David Cage, who is also president of Heavy Rain developer Quantic Dream says that we won't see the French equivalent of a Dragon Ball-esque karate hover battle, a la Indigo Prophecy.

"I believe it'll be much more emotionally involving, as gamers will easily relate to the situations and characters," Cage said. "In Heavy Rain, you won't be a superhero or a gangster. You'll just be someone real." Given how good the game looked at Games Convention (and continues to look) we might be able to settle for normal, even if that sequence we saw won't be more than a potential bonus feature in the final game.

Heavy Rain (PS3) [1UP]

He first contrasts sandbox gaming in general with the deliberately-constructed "rollercoaster" of linear games:

"From the time you're in the line, you go in the back of the rollercoaster and through the tunnel and everything is defined. We knew while you were waiting how to make the stress grow, how to make you feel something, get you scared, make you feel better, et cetera. This rollercoaster is being conceived by someone to optimize the experience."

Calling MMOs the only "true" sandbox of which he's aware, Cage is a little bit critical:

I've played many MMOs these days, and most of the time, the experience is really poor, because you end up doing not very exciting things. I think the value of the experience is not on that. It's really about building yourself - the vision of yourself, like, "Oh, I want to be a hero, because I've spent so much time at level 16. I'm so strong. Look at my weapons and my helmet." These are the core mechanics these games are based on.

I think that's fine for people when they need to build self esteem, and it's a very important core complementing experience, but if you're not into that, what's the real narrative or emotional value? Sometimes it's really interesting when you're in the guild in a massively multiplayer game and you attack the fortress or whatever. Some great things can be told, but it's not guaranteed. The value is not always there."

What do you think, Kotaku readers? Do you get a "narrative or emotional" value out of MMOs most of the time, or do you prefer the "rollercoaster?"

Dreaming of a New Day: Heavy Rain's David Cage [Gamasutra]

Xbox Originals Manuals and Controller layouts (and free themes and picture packs) [Microsoft]

The press release doesn't say much more about the game other than that it will use the power of the Cell and game development technology of the PS3 to "set a new benchmark in delivering emotionally compelling experiences to gamers." With Quantic on board, I think that's quite possible. More details are expected "soon", which has to be code for at E3. Hit the jump for the press release.

Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios to Work on a Groundbreaking New Title for PLAYSTATION®3

Collaboration with developer Quantic Dream to redefine cinematic realtime entertainment

LONDON, July 3 2007 - Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios (SCE WWS) is pleased to announce that it will be collaborating with developer Quantic Dream on an exclusive PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3™) title - more details of which are to be announced soon. Quantic Dream has an outstanding track record in delivering interactive, cinematic games with true emotional depth. Combined with the power of Cell Broadband Engine™ and game development technology of PS3, the project is expected to set a new benchmark in delivering emotionally compelling experiences to gamers.

Founded in 1997 by David Cage, French developer Quantic Dream has achieved international renown for its ground-breaking innovation within the games industry, particularly in the areas of interactive narration and emotional content. The studio's record speaks for itself: in particular Quantic Dream was responsible for 2005's award winning Fahrenheit (known as Indigo Prophecy in the US and Canada), a paranormal, interactive blend of film and gaming that was widely praised for re-imagining the adventure game genre.

Michael Denny, Vice President, SCE Worldwide Studios, said: "We're really excited to be working with Quantic Dream for the first time and to have this opportunity to once again push the gaming experience to realise a new level of interactivity and, in particular, to engage players at an emotional level never experienced before. We're looking forward to revealing more news on this special title later this year."

David Cage, Founder, President and CEO of Quantic Dream, said, "We always believed that "next generation" meant more meaningful content based on players' emotional involvement. To us, PS3 is the only platform that can truly deliver on this promise, and SCE WWS is a group that is both inspiring and pleasant to work with."

Update Here's that Heavy Rain tech demo everyone is talking about in the comments:

What with all of the holidaying, I forgot to mention last week that my slender Gamer’s Gift Guide ran in the Rocky. I had a mere 35 inches to cover what I thought were the best titles of the season. (I didn’'t even think about trying to cover the entire year.) I decided to go with a series of very short — like one paragraph — descriptions of why I liked each game and to put them in a bunch of bizarre categories.

