Hellsing321
Member
Its not even important when its first introduced. Ethan just casually mentions it to himself and its never brought up again.INDIGO_CYCLOPS said:
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David Cage Q&A: Heavy Rain Sales & Critical Response Beyond His Wildest Dreams
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GhaleonQ said:
Why do you think bad actions have to be punished and good actions rewarded? That's not a particularly mature take on storytelling, or life for that matter. When I was a kid I stole a candy bar. I didn't become a master thief, or an obese hoarder, or whatever convenient plot turn you'd stick in my story. I ate it, enjoyed it, didn't get caught, felt bad, and never did it again.
In the game, I didn't feel bad about
killing the drug dealer. He picked his line of work. I felt terrible about killing the crazy guy, though.
I'm not trying to claim it's great literature or anything, but I think you're being way too dismissive. A story not reaching the level of Brothers K doesn't make it immature.
Branduil said:
How do you say MacGuffin in French?
Alex
Member
Fairly iffy title, I'd rather play an infinite number of other adventure games that don't let a cinematic nature get in the way.The story didn't do much for me, even though I appreciated the tone swap but more importantly a lot more could've been done with the theme of the game for the actual, yknow, gameplay portion
Of course, it was still a nice speed bump between spoon-fed beat 'em ups and shooters being sucked off the other 11 months of the year. I dont really regret nabbing it.
Of course, it was still a nice speed bump between spoon-fed beat 'em ups and shooters being sucked off the other 11 months of the year. I dont really regret nabbing it.
Night_Trekker
Member
bobbytkc said:
No, he really is that easy to hate.
speculawyer
Member
Good for him. The game definitely is definitely different than most of what is out there and it is really good to have diversity.
VegaShinra
Junior Member
On GTTV Cage said we'll see the next game sooner than we think and he has written the game already. 
Dabanton said:
you have got to be kidding me. since when has it been a sin to have an opinion? Peter Molyneux has been eulogising about emotional attachment to characters for years, and strong emotional response to when a character dies. He also has a track record of over-promising and under-delivering. I don't see it as a troll toward 360 specifically because he's been doing it since before his MGStudios days. I really don't think he is the right man to lead those studios. I could turn out to be wrong, and he could be the best thing ever with the correct amount of funding.
BaronLundi
Member
jcm said:
MacGuffin !
Since the explanation given by Hitchcock appears in the legendary interview/book with François Truffaut, i'm pretty sure anyone interested in cinema in France knows what a MacGuffin is.
VegaShinra said:On GTTV Cage said we'll see the next game sooner than we think and he has written the game already.
That's really cool. I love the Joystiq interview as well where he talks about having the pipeline and workflow refined and has now acquired the visual and communicative language behind this new type of gaming format. I think that's some really solid, tangible stuff he's talking about and Sony should really tie down the studio.
F#A#Oo said:
How do you want us not to be proud when we're the awesomest people in creation!
Good for him, good for his team, good for videogames. Even though it's not the only direction I want videogames to pursue I hope Heavy Rain gives birth to a whole new genre. There's good stuff to be done within (and outside hopefully) of that framework.
Well...good on him i guess.
I personally loved the game...that is when i completely stopped thinking about it after the
. I tore into the game quite a bit during my playthrough as it has IN MY OPINION; shallow characters, weak writing, and other glaring problems (plot twist, character thought system, red herring of which you can say for more than one of the issues (one being the Ethan Mars 'flashback' scenes)). I'd like to go on the red herring "technique" *eh-hum* present in Heavy Rain, but I'll keep it short; prettied up words for shit writing.
But that isn't to say that i didn't like it, i thoroughly enjoyed it and exactly got what i wanted: A game that tries to make the players connect with the characters situation emotionally, and on the whole an intense story driven experience. I applaud+love the attempt, but bash upon the afterthought.
Though as i said, i absolutely loved it, but when given a few moments to think about it, the games supposed storytelling/narrative strengths being wildly lauded are it's biggest weaknesses and problems. But who gives a damn, Cage improved from his previous effort so good on him, plus i never laughed so hard in my life for awhile during the epic opening dive.:lol
I personally loved the game...that is when i completely stopped thinking about it after the
Ethan Mars diving son moment
But that isn't to say that i didn't like it, i thoroughly enjoyed it and exactly got what i wanted: A game that tries to make the players connect with the characters situation emotionally, and on the whole an intense story driven experience. I applaud+love the attempt, but bash upon the afterthought.
