With upcoming PS3 title Heavy Rain, the developer aims to make the video game equivalent of something like an R rated film — adult characters, adult content. As mentioned previously, some of that content is nudity. The preview build of the game played by Kotaku included a little bit of nudity - a bare male posterior, a topless woman, and cheekily blocked genitalia during some scenes of dressing and undressing — but no sex.

Footage from Polish site tvgry.pl offers a look at how the adult content in the game is being handled — looks somewhat sterile, which is refreshing for a video game.

I'm beginning to piece together some of the story from Heavy Rain for myself between all of the screenshots and Totilo's recent preview, and I'm feeling a bit sad even before the game is released. Poor Ethan, conflicted by feelings for his wife, whom I am guessing something horrible happens to - you don't spend this much time showing how in love two people are in a drama without someone dying tragically - and his well cultivated grief beard. Those two words don't even sound right together. Grief...beard? It's like some strange alien language.

But the content fiascoes of that older game, called Indigo Prophecy in the U.S. and Fahrenheit in its native Europe, are a thing of the past, the co-CEO of its development studio, Quantum Dream's 's Guilaume de Fondaumiere, told Kotaku in a recent interview.

The ambitiously mature Heavy Rain won't be censored for America.

Earlier this week we ran a preview of the somber murder drama Heavy Rain and a story about its Trophies. The integrity of the content seemed like a crucial issue to address with our latest bit of coverage of the game.

Quantic Dream, which is based in France, intends to make games for adults. They did so with Fahrenheit and aim to again with heavy Rain. That doesn't mean "adult games," as in "pornography," but it does mean that the team is comfortable with including nudity and sex in its games. Fahrenheit did, more so in Europe. In the North American version of that game, sex scenes were removed or censored in order for the game to get an M rating.

Many Americans, apparently, didn't like that.

"Tens of thousands" of people wound up importing the European version of the game, de Fondaumiere told Kotaku. But they won't have to do the same for Heavy Rain, he said, because there will be no censoring, no content differentiation (other than, assumedly, language tracks) between the game as it will be released by its developers and Sony and Europe and the version released for PS3 gamers in North America.

The preview build of the game played by Kotaku included a little bit of nudity — a bare male posterior, a topless woman, and cheekily blocked genitalia during some scenes of dressing and undressing — but no sex. We know that the game will include a scene in which the player makes their female character strip, a scene that is intended to feel uncomfortable. But the extent to which there is any sex isn't known and probably isn't that important to catalog in advance, given the context of Heavy Rain's depiction of adult content.

De Fondaumiere didn't give me the impression that Quantic Dream had backed off. He said that much has changed in the four years since the release of Fahrenheit. More adult content has made it into games and more of it — not all — has been handled with class. The seriousness with which Quantic Dream wants to include the equivalent of R-rated movie material in a video game sold in America is now more permissible, the developer noted.

As a result, North American fans of the idea of playing a game the way a developer intended it to be played won't have to worry about importing in order to play the "real" Heavy Rain. It's coming to America, with no censorship attached.

Heavy Rain, an interactive drama (or think of it as an adventure game), will be out for the PlayStation 3 in early 2010.

Over the weekend I played the first several chapters of Heavy Rain using a preview disc supplied by Sony Computer Entertainment of America. It was my first at-home trial of one of the major early 2010 games, a hands-on test of whether ambitious French game development studio Quantic Dream can meet its high goals of high-definition interactive fiction, last seen by players in the studio's 2005 PS2 game Indigo Prophecy (Farenheit in its native Europe).

Or let's call the Heavy Rain genre not interactive fiction but something else, a different name signalledby one of the early rewards unlocked for starting the game is a Trophy that states: "Thank you for supporting interactive drama."

Interactive drama. It's not quite a classic video game, at least not in what it asks the player to do, how it shows the action of its scenes and how it marks progress. Having experienced Hevy Rain's first several chapters I've not repeated many actions the way you might repeat Kratos' combat moves 25 times in the game's first 30 seconds. In those Heavy Rain chapters I seldom saw my controllable character from behind, as you would any number of heroes of Final Fantasy or Dead Rising. And I never scored points, lost lives, collected items or so many other things that we do when we play games.

I searched for clues about a serial murderer, the Origami Killer. I also washed dishes, turned on light switches, smooth-talked a convenience store stick-up man and took a shower. Concerning that last one, I took a shower both as one of the game's male characters and later as one of the game's female characters, and didn't just get to control the shower — I got to control the drying off.

