Interviews// Inside Heavy Rain

SPOnG: So you think people will want to play through again, having seen the story before? Is there enough difference in the different paths you take that people will be compelled to come back?

Guillaume de Fondaumière: For us the most important element in the game is to give players the possibility to live and choose their own story. Whether players will either come back each time and try the different possibilities, it really depends on the gamer.

We give these possibilities, the game is saving all the time, so you always have the possibility to go back and choose a different path or do something different, or talk differently to a person, or engage or not into a relationship. So, there is this possibility, but we’d like very much for players to bear the responsibility for their actions, play the game through. And if at one point they believe that it will be worth exploring other possibilities, maybe play through to the end and come back to that particular point and play differently, I think this would be more interesting.

We give the possibility to players to really choose how they want to play.


SPOnG: Will there be a trophy, then, for playing through without going back to any of your saves?

Guillaume de Fondaumière: We haven’t figured out, as of yet, how the trophy system is going to work. It’s not necessarily a game that is conceptually in line with what trophies should do. Again, it’s not about succeeding or failing. It’s not about doing the right thing or doing the wrong thing. It’s about the journey. The journey is the most important thing.

So, to a certain degree, I would say we’re not rewarding the players in a conventional way. The reward is the emotional experience, is how good the story is from the player’s perspective. I guess it should be the other way around. It should be gamers giving us trophies (grins) rather than us giving players trophies!

But we’ll of course support trophies and we’re trying to find the right way to integrate trophies into the game.


SPOnG: OK. So, you’ve got four main characters, all of which are playable and, if you die, you move onto another character. Is there a risk that, with players switching characters, they’ll become ‘de-immersed’ from the game?

Guillaume de Fondaumière: I don’t think so. I think it’s not an experiment, we see it in a lot of movies. They follow different characters, and the fact that you’re following these different characters is only a way to give you different perspectives on the story. I think it only adds to the experience, and I don’t think that you’re going to lose the immersion because of that.

I think what is very important in the story and in the characterisation is to present the characters in such a way that you get acquainted (with) them, that you understand their motivations, and if we’re successful in that, I think that players will find it interesting to be able to play the story from different angles, and to see it from different perspectives.