Heavy Rain has excited gamers with its potential since developer Quantic Dream showed off a non-playable demo at E3 2006 demonstrating the impressive technology the title would be built upon. As the game nears completion and more impressions are given for early versions of the game, many have thrown around the term “interactive movie” to describe Heavy Rain, but Quantic Dream co-CEO David Cage would describe it more as a “journey.”
"Heavy Rain is about playing with a story almost in a physical sense, changing it, twisting it, discovering it, making it unique, making it yours," explains Cage to Destructoid. "Using the term 'interactive movie' to describe Heavy Rain has been a tricky question from the beginning. It is in many ways what Heavy Rain is -- a visually told story that the player can affect by his actions."
"In Heavy Rain, the player is in control second to second, he tells the story through is actions,” he continued. “All this is done in a very fluid, seamless way, with no cut scenes, no big flashing sign to make decisions, and this is what makes the game really unique."
In fact, Cage doesn't see Heavy Rain in the same light as most traditional interactive media, looking at it now as something of a trendsetter in a new genre. "Heavy Rain is not a video game anymore in my mind because it breaks with most of the traditional paradigms, but it's fully interactive,” mused Cage. "If the format becomes successful, we will probably have to find a different name for this type of experience."
Will Heavy Rain change games as we know them?
While there's a certain amount of pretentiousness that comes with asserting your title will result in a paradigm shift for an entertainment medium, everything we've seen, heard and read about Heavy Rain suggests it will at least be very different than most other gaming experiences out there.
