Skip to main content

The Art of Heavy Rain (Part 4)

Player Choices Bear Consequence

There are multiple ways a scene can play out depending on the player’s past choices and those specifically made in that scene.
storytelling, branching structure, dramatic tension, the hero’s journey (heroic quest)
Players can get answers through dialogue choices and explore observations (and objectives) through a character’s thoughts.
There is direct player control — with no specific run action. Most of the time, players won’t run indoors. Running is automatic during gameplay, to fit the emotional direction of the scene.


Win or Lose
There is no way to “lose” the game per se; only unfavorable events unfold, (i.e. characters die) or the player’s search is impeded (evidence is lost, players never meet important characters or situations to gather evidence.)
There are many scenes where the main characters can die in different ways at several points in the game; the game continues, but circumstances are heavily affected.


For example, those decisions have an effect on game’s unique combination of ending epilogues depending on the player’s choices carried outrendering his experience and the denouement of his story, unique.



Environment
David Cage wanted the atmosphere of noir detective movies dark, cold and disturbing   but also mysterious and fascinating.
Heavy Rain takes place in the urban, rundown districts of Philadelphia; this is evident as all of the victims’ coming from underprivileged backgrounds are from this area.
The developers took a trip to Philly to capture photo references and to get a feel for the area. This is to effectively convey the background mood of Heavy Rain. There were concepts to set the design for over 90 environmental scenes that made it in-game.
This set the tone for the true atmosphere of the game evoked in the opening  the everyday scenes, to the characters in the foreground and the omnipresent rain.


Action Sequences
The action sequences in the Heavy Rain were designed to be as realistic as possible. The writers didn’t want the characters to be supermen well-versed in the martial arts.
Ethan is a family man with no training in the martial arts. Madison while good with movement, is not a hand-to-hand fighter. Jayden while he had some formal FBI training, is not too good fighting on the ground. Shelby however learned to fight in the streets and is a man of great brute force.


The action sequences were formulated by a stunt coordinator for film from a document describing the action sequences; then the stunt men would go into the mocap room to elaborate the final actions.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Level Design in God of War (Part 1)

Becoming the God of War God of War is one of the most-critically acclaimed franchises to ever hit the Playstation market. In this pipeline deconstruction, I will refer to elements of the series as a whole. Dominus the main character in concept, needed to be summed up in a single word -- wrath . Covered in the ash of his wife and child, the character is a demigod who seeks revenge on the gods who betrayed him. Once the artists stripped away his armor and shield, the character’s true raw, animalistic side was exposed. Tall with upper-body musculature, covered in ashes and hunched over with his signature Blades of Chaos, Dominus was a force to be reckoned with. Dominus set the stage for the today’s Playstation mascot -- Kratos. Level Design Mood and exploration is a staple part of level design in God of War . Areas that are more open are also relatively barren; while many objects are placed around smaller areas like rooms. I think this encourages the player’s sense o...

Time Manipulation in Game Design

Time Manipulation in Games Introduction The gameplay mechanic that I wish I had come up with first, is Time Manipulation. This is includes the concept of time dilation and the reversal of time in games. Implementing the Manipulation of Time Time manipulation is a robust mechanic. It involves non-exploitable time manipulation, with the goal of being fast and smooth, while not computationally-taxing on memory or hardware resources. The best way to implement this mechanic can be seen in Braid - an indie platform and puzzle game, developed by Number None, Inc. In this game, the world state is recorded for every frame, where the data is stored and compressed. With the recorded frames, any changing entities are extracted and mixed into the final state, which can be manipulated or rewound by the player. The player’s position is recorded and other properties such as color and rotation are stored as an integer that can be reconstructed, along with time information taken fro...

Most Difficult Parts in Heavy Rain

Under Pressure In my experience, the most difficult button combination sequence in the game is when Norman Jayden must bring in a suspect for questioning, who goes by the name of Mad Jack. Jackson is said to have sold a used car to the Origami Killer and presumably has information on the killer identity or alias. When Jayden finds traces of human blood and orchid pollen, he tries to arrest Jack on the spot. He resists the arrest and goes to Kill Jayden — which he can if the player is not quick enough during the intense fight sequence. If Jayden survives the attack and beats Mad Jack, he concedes and Jayden proceeds with the arrest. It’s then Jayden’s nose begins to bleed, his eyes begin twitching and his hands start shaking uncontrollably in the middle of the arrest. To resist feeding his addiction to a drug called triptocaine, the player must hold down a series of buttons to stop his hands from shaking and the weakness from his symptoms of withdrawal. If the playe...