Notgames Forum

I try to back away, but sometimes I feel bad about this and get to feeling I need to do something a little bit more gamey. But I'm happy with the balance in Heavy Rain, because it's almost like a reference to old games, and old adventure games especially.

I made a different decision, which was to get rid of the violence, the mechanics, the patterns in the gameplay. I think that this is not an absolute necessity; there are other ways of offering gameplay than using the same loops in a way.

Sometimes you just stop playing and say, "Why am I doing this, by the way?" Yeah, it's fun, but, when I turn off my console, that's it. There is nothing left in me when I stop playing.

In Fahrenheit, you had to look at the 3D world, what you want to interact with: look up and say, "Okay, it's this movement", make the move and look down for the result. Basically, it's really unfocusing. What we wanted to achieve is the fact that you look at something, and you know at the same time you want to interact with this. This is how I'm supposed to do it, and here I can see the result. So your attention is focused only on the object, and you got all of the information at the same time.

Really, you didn't pay attention, and it was a way to reinforce guilt for the player as the father. This is just role-play, and this is something I used a lot: not every single action in Heavy Rain has huge consequences. Sometimes it's just about the role-play, putting you in the shoes of these characters; making you feel bad or making you feel guilty or whatever. I really like this kind of stuff.

And the feedback we got about this scene was just amazing because, with some people -- I remember a journalist who was raised by his father because his parents divorced, and he was like Shaun, moving to different houses with crates that were never opened because they were moving out. He felt so depressed about this scene because it truly resonated with his own personal experience. When you can do that, as a game creator, this is the absolute holy grail -- that's what you're looking for

In Heavy Rain, you make choices, and these choices could be to kiss someone or not to kiss someone; it could be to help someone or not to help someone. It could be just to make a decision affecting your psychology or how you feel about your character. I think that was the most important thing.