imagine you have to kill someone, and you have a very good reason, in most games it's just kapow you're dead. If we manage to create this moment where you're supposed to kill someone but the decision is difficult, and you may choose not to do it, then we've accomplished somthing.
Any other examples like that in the emotional relationships?
Certainly, building relationships with other characters is extremely interesting. And I've bet a lot on Heavy Rain that we've created that connection with NPC's, in a way that hasn't been done before.
With the technology and game building, how do you make those characters sufficiently believable?
That's a major difficulty. If they move like robots, or act stupid, you'll never have this suspension or disbelief. You'll always see them as a program, a bunch of pixels on screen. But we're trying to create a situation where you might think you'd hurt someone's feelings if you didn't behave a certain way, where you really feel something for these other character. If we manage to achieve that, it will be very rewarding, even if the rest of the game is terrible, I'd be happy!
Maybe for a project down the line, have you considered other methods of interfacing with the game world? The controller is still an analog format, but do options using, say, the Playstation Eye make sense?
Yes, we felt the controller was a barrier for many people, so we looked at different interfaces based on movements, but I just end up thinking that if you want to experience Heavy Rain you don't want to gesticulate on your couch! That may be fun for certain games, but it's not the way to go for us right now.
As a Playstation 3 exclusive you've said it makes your life easier to focus on the one hardware platform, but what did Sony see in it to sign your idea up?
Well, they thought it was unique, and they thought it could be a platform-defining experience. No one else in the world is working on a similar concept. And we were serious about emotion, but not just having characters smile when they succeed or cry when they fail; it was about attracting a different audience, adults that would make decisions.
.