Quantic Dream made a major splash with its 2005 game Fahrenheit (also known as Indigo Prophecy.) It certainly had its
flaws, but its interactive drama was not quite like anything being done at the
time, particularly on the major consoles. Quantic Dream's upcoming game, Heavy Rain, eschews the supernatural
themes that marred Fahrenheit's
realism and explores the incipient dramatic/interactive form further.
Recently, Gamasutra had a chance to speak with Guillaume de
Fondaumiere, co-CEO of Quantic Dream and executive producer of Heavy Rain about the game. What is it?
What is the intent behind it? And how do the design decisions support this intent? These are important questions for a company that sees itself trying
something new, and de Fondaumiere answers them frankly.
Heavy Rain has
been much feted by the press; it was the subject of a dramatic announcement by
Sony and remains a flagship exclusive title for the PlayStation 3. "If you
want to drive cars and run and shoot people, then you shouldn't buy Heavy Rain; this is not a game for
you," de Fondaumiere says.
On a platform where the majority of commercial successes
revolve around that activity, can Quantic Dream find commercial and artistic
success?
Do you officially
call the game an "interactive movie"?
I thought that I had seen that.
Guillaume de Fondaumiere: Actually, it's always difficult
for us to brand what we're doing and to explain what Heavy Rain is about. I guess that the best short-form definition we
found was "interactive movie", which is a double-edged sword quite
simply because it reminds people of those games at the early '90s when you were
basically in a movie and you had the choice between going to the left or
opening the door to the right -- which of course Heavy Rain is absolutely not.
But to a certain degree, it is an
interactive experience in which your actions have consequences on the story,
and, because it's so cinematic, I guess calling it an "interactive movie"
is probably the proper definition.
Do you feel that
games approaching reality is a good thing?
GdF: We didn't set out to develop specifically realistic
games. However, we thought that, with the story that we had -- it was really
grounded into reality -- we wanted to create something that would not
necessarily mimic reality but look relatively realistic. It's also because we
wanted to create an experience where players would really be immersed in the
environment, and I guess it's easier to immerse them in an environment that they
understand and that they know.
This is why we went this route. But that shouldn't
necessarily be the case... with the new technologies that we have today, with
the capacity to create realistic characters, I guess you are going to see more
and more games that look pretty much like real life more and more so. But I
hope that developers are not only going to develop highly realistic games; our
studio in particular -- we can do different types of games and venture into
different graphical [territory].
The immersiveness of
realistic graphics is something that David [Cage] and I have argued about
before because the more realistic the graphics become, the more the human mind
will judge the results against their perception of reality.
High-end graphics make
you scrutinize the entire world much more; since it looks like reality, you
check it against your own reality, so that it puts the script and the production
design and the scenario under a microscope. Do you know what I mean?
GdF: Um, yeah, maybe. I think what was very important for us
was to create the means to be realistic. We set a very high bar in terms of
graphics, and I think we set a very high bar in terms of scenario. David and his team have been working for many
months on writing a story that would be at the level of some Hollywood
movies. I think, in my personal opinion at least, that we're doing a pretty
good job on this.
What kind of measures
do you take to overcome that challenge?
Have you had a lot of, for instance, playtesting with different
demographics to see how they react and how they feel -- like, is this
realistic, or is this plausible for me?
GdF: First of all, that's work that we've done on the
script. We've had scriptwriters who helped us.
David wrote the entire story and the entire script, but we had a couple
of scriptwriters who were really doctoring the script, so that was very
interesting.
Now, of course, we're using also playtest to see what
people's reaction is, and we're perfecting this game for many months now; and it's
going to be perfecting up until we release.
All elements are scrutinized both from a graphical standpoint and from a
story -- a dialogue standpoint. So it's a lot of work.
Attention to detail is one of the essential elements in this
game. Of course, because of the
technology, because of the graphics -- and this is why I totally understand
what you mean -- we need to have a very high standard in all compartments of
the production. That's a real challenge, but this is what we wanted to do.