I had to have a friend come over and play Indigo Prophecy with me. A lot of those QTEs were just tooooooooo damn hard. I hope Heavy Rain has an easier difficulty setting.

theswitcher's Avatar
theswitcher at 10/19/2009 10:24
Have no clue why this is supposed to be better than Indigo, when it looks to be the exact same game.

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You sir are the rarest of rare beasts, the "idiotdouch" seen here in it's natural habitat completing it's daily cock sucking ritual.

Finally a world where I can talk to kids without having their mothers push me away from them.

Ah, I forgot. Fans of games entirely composed of QTE's are some of the most rabid. Forgive me.

I'll never forget those ridiculous E3 vids of that white guy fighting that black guy in the parking lot, and the entire damn thing just being a long-ass cutscene with brief moments of control. With horribly mis-cast voices, and some pretty average graphics. (at least from the video)

Graphics look good, facial expressions look...soulless. Is that a bad thing to say? Despite their best efforts, they still don't look human to me. Half Life 2 and its episodes managed to nail it, at least with Alex...I wish that could pull over to other games.
Still, I like the style they are using in this, especially the way the present objects of interactions. Really neat.
Yeah...creepy doll people. They also move weird when walking around...
Yeah, I'm nitpicking. Game will probably still rule like Indigo.

shadowiii


your right, looks like the mo-cap they were doing only worked for movements, facial expressions, not so much

I wonder if this game will have the same emotional impact as movies that strive for the same mood and feel... I wonder if it will have the power to make a person cry?

its the way of the actions are placed that says, "you want interactivity? well here you go."

i really like it, its very lifelike and i love good stories in games. uncharted2 just blew my brains.

@eggdog14

Yeah, but it's IN ACTION where lifelike really takes over. Photos look great, but they don't move. A lot of times we see these zoomed in detailed graphics, but you really can't see that much detail unless you have a 60" 1080p TV, which I honestly don't think most people can afford.
I'm not bashing the graphics by any means, I'm just saying animations can make up for a LOT in regard to poor textures, or just general lack of realism. See Prince of Persia (the new one). It's artsy, but his animations are just SO SMOOTH it makes climbing on ceilings seem realistic and possible. These seem really stiff to me, at least when walking around.
In-cutscene the physical animations are a step up, but again the facial expressions kill it. Also the eyes...THE EYES.
Some day they'll figure out how to make skin not look plastic (this applies to all games, not just this one). But until then...
Still would be a day 1 buy if I had a PS3. Which I might get for christmas. So then it will be a day 1 buy.

In the absence of any skill based gameplay, how good this game is totally depends on how interesting the story is. So far it seems cliche ridden, overladen with characters and pretty dull. I really hope it turns out to be awesome, but I fear it is going to suck big time.

You've gotta respect them for trying though I suppose.

They totally couldn't get the looks, after all the r&d they have done. That makes me a sad panda. The best facial expressions can be seen in Heavenly Sword (cartooney, yes, but the expressions and looks are spot on) and uncharted 2.

People complaining about these games being nothing more than a series of QTE's are completely missing the point. These games represent a modern evolution of classic point-and-click adventure games. Like those, the gameplay is focused on environment exploration, communication, and puzzles. When comparing Heavy Rain or Indigo Prophecy to those games, you see that they are actually adding quite a bit more interactivity. Your character's emotional level actually impacts the ease of your decision making, and action sequences are now somewhat interactive, rather than just being cutscenes.

Lol at2:00 (Heavy emotional backing score playing) "Would you like a poptart or maybe some Duritos?". Haha, they're really trying to get your ol heart strings tangled up here.

Heavy rain looks awesome. TBH the best part I've seen of this game was a part that apparently isn't in the game. It was a demonstration to Edge of a part with the journalist woman and she's investigating a suspect in a murder case. She knocks on the door, he's not home so she breaks in sneaks around and finds a room full of embalmed womens bodies hanging out. He then arrives home camera splits and you've got to sneak out. If you get caught you die, if you don't you continue. Whatever happened didn't matter, you continue anyway until all four characters you can possibly play in the game die. Then the game ends. This sounds totally badass, and kept me hopeful that the game isn't just branching storylines played out by well implemented yet QTEs all the same.

Definitely my most anticipated game at the moment.

I can tell that this is definitely not a game for everyone. Adventure games are a very niche genre now (despite having been so popular in the past), and not everybody is going to understand their appeal. That's totally okay.

What's not okay is people criticising this game when they have little to no knowledge or experience with the genre. Calling Heavy Rain a QTE-fest or a linear "movie" is completely ignorant. These games are not about action: They are about consequence, storytelling, and atmosphere. The vast majority of the "QTEs" used in the game are single button prompts that are entirely optional. What some people don't seem to get is that this isn't limiting, it's an incredibly freeing control scheme that allows Quantic Dream to give you the option of interacting with the game-world in a vastly larger amount of ways than a traditional "this button does this and ONLY this" control method would.

The longer "actual" QTEs are responses to the many small choices you've made along the way. In other words, they're consequences. This is what I find so brilliant and intriguing about Heavy Rain; the gameplay itself is almost a metaphor: You have complete control of your every action until those actions cause a consequence that you can only react to. The idea of game-mechanics having the ability to support (and even strengthen) a theme is so interesting to me, and I really hope Quantic can pull it off.

I think other criticisms of the game are completely valid. What we've seen of the story makes me a bit apprehensive, and the facial mo-cap is definitely a bit uncomfortable looking.

But can we please just stop with the control-scheme complaints? They're goddamn ingenious.