Anyway, hit the site if you'’re interested (I'’m sure you can guess what my favorite game was) and feel free to post here or there about where I went wrong and how insane I am for (not) including fillintheblank.

Crecente: Giving Great Games [Rocky Mountain News]

It looks like our reader poll for best game of the year is shaping up to be a two horse race with Resident Evil 4 and Mario Kart DS duking it out for the top spot and God of War trailing a distant third.

Make sure to get over to the link and vote, besides having an impact on a completely meaningless award you can also enter to win a $500 Circuit City gift certificate.

Personally, I think the best game of the season, and perhaps the year, was Indigo Prophecy. While I loved God of War it was in many ways perfection of the status quo and while Shadow of the Colossus is also a stupendous title, it was a fantastic experience punctuated by moments of repetitive tedium. (I'll pause for a second to let you shout at me.)

The thing about Indigo Prophecy is that it delivered a genuine cinematic experience to gaming. If you haven't played it, make sure you at least rent the title. I'm going to post a review of the game in a bit.

I guess it all boils down how you define game of the year. Should it be the title you had the most fun playing or the one that you think got closest to tipping what you consider gaming on its ear?

Discuss among yourselves.

The $500 Contest

It's the commonplace settings, the mundane surroundings of Indigo Prophecy that provide the power behind its punch.

This isn't a game that delivers an experience steeped in fantasy or fiction, or a story cast with the unbelievable doing the inexplicable. The backdrop of Indigo Prophecy is a dark, dirty, imperfect New York City locked down by a snow storm. Its cast: two police detectives and a tech support guy at some faceless bank.

It's with this tableau of the everyday that Indigo Prophecy creates a frightening and engaging tale, a supernatural thriller that plops you as both a reluctant killer and the detectives hunting him.

The game opens with you hovering slightly in front of and above a man sitting in a bathroom stall as he methodically carves symbols into his wrists with a knife.

A few minutes later someone walks into the bathroom and the man rises from the toilet, walks to the second man and attacks him, the scene flashing between reality and a similar scene of a ritual killing. As the knife-wielding man stands you realize that you can now control him.

The game is in essence a murder mystery; the twist is that you take turns controlling the killer and two detectives trying to solve the gruesome fatal stabbing he committed.

The play mechanics are as slick as they are simple, allowing you to investigate, question, listen to your characters' inner dialog and perform tons of actions with a flick of the thumbstick.

After gaining control of the central character, Lucas Kane, in the bathroom, I used the left thumbstick to maneuver him around room. Whenever I approached an object I could interact with, an icon appeared at the top of the screen showing me what I could do and which way I had to push the right thumbstick to do it.

When I walked to the sink I saw that I could push right to wash my hands or up to look in the mirror. This simplistic system allowed me to use a mop to clean the floor of blood, drag the body into a stall and close the door, wash up afterward and silently make my way out of the bathroom, through the diner I was in and into the snowy night.

While this sounds simple enough, the game doesn't just present you with the right choices. There are plenty of ways you can make the wrong choice and end the game with a very premature arrest.

My first time through, I spent so much time exploring the bathroom that a cop, who was having a coffee in the diner, walked in on me, noticed a blood trail leading to the corpse in the stall and arrested me on the spot.

At the end of most chapters, like the one where I escape from the diner, you are presented with a choice of who you want to control in the next chapter. You can pick to guide Kane through his struggle to discover why he lost control of himself and killed someone, or one of two detectives working the case.

Your decision determines through whose eyes parts of the story is told, but doesn't seem to affect the overall outcome.

Early in the game you come to realize that you will have to have a hand at controlling all of the characters at some point if you want to get to the bottom of what is happening to Kane.

As you guide the characters through the serpentine plot of the game, you also have to keep an eye on their mental state. A character's mental health status is affected by their moral choices and the things that happen to them throughout the game. If it gets too low, then something bad happens.

Gameplay is mostly made up of interacting with the world around you, be it Kane's office in a bank or the detectives' investigation of the crime. As in the diner, you walk about looking for clues or people and then interact with them using the menu that pops up at the top of the screen.

