The Heavy Rain Tapes, Part Two

Welcome to part two of our seriously in-depth interview with Quantic Dream's David Cage. Heavy Rain is expected on shelves within the next six months – we find out if the game's ready, if Quantic Dream is ready, and, more importantly, if the world is ready?

Have you had the chance to get your hands dirty with Sony’s new motion controller?

We have a lot of interest in the motion controller developed by Sony. We’ve seen the prototypes and we’ve had a chance to play with them and I think it’s a very interesting direction. Also the interface of Heavy Rain is already a lot based on movement; we use sticks to do the moves and when you open a cupboard or door, you really do do it with the stick, so doing it with a motion controller would be very natural and wouldn’t require a big change in the game. Also the same thing when you hit the robber with the bottle, you really do this with the Six-Axis’ motion sensor – it would be very easy to do with the motion controller. So we feel really close to this already with the game as it is, but, who knows, maybe we’ll think about a motion controller version.

That should be interesting during the sex scenes. Although we understand that some of that, as well as violent content won’t make it into the builds available in certain countries. Does that bother you? What are your thoughts on censorship in general?

It’s always a very frustrating situation because you design the story and experience in a certain way and then you need to change it for reasons that I personally don’t understand. So it’s always something frustrating, but at the same time I do it because the ratings system is done the way it is done; we’re not going to change it on our own. And neither can Sony, by the way, it’s an international system. So if you want your game to be on the shelves, you need to be compliant to those international laws. At the same time, the compromises I’ve had to make so far are… okay. They didn’t greatly effect the experience, so I can still comfortably feel that the game is pretty much exactly the way I designed it.

Even though it’s fine, then, from a censorship point of view, to cut the stuff you’ve had to for certain regions, have you had to cut any scenes purely to improve the gameplay and/or story, or because they simply didn’t work?

Oh, we’ve done that just two weeks ago. We cut three scenes. We had questions internally about these scenes and we were discussing them for the last six months. Some people defending them on the team, other people saying they’re more confusing than really adding anything to the experience. Then we did a user test session with twenty people playing the game; the feedback was unanimous – ‘You know what? These scenes don’t work’. They were all right at the beginning and they were making the beginning of the game too slow. So we took the information back to the office and just cut the scenes.

That must break your heart with the amount of work that goes into one single scene?

Yes and no, because what matters is the experience at the end. You have to feel that in the end, these cut scenes aren’t a part of the final work. So yeah, there are some of them that I really love and there were some with great special effects, but at the end of the day they were confusing for the player so… maybe we’ll put them in as a bonus ‘Deleted Scenes!’ [laughs].

So when you’ve finished a scene, you’re happy with it, and it’s definitely staying in, do you ever worry that players may restart it over and over because they aren’t getting the result they want and thereby ruin the game’s flow? Are there any measures in place to deter players from doing this?

It’s not a worry, I mean people pay money to own the game – they can play it any way they want. I just recommend, though, that if you want the very best experience, just play it once and stick by your decisions – in one walkthrough. Don’t replay scenes because, okay, you’ll never know what you missed, but at the same time, that story will be yours. It will be unique to you, to who you are, to how you behave and what you wanted to see happening. But, yeah if people want to play the same scene again and again until they either see everything or get the right outcome, that’s up to them.

One reason they may do that is if their character dies. Do the plot strands with characters dead really play out as interestingly as if they are alive?

More interesting.

Really!?

Yeah, sure. It was very important for me that there was one good story where you were successful at everything and one terrible story that was shorter and more depressing and annoying just because someone dies along the way. I wanted all stories to be just as interesting no matter what happened. My favourite endings are probably not the happy ones.

That’s kind of the way we feel about written fiction. Happy endings infuriate us because they’re generally just so unbelievable. Do you take your influences from written fiction at all?

Oh yeah, you take a lot of influences and you never really know exactly where it came from. Many people who play Heavy Rain may think a part or parts of it remind them of Se7en, or Silence Of The Lambs, or maybe Fight Club among other things – novels or, I don’t know… TV series.

It’s all just in there [points to head]?

Yeah it’s all just in there [points to head]. But I hope also of course that Heavy Rain will stand up by itself and that people will see it as something original.

