We don’t know very much about far-off PS3 exclusive Heavy Rain. The first and only piece of media which has been released for the title was "The Casting," an emotionally charged tech demo shown at E3 2006. It was powerful, convincing, but still remained somewhat within the infamous Uncanny Valley.
Apparently, that’s all about to change. In an interview with GI.biz, Guillaume de Fondaumière revealed some juicy tidbits regarding Heavy Rain.
"I think when we showed The Casting everyone agreed it was nice and it really showed that there was a potential for creating virtual actors, but we’re still at this frontier where we don’t totally suspend disbelief. We still have this uncanny valley to bridge. But today, I can officially announce that there is no uncanny valley any more, not in real-time."
He continued, "With our next project we’re going to demonstrate with hundreds of characters that we can have extremely realistic characters that not only move like real actors but express themselves through facial animations and speech like real actors, and are extremely accurate to the actors they are portraying."
Speaking of actors, they apparently have some A-listers lined up for Heavy Rain.
"We had a meeting with Leonardo Di Caprio in 2004 and we tried to convince him to play in one of our future games – at the time we had Fahrenheit to show him. He liked it very much, but he politely explained to us that we still were not at the level that he’d expect the technology to be at in order to give us his time and be able to portray his performance."
"Today, it’s very different. We’re talking with class A actors. These Hollywood actors are asking us about the scenario and the stories as the technical aspects are taken care of. We’ve been able to demonstrate that we’re capable of portraying the performance. They are asking, ‘what’s the subject matter, what’s the role?’"
Finally, Fondaumière spoke regarding the PS3 itself.
"We believe that the PlayStation 3 is going to be extremely successful, as successful as the PlayStation 2. The other point is that when you look at the architecture of the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 you see huge differences and it’s extremely difficult to create games of the same visual quality on both platforms. Even from an economical standpoint, if you really want to give the best shot on both platforms you have to invest far more money than just spending the money on the one platform. Or you have simple ports, which are of less quality.
"At Quantic we have high standards and we really want to give our fans the best possible experience with our creations and we didn’t want to downgrade any version by porting a game. It was far more important to chose the right machine where we could express ourselves and give it the best shot."
More on Quantic Dream’s upcoming PS3 title as soon as it’s available.