Heavy Rain from Quantic Dreams
The Playstation 3 exclusive Heavy Rain hits store shelves tomorrow. Much to-do has been made over the game from developer Quantic Dreams. Since its debut at E3 2006, Heavy Rain has been lauded for its revolutionary graphics, and with good reason. To say that the game looks gorgeous would be an understatement. But the appeal of Heavy Rain has not been purely graphical. Part of the reason the game has been receiving so much attention is due to Quantic Dreams’ own hype. The developers have emphasized the game’s characters and their realistic performances. After seeing the game in action a few months ago and having played the recent demo, I can see some of what they’ve been talking about. The characters are disturbingly realistic (though not always convincing) with eerily familiar facial expressions, which can cause the characters to lean into the uncanny valley at times. Visually, Heavy Rain is without question one of the best looking games of this console generation.
My own issue with Heavy Rain has more to do with the pedigree of Quantic Dreams. Their first game, Omikron: The Nomad Soul was released in 2000. It was an interesting cyberpunk adventure that many now consider ahead of its time, The game let you travel freely around a bustling futuristic cityscape, plus it combined the adventure and first person shooter genres in a way that really had not been tried before, Another intresting element of Omikron was its soundtrack; the music was composed by David Bowie, who also made a cameo appearance in the game. Omikron was a very promising start for Quantic Dreams. It was the company’s follow up to Omikron, Indigo Prophecy (known as Fahrenheit in Europe) that would start the developer on the path to Heavy Rain.