Heavy Rain is bound to perplex some gamers. Its description will agitate a certain kind of macho gamer who is already angry about the alleged watering down of gaming by so-called casual and party game experiences.

But Heavy Rain may even test the tolerance of those who want to believe in development studio Quantic Dream's zeal to develop genuinely mature games. This, Heavy Rain, is a slow trickle of interactivity within a deluge of dark tones. This game is sad and slowly paced. It is melancholy and as sunless as the weather pattern from which it gets its name. Those who will enjoy it will be those who can stave off impatience.

The game begins, in an exception, in sunshine. The player controls Ethan Mars, taking the happily married father of two boys through some basic morning routines. That's the tutorial, teaching the player that a hold of a PlayStation 3 controller's shoulder button will walk Ethan forward, twists of the left control stick will turn him, but that most meaningful action will be generated by presses and pushes of the right stick and face buttons. Getting up from bed is a push of the right stick up. Opening a door might be a slide to the side. Shaving, washing your face and brushing your teeth is a combination of button taps and motion-triggered controller shakes. Any available action is signaled by the presence of a floating controller prompt, making the gameplay largely one of walking, searching for the next prompt that signals an available action. A hold of another shoulder button often generates a swirl of words around Ethan, representing his thoughts or topics of conversation, once he is around other people. This helps the player as a hint system.

This first Ethan chapter is your tutorial, the first gaming tutorial I've ever played consisting entirely of actions possible in the real world. In other words, Heavy Rain begins in an un-fantastic way, taking the aforementioned risk of lulling its players to disinterest. But the developers maintain that their quiet moments and quotidian options are character-building moments, mood-setters that make later actions more impactful. Sure enough, when one of Ethan's sons goes missing in a mall in the next chapter, it feels like it matters. And it's hard to say if it would have felt so relevant had the game not enabled the player to have Ethan horse around with his sons in the backyard one scene earlier.

About that backyard scene. There's a triumph there in the presentation of a challenging option. Once his wife and kids had returned from the store, I had made Ethan go outside to the backyard with the boys. The two sons vied for their father's attention and the game asked the player to choose: Who do you play with first? Who do you gleefully swing around like a propellor first, among these two cheerful boys jumping up and begging you to pick them? It's the simplest and seemingly least-perilous question posed in this or any other PlayStation 3 game. There's no stakes of life or death. But the feeling does seep in that something else is at stake: How the boys feel and how the one who won't be chosen first will lreact. Games seldom evoke such subtle and empathetic reactions. Heavy Rain doing it there, strikes the right note.

The game unfolds in chapters. Soon, Ethan's life is ruined, with death having struck the family and Ethan resigned to live by himself, struggling to maintain being a decent father while suffering mysterious blackouts. At this point the game's skies get dark.

Each chapter is established with some text that doesn't just name the day but notes the amount of rainfall. Sunshine is gone as the player becomes vexed with simpler things, like figuring out whether to force a child to do his homework or what to make for a dinner — and the domestic despair of not being able to find any as it gets later and later.

The player gets control of new characters in new chapters, taking command of an overweight, middle-aged private detective who visits a prostitute to speak to her about her son, a victim of the Origami Killer. The player controls Madison Page, in a nighttime scene played intermittently with Page in her underwear or, when she's showering, nude. The sequence might seem pandering and overly sexualized until those themes are twisted and made all the more disturbing when men seem to break into her apartment to attack her. She, with the player in control, can fight them off, as Heavy Rain prompts the player to input series of button presses and control stick swings to choreograph the fight (Bad timing in this game might result in a missed punch or, in a less threatening moment, a dropping of the grocery bag you were supposed to be taking from your wife).

A fourth character, Norman Jaden, is an FBI profiler who seeks clues to the identity of the Origami Killer with the help of some advanced glasses and glove that allow the player to produce a clue-highlighting circle of light. Jaden's sequences, using that clue-finding mechanic, are the most classically game-like in Heavy Rain.

