Heavy Rain

Heavy Rain is an adventure game for the PS3 being developed by the French company Quantic Dream. Rain is the company's follow-up to their 2005 title Indigo Prophecy (PC, PS2, Xbox). At the moment, little is known about Rain's story or design. However, a highly talked about tech-demo, which featured hyper-realistic character animation, appeared at the 2006 E3 convention and has made Rain a highly anticipated title. The game uses fully virtual actors with the ability to show high levels of emotion.

The demo is titled “Hard Rain: The Casting,” and is portrayed more as a literal casting session for the game itself, rather than an actual demo of Hard Rain. The demo begins from the first-person shaky view of a camera, which focuses in on Mary Smith, who is being auditioned. She makes her way uneasily to her chair. She talks nervously about her few unsuccessful experience with films, saying “there's always something wrong with me,” which is why she never gets roles. The scene changes from the white, bland audition room to a detailed kitchen area in a house. She goes on to recite her lines for the audition, describing how she met a man outside a movie theater in the rain, addressing him as “you,” in the third-person. “Three months later we were getting married,” she says. She describes this as a “corny romance.” She then goes on to describe how she began to suspect her husband of infidelity, finally seeing him firsthand go to a hotel with another woman. She gets out a gun, points it directly at her head, explaining that it might be better for her to end her own life. But she changes her mind, saying she decides to wait for her husband to get home, so she can get her revenge for “turning my life into a soap opera cliche.” The gun disappears, the kitchen changes back to a bland audition room, and the man behind the camera says that someone will get in touch with her. Mary leaves.