Heavy Rain was officially announced at E3 2006 and is scheduled to be released in early 2010 under the genre of interactive drama. It is developed by Quantic Dream and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 3 game console. The game runs on a PhysX (game physics) engine and is directed by Quantic Dream’s founder and CEO David Cage who wrote and directed the studio’s two previous games as well. According to the director, Heavy Rain will be “a very dark film noir thriller with mature themes”, without any supernatural elements, and that the “real message (of the game) is about how far you’re willing to go to save someone you love. In terms of the setting, the director has confirmed that there will be no big free-roaming city like GTA, as the flow of the story will then be hard to control, however there will be big sets, with a crowd, heavy populated areas like a mall and a subway, with the gameplay making use of those aspects too. There are four playable characters in the game, comprising of an FBI profiler named Norman Jayden, a private detective named Scott Shelby, an architect named Ethan Mars, and a journalist named Madison Paige, all of which are said to be looking for a serial killer known as “The Origami Killer”. Unlike other games, Heavy Rain will use a unique control scheme that includes a trigger button on the PlayStation 3 controller that will move the character forward, as well as take advantage of the button’s analogue function, allowing players to control the speed of the character’s movement by pressing harder or softer on the button. By having the left analogue stick control the movement of the character’s head and the direction he move in relation to where he is looking, the character’s movement will be free from the perspective of the camera, with the rest of the game played using a series of context sensitive actions and quick time events.
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