Though as i said, i absolutely loved it, but when given a few moments to think about it, the games supposed storytelling/narrative strengths being wildly lauded are it's biggest weaknesses and problems. But who gives a damn, Cage improved from his previous effort so good on him, plus i never laughed so hard in my life for awhile during the epic opening dive.:lol
GhaleonQ
Member
andycapps said:
This is perhaps something more related to the official topic, but I'll reiterate that the game is built around its violent sequences (opening excluded). 1 more time:
1. Series like Gabriel Knight have much less violence, time-wise, than Heavy Rain, and they're among the most respected adventure games there are.
2. Because, say, Gabriel Knight has more creative gameplay, it needn't focus around the murder parts. The parts between violent outbursts are just as gripping, both because of the game's atmosphere and because the designers focused on the puzzles in between action/escape sequences. Since a lot of people have complained about the "boring" introduction and very few people have celebrated the "walk to a cutscene or item" segments, the game depends heavily on the stuff Cage implied is lower than his work. I don't care if he says that his games evoke emotion (because, as baffling as it is to me, they're designed to do so and they do the job for many). Dishonestly like this is why he bothers me.
andycapps said:
andy, for all of my whinging, I respect your (and everyone else's opinion) when it comes to appreciating something different, risky, story-driven, et cetera. Since you didn't read every post in the topic, I'll reiterate here that I WOULD LOVE NOTHING MORE THAN FOR 1/2-1/3 OF THE GAMES INDUSTRY to be dominated by story-driven games (with more creative and genre-blending gameplay). WE'RE NO SO DIFFERENT, YOU AND I. Blah, blah. I can't say I'm glad Quantic Dream exists, but I'm glad that a lot of people are taking baby steps toward mature storytelling in games.
Again, though, the topic is about David Cage's self-delusion. I generally stopped posting in the Heavy Rain topic because I felt that the others and I litigated it as far as it was going to go. So, Heavy Rain's cleared the "unique" bar (so that's settled), we disagree on its quality (so that's settled), but you're hedging your bets on his actual opinion of himself (so that's not settled). That's the point of this topic. His game did not jettison violence to the extent that (I suppose, subjectively) better graphic adventure crime thrillers have. Therefore, he should shut up. Gabriel Knight (and The Last Express and others) are brilliant, but they aren't mature works on par with the lower ranks of other forms. Jane Jensen hasn't claimed that Grey Matter is going to reinvent the language of video game storytelling, you know. While I see how its less adolescent than Gears Of War, I don't know why you, reviewers, or whoever claim Heavy Rain is of a different species than Cing's games, Gabriel Knight, The Last Express, Ace Attorney, Famicom Detective Club, Sherlock Holmes, In Memorium, or any of the other murder mysteries previously released.
andycapps said:
And I wouldn't deny you that.
I should make myself more clear, because my statement doesn't really make sense. Let's drop this point, because it's impossible to parse what Cage meant, since he (presumably) was speaking English. He says that that moment's important because the player role-plays, and then he says immediately afterward that it's due to suspension of disbelief (i.e., that you are the character). That's a direct contradiction, so we can't make anything productive from it.
andycapps said:
I tried to give examples earlier about what such a game would look like, even with divergent gameplay paths. You can express the same themes in different ways. Hell, that's a large part of what storytelling is. Again, I barely care about plotholes. My original point was that mature storytelling should generally have mature themes. Heavy Rain doesn't have mature themes, even though such a thing has been done before in a similar way. Because it doesn't have mature themes, we need to judge it on its craft. That's when errors like improper use of unreliable narrators, red herrings that aren't red herrings, bad dialogue, et cetera come into play. So, if you don't have craft and you don't have themes, you don't have a mature work. Games have evoked simple emotions like Heavy Rain does for years (and I've tried to list them), so it's nothing out-of-the-ordinary. It's just different.
BaronLundi said:
*laughs* I thought I was picking a really commercial movie, but Bak did win a 2nd place award from Cannes (losing to Farenheit 9/11, so maybe they had a weird jury that year). Anyway, I didn't mean that it had to be that good, just that it could generally be done. When I make comparisons, I'm not trying to say that Love-De-Lic should top Dostoevskii. I'm trying to say that games can explore complex themes or situations, even though they won't likely express them as well yet. Otherwise, see my above response.