Quantic Dream has promised a malleable story and one with consequences. Those claims were hard to test in the incomplete build I have of the game. I recognized options for how Ethan could interact with one of his sons, but I didn't see consequences yet about how that would affect their interactions later in the game. I had the private detective, Scott Shelby, play out the convenience store stick-up scene in two very different ways (honestly, I was trying to get him killed the second time), yet each scenario ended the chapter in the exact same way. It feels like there are choices, but it's hard to recognize if and how they matter. That they will is supposed to be one of the draws. After all, the game's executive producer, Quantic Dream CEO Guilaume de Fondaumiere told me recently in New York that any one of the four characters I played can die — and die early. The game has approximately 20 endings. So there is variation, just, for better or worse, nothing that is obvious about it in the early going.

Another more worrisome detail is the quality of the voice-acting, which sounds as if accents are being suppressed and characters are talking in isolation, conversation being stitched together rather than occurring in person. There is time for that to be improved.

It's hard to convey just how much of a sad experience Heavy Rain is without giving away some of the plot. It might suffice to say that it seems that almost every major character in this preview build has experienced a death of someone close to them. That sadness weighs on their moods, is worn on their faces and matches the relatively slow movement and quiet activities of this game — or interactive drama.

What was building by the time my preview build reached its end was a decent mystery about who this killer was but also a deeper interest, in me, as to how these four main characters would wind up. I want to know what happens next, what I can make them do and where their emotional journeys will land them. These are not the impulses I typically have about game characters. There is no ultimate weapon to seek, not level to conquer, no stat to raise. I didn't mind the quiet actions, though the brushing of teeth, washing of hands, turning on and off of light switches was a little more than I expected.

I finished the preview the least interested in playing Ethan the father, in terms of the game mechanics available to this sad and broken man. The other characters were more dynamic and physically fun to play. But I find myself drawn to the emotion of Ethan's story the most and I do desire to know what happens next. I'm interested in feelings and drama. So far, that change of pace is a welcome one.

Heavy Rain ships for the PlayStation 3 in the first quarter of 2010.

Writing for PopMatters, G. Christopher Williams picked up on an interview with Quantic Dream, the developer of Heavy Rain, in which the writer confessed he felt uncomfortable being forced to perform the striptease. "Fantastic," Quantic Dream's David Cage tells Game Informer. "You know what? That is exactly what we wanted. ... Yes, it's a strong moment for the character. But if we managed to make you feel uncomfortable it is because at some point we made you believe you were Madison."

This is a departure from other gameplay-based depictions of sex, Williams argues, where the object was either to reveal skin or engage in a mini-game that "reduces sex to the stabbing motions of button mashing." He says the breakthrough lies not necessarily in a mature depiction of sex, but in delivering a new perspective on how it is understood, even if it means forcing someone in an opposite gender role to see its more degrading side.

The Gleam of Electric Sex: What Video Games Might (or Might Not) Teach Us About Sex [PopMatters, Oct. 14.]

If I am interpreting Cage's thinking correctly, he seems to be suggesting that Heavy Rain is moving beyond the voyeuristic simulations of sexuality offered by countless other forms of more passive media and also beyond simply making a participatory simulation of sexuality into a mere simulation of the "‘ol in-out, in-out". Instead, what seems to be offered here is a potential simulation of some of the psychology of the sexual experience.

In this particular instance, the psychology is particularly fascinating as it is likely a rather novel experience for the largest demographic of video game players, males. If feminist theory concerning the tendency for women to become the object of the male gaze holds any credence, the experience of being made object to that gaze may be an entirely new experience for many players. Indeed, it may also be an uncomfortable one as traditional gender roles and perspectives may be tested and reversed as a result of being made to "believe you were Madison" because players will participate in this humiliating act rather than merely view it.

Certainly, Cage and Quantic Dream's efforts are not entirely new. Many video game players have toyed with gender bending experiments such as playing avatars that represent themselves as the opposite of their own gender. I have played female avatars in online games and have noted differences in the ways that I am treated when playing as a female character as opposed to a male character. Largely, my own experience had led me to observe that I seemed to receive a lot more gifts from other players when playing as a female (which may suggest something about cultural norms and expectations concerning male-female relationships).

However, this limited sort of experience was not placed in the context of a story or a character whose entire personality is coded as female (my avatar was always driven by my own personality as I am not one to play "in character" in games, not attempting then to specifically act like the character that I am playing in the context of the gaming world). Adding layers of storytelling and the more objective, dramatic qualities of scripted and directed behaviors into this mix may produce more focused statements on sexuality than we have seen in gaming thus far and may push this participatory art in directions that the passive arts are limited in exploring. Because we may have to reconsider who we are as we play out the experiences of someone else. Games have the potential to create empathy with characters rather than the sympathy that film or books might evoke in watching someone else suffer or experience pleasure.

