"Heavy Rain" and Free-Choice in Games

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MawnLower

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May 9, 2008
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I think I recall seeing the trailer. The lip sync was off but it looked amazing.
Anyways, it sounds good.
 

NeW SpEcTrUM

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Mar 14, 2008
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The amount of ignorance in this thread was quite surprising. Thought more people would be on top of HR like I am.
 

indyfan

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Oct 19, 2008
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its those choose your own adventure books all over again...

Im hoping it'll be a fun and unique experience
 

TheBluesader

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Mar 9, 2008
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I think this is another situation where I'm sure they COULD do it, but SHOULD they? Even linear RPGs like Oblivion take a hundred hours to play though. Do we really need an even greater excuse to never leave the house again?

I spent 16 hours the first week I had it going customization-crazy with Soul Calibur IV. And yesterday I lost track of time and stayed up all night buying clothes and painting cars in Saint's Row 2. I know I personally do not need a deeper well to drown in.
 

Corven

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Sep 10, 2008
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Indigo_Dingo post=9.74754.845987 said:
darkstone post=9.74754.845828 said:
well it's not action gameplay, it's there ever beloved QTE, yay.
There's not going to be that much action. Its an adventure game, action is handled by dodging, or by getting around it. The other alternatives to that situation that I know of were, sneak out of the house and just drive away, sneak up behind the guy and kill him, call the cops, hide in the closet, or just get killed. Or you could have handled the situation different earlier on and had it unfold in a completely different way.

THATS what choice means here.
really I don't want it to be an action game I like how this is shaping up, I was pointing out in the trailer in the scenario when you are being chase by the killer there were a couple of quick time events to avoid being captured.
 

ElArabDeMagnifico

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Dec 20, 2007
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"back in the day" this took too much manpower, now in this "day" it takes less manpower but it's still tough, and usually the writers/animators/programmers have this huge ambitious project and then near the end get lazy because they are tired and made the mistake of announcing the game when it was a concept on a napkin, and end up putting "good or bad ending." Instead of "what you did actually mattered."

Heavy Rain is making big promises, and I expect it to be fulfilled because they learned a lot from Indigo Prophecy/Farenheit (that needs to keep ONE title this time) - but if the story is still shit then who's gonna care how much we can change? So that's what I'm worried about most.

Also, the hype for most things is getting really exaggerated, it's not exactly "false" - but they do overblow it.
 

Doctor Panda

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Apr 17, 2008
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I'm also watching this title with some anticipation. Not gripping at the edge of my seat anticipiation, but I've got it in the back of my mind. I actually quite enjoyed farenheit, just as something a little different (or raher something that's been done before but not for awhile and usually with less graphics and quick time events). It was absolutely brilliant in a couple of scenes - particularly the first one - but sadly fell down as the programmers *very* obviously got lazy in giving you options. Particularly meaningful options. How many choices actually made any difference at all in that game? Like 4? At the start a few *felt* like they made a difference and that was really nice. But eventually it became clear that it was just 'click on everything until the scene advances or you die' and it started to lose its charm. Liked it anyway because of + points for presentation (at times very, very nice acting and graphics), trying, and the sense of melancholy that the game bestows.

So here's the same folk again. Again promising that player choices will be meaningful - hey, maybe they're not lying. They've had practice and this time they're not basing it on a book, which will give them more room with the storyline (though given that the story seems to follow essentially the same paths i wonder if it will really come down to fairly trivial differences in dialogue which will be a shame). They're also promising that they'll have no supernatural themes (yay, less opportunity for cop-out endings), a film noir atmosphere (sounds good), and truly ambiguous moral choices (god i hope they deliver on that, it's so rarely done well).

Do i really think they'll deliver it all? Hell naw, nobody does. But if they make something of the same quality as farenheit (and definately prettier and hopefully little better) I'll play it anyway.

