In what I assume will be our final, foot-dragging wrap-up from the week that was E3, we wanted to touch briefly on a title that many felt was severely slighted in getting pretty much no attention during Sony’s Monday press conference. I speak, of course, of Quantic Dream’s criminal thriller, Heavy Rain.
A spiritual successor to Quantic’s PlayStation 2 title, Indigo Prophecy (known as Fahrenheit outside of North America), Heavy Rain boasts a twisting, interconnected story regarding the search for a serial murderer known at the Origami Killer. Take a look at the trailer below for a peek.
Heavy Rain, like Indigo Prophecy before it, focuses on an engaging storyline, pushing the concept of “virtual actors” to the limit – every character in the game is modeled on a real person, not only conceptually, but everything down to a scan of their facial movements and body language.
Despite complaints that IP‘s story fell apart in the last act, it was definitely an adult story with adult sensibilities – a modern, interactive murder-mystery thriller that Heavy Rain intends to one-up. When any of the four characters you play as throughout the story die, they stay dead and the story moves along without them. Quantic Dream has promised that the game will have a high replayability factor, if only due to the ability for you to see the different permutations of how the story plays out and its final outcome.
Heavy Rain is exclusive to PlayStation 3 and will likely not see the light of day until sometime next year – spring is our best guess. For now, enjoy some screenshots (including a batch we forgot to give you a few weeks back) and watch the skies for clouds.