- G. Christopher Williams

Weekend Reader is Kotaku's look at the critical thinking in, and of video games. It appears Saturdays at noon. Please take the time to read the full article cited before getting involved in the debate here.

Quantic Dream founder David Cage spoke to Videogamer.com at Gamescom last week about the possibility for additional, post-release downloadable content for the cinematic action adventure Heavy Rain, going out of his way to make sure players understand that the company wouldn't simply be releasing content that didn't make it into the retail release.

"It's a self-contained experience. We won't release the end of the game as DLC that you need to pay for. The game has all the scenes it's supposed to have. It's a complete story," Cage told VideoGamer.com at Gamescom last week. "But we are talking with Sony at the moment about having maybe extra downloadable content, maybe with prequels or sequels about the characters. I'm sure people will get attached to some of them and will want to know them even better."

I'd say he's right. I would have killed for downloadable content for Omikron or Indigo Prophecy, two of the studio's previous games lauded for their storytelling. More content from Quantic Dream is always welcome.

Heavy Rain sequels and prequels possible through DLC [Videogamer.com]

Since Quantic Dream had already thoroughly teased the adventures of newly revealed character Ethan Mars at Sony's Gamescom press conference, our demo focused on the fourth and final playable character, Scott Shelby. In Heavy Rain, Shelby's been hired to do a little detective work on the Origami Killer, in service to those who have long lost loved ones to the mysterious serial killer. The Shelby segment shown to us didn't reveal much of the game's story line, instead putting a heavy emphasis on its characters and the consequences of their choices.

The brief scene was set in a convenience store run by a man named Hassan, father of one of the Origami Killer's victims. Shelby's there to interview Hassan, but the private dick finds it hard to get anything out of the shop owner who is clearly still hurting from the loss of his son. Shelby's solution? Make use of his proximity to convenience and pick up some asthma inhalers.

Whilst shopping for said inhalers, Hassan's Shop is robbed by a young and jittery thief. Shelby, luckily out of sight, has a choice to make.

Fondaumièr showed us the results of one of those choices, with Shelby slowly creeping down one of the store aisles directly behind the thief. Along the way, Shelby nearly knocked over what appeared to be a box of detergent, but Fondaumièr was dexterous enough to catch it via an on-screen prompt, quietly replacing the box. He then, just as quietly, pulled a bottle of booze from the shelf to his left. Sneaking up behind the assailant, Fondaumièr swung the PS3 controller downward, knocking the thief unconscious.

Hold up averted.

Shelby's alternate attempt wasn't as cut and dry. Fondaumièr instead chose a different aisle to sneak down. Upon exiting, he found himself perpendicular to the thief who spotted Shelby in his peripheral.

At the thief's nervous request Shelby held his arms up—really, Fondaumièr held the R1 and L1 buttons on the DualShock controller—and attempted to talk the thief down. Negotiating is as technically simple as pressing one of the controller's face buttons, but you'll have to make the right decision. Fondaumièr did, choosing a series of soothing, grounding dialogue options that tied into the game's thread of love and loss.

The demo didn't show off much that we didn't already know about. We've seen Heavy Rain in action multiple times and have become familiar with its control scheme, its mechanic of letting the player hear the internal thoughts of its cast, and the complex threads that weave between each of the four characters' respective stories. Co-creator David Cage has been careful about not revealing much in the way of intertwining plot, so we'll be interested to see how scenarios and characters overlap in the final product.

What we saw at Gamescom was as consistently good as Heavy Rain has been over the past year in its public showings—it's now been a year since we first saw a playable build. It's not due to hit PlayStation 3s until sometime next year, so we're guessing there's still more yet to be revealed about the game.

We'll let you know our internal thoughts on those details when the time comes.

What you make of it all is another matter. It...looks a lot like Indigo Prophecy to me. Indigo Prophecy meets They Live.

And for the record, those are just two of my favourite things.

These pics (via Superannuation) come from the portfolio of Morgan Yon, a concept artist who used to work for Quantic Dream between 2006-2008. They're dark! They're moody! They're brooding.

UPDATE - Gallery fixed, pics now working!