While conversations are also handled with the pop-up menu, a timer makes things a bit more interesting. As you talk to a person you decide what questions to ask and how to react to what is being said by using your right thumbstick, but you have a limited time to make your decisions. As the conversation progresses, the time you have to react or select a question diminishes until the conversation is over and you walk away.

This method forces you to pick and choose what you want to say and ask, if you make the wrong decisions you may never get all the information out of a person.

And the game doesn't just rely on selecting options.

When exertion is required of your character, like diving into a frozen pond and swimming to its bottom, or dragging a body across a floor, you have to rhythmically squeeze the right and left triggers on your controller fast enough to build up a bar.

The most bizarre form of control occurs when your character is physically or mentally struggling with some problem. When this occurs, two multi-colored rings pop up. Each represents the directions on your controller's thumbsticks. As your characters works their way through the problem, a series of patterns flash on the rings and you have to mimic them with your thumbsticks.

In one scene, detective Carla Valenti is sitting in on an autopsy of the murder victim. As I watch the autopsy unfold and listen to the medical examiner describe what he finds, the sequences begin to pop up on the screen. I miss the first two sets and Valenti simply watches on in a sort of stunned silence as the doctor rattles off facts. I succeed in the next two and Valenti's thinks to herself that the direction of the stab wounds must indicate that the killer is left handed, and then gets to ask specifics about the stab wounds.

This mechanic also shows up while characters are fighting for their lives or running from danger.

Although the gameplay sound a bit light, when combined with the cinematic cut scenes, an involving plot and three different endings, Indigo Prophecy easily becomes one of the best games of the season.

ClockworkGrue took a look at Indigo Prophecy over on Game Girl Advance, and like those that came before him, he liked what he saw.

Grue says that it s the closest game that s ever come to a text adventure on a console. This isn t too surprising since it was created by Quantic Dream, which brought us the very much ahead of its time Omikron The Nomad Soul.

It s very much worth pointing out that this is a game designed to be viewed as an interactive movie. Quatic Dream developed something called Interactive Cinema and this is the first game that uses it. According to their site, these are the main features of IC:

Giving players an interactive experience based on a solid scenario in which they control not just one or two stereotyped heroes, but all the main characters;

Using the concept of " elastic " writing, which gives greater freedom to players in the form of contextual movements and actions linked to the story;

Empowering film professionals to be part of the creative process, be they writers, directors, actors or musicians;

Creating characters with very high-quality animation and thus transmitting emotions in a way that is every bit as realistic as film;

Inventing new forms of interfaces and interactions in order to give characters greater control over their environment, while making this extremely easy-to-use for beginners;

And from the reviews rolling in it looks like their creation has been well accepted.

Beated by a Grue: A Designr Looks at Indigo Prophecy [GGA]

Indigo Prophecy just released and already an enterprising fan fired up a machinima on it. Over at Heavy, there's a video self-described as A serial killer with a serious case of I.B.S. and a geezer with prostate problems talk about life, love and the pursuit of good digestion. Made from the game, Indigo Prophecy."

Thanks Seth!

A few weeks back I mentioned a game called Fahrenheit, which the GamesBlog said had all of the makings of a spectacular ride, perhaps even a game of the year.

Well Atari sent word today that the adventure game, known as Indigo Prophecy in the U.S., has gone gold. From the press release:

In Indigo Prophecy, New York City is stunned by a series of mysterious murders, all following the same pattern: ordinary people are killing absolute strangers in public areas. Lucas Kane becomes another one of these murderers when he suddenly kills a stranger in a men s bathroom. Covered in blood, Lucas regains consciousness with no recollection as to why he committed murder. Hunted by police, Lucas must uncover the supernatural forces behind his crime before being incarcerated for life.

By encouraging players to assume the role of multiple characters and experience the game from multiple viewpoints, Indigo Prophecy allows players actions to affect the plot by offering a scenario driven interactive experience each and every decision made by the player will impact how the in-game story unfolds. Through motion picture techniques such as actor direction, multi-camera views, motion tracking and a contextual music score, players find themselves intimately immersed in the game

The game is expected out on Sept. 20. Did I mention that it has a depression meter?

Indigo Prophecy [Official Site]