BaronLundi said:You keep bringing up good reference here and that makes me even more puzzled as to your reasons for disliking HR so much (emphasis on "so much").
I enjoyed those 2 games, for different reasons and your Ico description is spot on. And still I enjoyed Heavy Rain's gameplay (yes) and way of unfolding it's (mature
I think gamers suffer from the same inferiority complex that comics fans do. Whenever something different comes along, people praise it largely unconditionally. This is especially true when it seems to be at the pinnacle of its genre, since players can't imagine how something could be improved. Comics fans' agitation praise Love And Rockets or The Dark Knight Returns or Watchmen or Asterios Polyp to the extent that they make respected publications' best-of lists against proper literature! That's not to say that 1 form is inferior to another (my top 10 for proof: Winsor McCay, Seth, Yves Chaland, Gary Larson, Jim Woodring, Mark Kalesniko, Osamu Tezuka, Noboru Oshiro, Alain Saint-Ogan, Dave Sim), just that smarter and more creative people are drawn to comics (and video games) much less often than they are to music or poetry.
When building up a form that we love, we needn't praise everything novel and we needn't lower our standards. Something, something, soft bigotry of low expectations. So, I'm comparing everything to the pinnacle of their forms (and accounting for focus). That's not to say that I demand everything MATCH the pinnacle, just that we note the gulf between them.
Replicant said:
What's the fan consensus, again?
woxel1 said:
1. Uh, "critics are easily manipulated" is not the point you want to make here I think. Fahrenheit has an 85% rating on Gamerankings.
2. http://www.theyshootpictures.com/gf1000_top100films26-50.htm Is that laughable? I think so.
I don't think anyone praises Hitchcock's writers for their maturity, and I KNOW that no one forgot his (or other famous directors') lesser works. He always, always made pulp. The reason his movies are successful is because he innovated brilliantly in every technical aspect and his movies' plotting is impeccable (again, Cage could learn things). That's just as admirable, artistically, as the other stuff. If you can get critics and fans to recommend a clunker like Rope just because his filmmaking technique's so impeccable, you're a master. "Alfred Hitchcock was an arrogant hack whose lasting influence on cinema is that he taught bad filmmakers to go back to film school before insulting 1 of the 5 greatest technicians cinema's produced."
jcm said:
That's not what I wrote. Characters are typically influenced by the plot. The popular awful horror film series ripoff is bafflingly irrelevant to the rest of the story. The scene in question is bafflingly irrelevant to the rest of the story. Too many scenes are independent, choppy setpieces. Bad dramatic television shows get criticized for the same thing. If 1 episode doesn't affect the next, the producer's insulted the viewer. The player doesn't need to be PUNISHED or REWARDED, just affected. 1 way to do that is through good storytelling, which Cage can't do. So, I suggested that he alter gameplay. After the camera scene, your controls, fight sequences, vision, story, or vitality could be affected by your actions. Then, the game's treated you with respect. Otherwise, it manipulated you by plot points. It's just a bad superhero comic (SOMEONE WAS RAPED! BE SAD! SOMEONE PUNCHED SOMEONE! SAY, "AWESOME!" SOMEONE WAS RESURRECTED AFTER A LONG HIATUS! BE EXCITED!).
00011000 said:
00011000 said:
*sigh* Look at the MacGuffin definition again. It IS a red herring. It's just a bad one that breaks the rules, so it would get cut by any editor or real writer.
Count of Monte Sawed-Off
un33dab@dpu$$y
Holy shit, is Gray Matter actually coming out!?
BaronLundi
Member
GhaleonQ said:
And it wasn't even when Sean Penn was president of the Jury (Tarentino was if I remember well). Typical case of a political stance being preferred to genuine appreciation.
GhaleonQ said:
I still think that Heavy Rain constitutes a step in the right direction in that regard.
GhaleonQ said:
I don't for neither of those media. Maybe because where I live comics are generally seen as a serious form of art capable of addressing adult themes. Videogames are still in infancy though, and again, Heavy Rain is a step forward, as far as I'm concerned.