Oh, one last thing. FARENHEIT HAS TWO SEX SCENES - ONE OF WHICH IS INTERACTIVE! IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN BANNED IN AUS - INTERACTIVE SEX SCENES ARE GROUNDS FOR INSTABAN. AHAHAHA SUCK ON THAT CENSORSHIP BOARD.
 

Vortigar

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The quick time events in this one are completely integrated into the gameplay and not sprung on you. It seems like an interesting system to direct your actions in a tight situation but I still wonder how it's going to turn out.

I'm definately keeping my eye on this one, I love people who try to invent entirely new ways in which games could work (even if it fails horribly in the end).

Uncompetative:
Because it's a really good movie?
 

GloatingSwine

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Vanguard1219 post=9.74754.845268 said:
I seriously doubt that one. I can't really comment on Fable 2 because I haven't had a chance to play it, but the big thing about "free choice" in the first Fable was that every choice shifted you either towards good and evil. From what I've heard about Heavy Rain, most choices you can make, if not all of them (which, we agree, sounds like a very complicated thing for a developer to pull off) nudge the story along in a slightly different direction.
This has, of course, been claimed before. It just hasn't been done yet, mostly for two reasons, firstly because of exponential branch multiplication, if player changes are cumulative then each set of decisions needs a unique or semi unique branch (and if they're not cumulative then the player feels like they have less influence on the game as a whole) and each branch will take development time and money to produce, and secondly because there's no way that the developers can ever anticipate everything a player might try (look at Deus Ex for information on how players managed to completely surprise developers), so the actual number of influential decisions the player gets to make are massively constrained.

Gotten from a magazine, not much spoilers since it's the first mission or whatever.
The demonstration scenario for Heavy Rain so far is not from the game. It was custom made for the demonstration.
 

Rush_Thores

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Oct 2, 2008
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Uncompetative post=9.74754.847364 said:
Why do people want to spend £40 on a movie?
Why not, I mean, people bought MGS4.
I'm kidding, i love that game, but it's true. If the moments of gameplay are euphoric, or the story is epic and so compelling, people will buy it. Mostly fans, but other than them, still, a lot of people like a really compelling story, and if HR has good writing, I'll play it. Hell, thats why I finished Folklore, by the time towards the end when the fighting had begun to feel recycled and repettitve, I still played through those last few hours, because I really wanted to see what happened next.
 

GloatingSwine

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Indigo_Dingo post=9.74754.848814 said:
GloatingSwine post=9.74754.847487 said:
The demonstration scenario for Heavy Rain so far is not from the game. It was custom made for the demonstration.
No, its from the game, its just the best portion they had so far.
The article in Edge last month says otherwise, that the specific scenario displayed (and described here) was created for the demonstration, because they're not showing any story content yet.
 

Corven

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Sep 10, 2008
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Indigo_Dingo post=9.74754.849236 said:
GloatingSwine post=9.74754.849183 said:
Indigo_Dingo post=9.74754.848814 said:
GloatingSwine post=9.74754.847487 said:
The demonstration scenario for Heavy Rain so far is not from the game. It was custom made for the demonstration.
No, its from the game, its just the best portion they had so far.
The article in Edge last month says otherwise, that the specific scenario displayed (and described here) was created for the demonstration, because they're not showing any story content yet.
The article in Hyper says otherwise to your otherwise. While they're not showing the complete storyline, they have said many times that that is actual gameplay footage.
the video matches with the small snipet of story-line in my issue of gameinformer as well, maybe they liked it so much they added it as a good start-up level.
 

Fineldar

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Jun 8, 2008
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Is this the game that's just a movie that you control through your dude, though I think it's a girl? Yay, now I can play Crappy Real Life on your fancy Xbox 360 after you get home from your Crappy Real Job! I guess that's not entirly true, as there seems to be decent plot and stuff.

I doubt the technology and work is up to par to be the ultimate free choice and dynamic game that it's said to be. I'm more interested in how they made it.