[Morgan Yon]

What sort of statistics, you ask? How about numbers regarding the game's 2,000 page script, developed over a period of 15 months and based on 6,000 pages of notes and reference. It contains more than 40,000 words of non-linear dialog, compromising 60 15 to 20 minute long scenes. A very impressive undertaking.

Equally as impressive is the amount of work that went into motion capture, which took place on-site at the Quantic Dream offices in Paris. More than 70 actors and stuntmen participated in recording 30,000 unique animations for the title, requiring 170 days of shooting spread across 9 months.

After seeing these statistics, all I can do is hope the game winds up a massive success, because anything less than that wouldn't have been worth all of this trouble. As long as the action is more accessible than Omikron and the story less twisted than Indigo Prophecy they should do just fine.

Heavy Rain's vital statistics [Eurogamer]

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]

I can’t really tell you too much about what the story’s about or how it’s going to work with the characters, all I can tell you that your character - the main character - can die, and the story will continue.

That's creator David Cage, who goes on to say that, yes, this means you can go on playing, just not with the main character. So long as this means we don't have to endure a torturous QTE sequence to bring her back to life, OK, Cage, we're interested.

Heavy Rain: If the main girl dies, you can keep playing the “big story” [VG247]

We've already written about the driving game inspired character control — the R2 button moves her forward, with the left analog steering her head and shoulders — so let's focus on how everything else is done.

After discussing how the character walks, Cage showed us how to interact with objects. Outside of the residence that the protagonist was investigating were a pair of metal trashcans and a mailbox. Both could be opened with the right analog stick, using forward and back motions that translated to on-screen movement. Pulling back on the stick fully opened the mailbox door fully, pushing it forward closed it. You may have seen this interactivity showcased in the game's Games Convention trailer, with the character opening a refrigerator with a sweeping arc of the right analog stick.

Heading up to the house's front door, a context sensitive control scheme appeared in the bottom right corner, giving us two options — knock or ring the doorbell. Both could done repeatedly, with a side to side motion of the right stick.

Following that, another context sensitive control option became available, letting the player call out to whomever might be inside. This was done with SIXAXIS control, giving us three dialogue options. This could be done in concert with the knocking/doorbell-ringing for maximum annoyance to whomever might be at home.

As the character walked around the house's right side, we encountered a barrel. It wasn't of the exploding type, just a regular, non-combustible barrel that Cage wanted to use as a step. Pushing the object over with the square button, his controlling assistant pushed it forward with a thrust forward of the SIXAXIS. To right it again, he hit the square button.

Heavy Rain also gives players access to internal dialogue. Using the L1 button, we can listen to the main character's thoughts, giving players helpful clues about how to progress or simply to learn her opinion about the pros and cons of the current situation. There were two options when deciding whether to break and enter the house, one "daring", one "cautious."

Much of what we saw in the house was controlled via these methods, with brief Quick Time Events requiring randomized button presses. One, triggered by bumping into an overturned bottle, simply required a quick push of the triangle button.

Perhaps the most interesting implementation of the PlayStation 3 controller was during one of the stealth-action sequences. Forced to hide from the killer during the demo, the protagonist sneaked behind an open door, something that required the player hold X, then the R1 button, then the triangle button.

Another version of this sort of finger Twister game occurred when she sought shelter in a large wardrobe, requiring four consecutive button presses. We didn't actually see anyone from Quantic Dream fail at this, but it added a nice bit of tension to the scene.

Some of these control methods have been featured in Quantic Dream's previous games, but Heavy Rain looks to bring them all together into a cohesive package that feels thoroughly well implemented. We definitely look forward to going hands-on with the PlayStation 3 controller whenever Sony decides that's something it wants us to do.

He compared Heavy Rain's story structure to a rubber band, one that can be deformed and stretched by your choices in-game. Cage told us that what we were about to see would help us remain spoiler-free — our demo was a standalone scenario, not integral to the game's actual story.

After wrapping up his excited sales pitch — and showing us the "best looking menu of the show" featuring motion captured eyes — we began our first look at Heavy Rain.

Heavy Rain's main character, the woman seen in the first teaser, arrived via motorcycle at her destination, a taxidermist's residence/workshop. Based on a conversation she had on the ride in, we learn that she's an investigative journalist on the hunt for the Origami Killer. In the demo, she visits the house of Leland White, a suspect in an unidentified murder case.