People are often quick to say ‘you copied this or that’ though, and platform-specific titles like Heavy Rain are internet dynamite. There’s probably more forum verbiage on Heavy Rain than the contents of the British Library. Are there any recurring misconceptions that really irritate the hell out of you?

There really is, although finally, it’s beginning to stop. It’s definitely when people think that Heavy Rain is ‘just a bunch of QTEs’; that’s all there is in the game; just pressing the buttons your directed to and seeing things happen. We showed four scenes from the game so far and there was a QTE sequence in one third of one of the four scenes. So it’s not a significant part of the game. In Heavy Rain, you are in control from second to second. You are in complete control of your character and there are really only very few action scenes that are mapped out that way.

But it’s really interesting because people can’t figure out how it’s possible to tell a story with gameplay – they don’t understand. So there are people who think it’s full of cut-scenes, which is wrong; there is in fact, not a single cut-scene in the game. Some people think it’s just QTE and pressing buttons which is wrong, it’s second to second control. And they don’t have any other option, which is funny because there are other ways. Heavy Rain proves that there are ways of telling the story using gameplay. Gameplay shouldn’t be limited to shooting, jumping and driving – you can do so many different things.

We noticed during the scenes we’ve seen in Heavy Rain that there are some pretty humorous elements to the dialogue. Why do you think it is that games – like Heavy Rain – that purport to be dark and brooding tend to break the mood with witty one-liners? It’s not like Morgan Freeman in Se7en turns to stand-up comedy to help digest a murder scene.

[laughs] Well, you know, the thing about movies is they usually last around 90 minutes, games usually last 8-12 hours. I mean it’s great to be dark and dramatic for short stints, but for 12 hours, it just just becomes very depressing [laughs]. So my approach with Heavy rain – it’s not a comedy, that’s for sure – but I thought that it would make the characters more colourful if they had some funny lines here and there or if they were put into some situations that will make you smile. So as long as it’s not forced. As long as it’s natural to who they are and how they behave, and where they come from, I think that’s okay. The team’s favourite moments in the game are probably the ones that are really funny. Scott Shelby is a funny character – he’s a funny actor and some of this comes across in his character.

So you’re saying that comedy has been used to add texture to the characters? What other elements have you used to make them come to life?

I use a very simple technique which I find works quite well. I try to start with an archetype. What I mean by that is someone who when you see him, you instantly know what type of character he is. Through his looks, through what he says , or in what situation you introduce him. And what makes the difference between and archetype and a caricature is that an archetype is just a base – a place to prepare the ground for this, then you add layers of complexity and then you can surprise the player. But the entry point to the character for the player is very easy. Like ‘oh, yeah. Scott Shelby, I know him, he comes from film noir – a Humphry Bogart kind of guy – he probably has a whisky bottle in his detective office’. Okay, fine I say, all of this is true, but now let me show you aspects of his personality that you didn’t expect. But the entry point is very easy. After five minutes you get the feeling you know him by heart and that’s what I like about it. So, most of the characters are pretty much structured this way more or less, with all of these complex layers and some complex twists.

So would you say you’re coaxing the player into thinking ‘I know this guy’ just so you can say ‘Aha! No you don’t’? Is that archetypal familiarity a mechanic you employ to surprise?
[laughs] Yeah, let’s just say you will definitely discover aspects of the characters you didn’t expect.

And after Heavy Rain next year? Big fat holiday?

Sure, but not yet. I can’t think about that; we’re in a rush right now between Beta and master, so this is a critical moment for the game because this is a game that can change a lot between beta and master. All of the game is built with tools that mean we can be very reactive and make pretty significant changes in a very small time frame. So, we do user tests pretty much every day and we see what they do, what they miss, what they don’t understand, what they don’t like and we fine-tune the game. We improve the music, we improve the gameplay and iterate the directing. We essentially try to make it perfect. It’s really an incredible amount of work because each scene is unique; each scene is almost another game. So you can’t say ‘I’ve tuned these 20 scenes now, the rest is just the same’ – every scene is special.

And presumably has a knock-on effect on other scenes whenever you change something? Are you ever concerned that you’re over-tweaking?

Yeah, there is a moment when the scene works and you know ‘It works’. Could it work better? Yeah, maybe, but you know what, it does what it’s supposed to do. People are playing it and enjoying and feeling something when they’re in front of it and that’s the most important thing.