GhaleonQ said:
Good name dropping again
Heavy Rain story and storytelling is nowhere near as good and refined as those you would find in a Seth (or Moore, Hernandez or even Bendis) book. It's certainly not as intricate and mature as Chris Ware's or (another favorite of mine) Daniel Clowes' productions. Still I think it really succeeds in one domain that (in my gaming experience) is unheard of : the gut-level empathy you may sincerelyfeel for the characters and their ordeals. It's not all the way through the game though but in many scenes the kind of connection I had with the characters' feelings and agenda, the sense of urgency and panic I experienced psychologically (and physiologically : heart pounding, sweaty palms) was truly a first.
This is what I'm praising : I was both compelled and truly entertained although the game was by no means "fun". This is new and exciting to me and I want it to be explored further.
astroturfing
Member
GhaleonQ said:
really?
i find most music and most poetry to be just as uninspired as your average licensed videogame.
It makes me feel so good to see the game getting positive feedback everywhere. It's particularly remarkable when people who don't play games ask me about it. I have no idea how they find out about it -- one person read the glowing full-page review in Entertainment Weekly -- but it's so satisfying to see such an ambitious, well-made game get the respect it deserves despite its unorthodox nature.
For me, Heavy Rain was so incredibly emotional. There were multiple moments that were so beautifully directed and acted that their import hit me hard enough to make me cry... Only a couple other games have ever done that: The "twist" in Silent Hill Shattered Memories and, long ago, Kafei and Anju's reunion right before the world ended in Majora's Mask, the latter more like tears welling up.
Heavy Rain consistently delivered the emotion, constantly delivered the eye/ear candy and reeled me in deeper and deeper with each action, big and small. Going around a room rifling through drawers, checking details like wall-mounted crucifixes or simply leaning all had a simple addictiveness that reminds me of my need to ransack every room for loot in BioShock and BioShock 2. And then the big actions -- the brilliant fight scenes, of which there are many, all of which had me on the edge of my seat -- seal the deal. Simply walking around, pausing and having the character look around to absorb their surroundings absorbed me into the world. You're living and breathing alongside these guys, and it only took me a chapter with each character to feel inside their skin.
Sorry to prattle on gushing like this. I just picked up the new dynamic theme (ARI on Mars) and went to bed thinking about it after a round of GOW3 last night. I need to get back to Heavy Rain and see if I can get a different ending (it's not spoiling to say that in my ending, Ethan lived but didn't partake in the grand finale).
Anyway, in closing, great to see 100 multi-page topics keeping this game firmly in the public eye. So many people get interested because of the buzz; the game's so different that people who normally don't play games are interested.
It's particularly remarkable when people who don't play games ask me about it. I have no idea how they find out about it -- one person read the glowing full-page review in Entertainment Weekly -- but it's so satisfying to see such an ambitious, well-made game get the respect it deserves despite its unorthodox nature. For me, Heavy Rain was so incredibly emotional. There were multiple moments that were so beautifully directed and acted that their import hit me hard enough to make me cry... Only a couple other games have ever done that: The "twist" in Silent Hill Shattered Memories and, long ago, Kafei and Anju's reunion right before the world ended in Majora's Mask, the latter more like tears welling up.
Heavy Rain consistently delivered the emotion, constantly delivered the eye/ear candy and reeled me in deeper and deeper with each action, big and small. Going around a room rifling through drawers, checking details like wall-mounted crucifixes or simply leaning all had a simple addictiveness that reminds me of my need to ransack every room for loot in BioShock and BioShock 2. And then the big actions -- the brilliant fight scenes, of which there are many, all of which had me on the edge of my seat -- seal the deal. Simply walking around, pausing and having the character look around to absorb their surroundings absorbed me into the world. You're living and breathing alongside these guys, and it only took me a chapter with each character to feel inside their skin.
Sorry to prattle on gushing like this. I just picked up the new dynamic theme (ARI on Mars) and went to bed thinking about it after a round of GOW3 last night. I need to get back to Heavy Rain and see if I can get a different ending (it's not spoiling to say that in my ending, Ethan lived but didn't partake in the grand finale).
Anyway, in closing, great to see 100 multi-page topics keeping this game firmly in the public eye. So many people get interested because of the buzz; the game's so different that people who normally don't play games are interested.
Kasumi1970
my name is Ted
I don't like Indigo Prophecy but I played HR and I like itGhaleonQ said:
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