Standing outside in the pouring rain, we got our first taste of Heavy Rain's non-traditional control scheme. Cage lamented the use of an analog stick to control a character in 3D space, in relation to an ever changing camera angle, explaining Quantic Dream's implementation.

Similar to the method of moving your character in the developer's own Indigo Prophecy, Heavy Rain uses a racing game inspired layout. You'll use the R2 button as an accelerator to move forward, steering her head and shoulders to guide her with the left analog stick. This gave her movement through the space a much more fluid feel, with no jittering or awkward ambling.

(We'll talk more about Heavy Rain's control scheme in another post, because of its rather unique implementation, and focus more on the action here.)

After attempting to go through the front door, getting no response, the character moved into the house, through an open kitchen window. Transitioning through the demo level's highly detailed environments, we didn't see any loading, as Cage says the game will stream data from the disc and hide load times elegantly.

The kitchen environment floored us with the game's attention to detail. Everything in the game looked natural, lifelike, with high resolution wallpaper textures and softly casted shadows. With almost no HUD — you'll only see contextual cues to interact with objects and complete "Quick Time Events" — there's little in Heavy Rain to remind you that you're playing a video game. The near photorealistic environments and characters certainly help.

The main character continued her investigation indoors, finding clues in the fireplace and garage. During these moments, the game dropped hints about how the environment will behave. For example, while in the garage, surveying a blood stain on the floor, she attempted to raise the garage door, which had been locked from the outside. Flipping a switch, the door raised, then became stuck. Similarly, when walking upstairs, floorboards creaked. Both were important environmental factors that played out later.

While the main character was idle, mentally processing some evidence she'd unearthed, the game seemed to take control of the camera. Cutting and panning across the room, showing off realistic reflective surfaces on a series of picture frames, focusing on the numerous mounted heads in the taxidermist's house. The changing view lent the game more of a cinematic feel and the cuts were surprisingly well edited on the fly.

After the protagonist went upstairs, uncovering the corpses of a half-dozen women — all taxidermically preserved in a variety of sensual poses and situations — the owner of the house came home. The game's camera then went split screen, giving us a view of the killer and the heroine. After listening to her internal thoughts, something the player can do at branches in the game's story, she was determined to get the hell out.

As she crept downstairs, avoiding the creaking floorboard with a QTE and out of the garage, we had a constant camera view of the taxidermist (who occupied about a third of the screen), making for an incredibly tense escape.

Cage then showed us a different version of that scene, picking up the moment the killer returned home. After failing to stay quiet, the killer found the main character hiding in a wardrobe. This kicked off a much more action oriented series of events, with numerous Dragon's Lair-style reflex focused button presses. In between these Quick Time Events the Quantic Dream rep was in control of the character, whose animation changed to a more panicked style. She was clutching walls and taking missteps down stairs, conveying fear through animation and facial expression.

The QTEs, not something I'm particularly fond of, mind you, looked to be implemented well. They were graphically designed well too, with a clean black and white button hovering above the object she was interacting with (or avoiding). That means that as the knife was being swiped at her, the button graphic followed the arc of the killer's stab. It was a nice touch.

This particular scenario, Cage said, was indicative of what will be included in the final game, estimating that some 50 or 60 would be included when the Heavy Rain shipped. Each would offer multiple outcomes, scenarios that could be replayed to allow for new perspectives on the story.

To say that we were impressed by Heavy Rain would be an understatement. Quantic Dream is certainly sitting on something unique with the game, with what appears to be a balanced blend of gameplay and cinematic storytelling. It also happens to be the second best game we've seen at Games Convention, graphically.

Keep your eyes peeled for the demo — no, we don't know when that's coming — because we suspect it will look exactly like what we saw at Leipzig. And you'll probably think it's amazing, too.

We watched the game's protagonist, seen in the 'casting call' trailer shown at E3 years ago, investigated an abandoned house, filled with what we assume to be ghosts frozen in time. Visually, the game looked spectacular and moody, heavy in sepia tones but with occasional dashes of primary color, but we'll have more in-depth impressions of Heavy Rain when we see it behind closed doors tomorrow.

Other things we learn about Heavy Rain is it features an obese man, plus the front and back of a motorcycle. We're sure to learn much more about Heavy Rain at the Leipzig Games Convention. Promise.

Heavy Rain [Spilzonen]

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]