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Source: http://www.gamekult.com/actu/gamescom-itw-david-cage-on-ne-reviendra-plus-en-arriere-A103843.htmlgamescom> ITW David Cage: "We will not go back"
By Yukishiro, Gamekult.com
Interview - Friday, 17/08/2012 at 18h 00
With the success of Heavy Rain, frenchman David Cage is doing well. Present at gamescom to promote his new title, Beyond: Two Souls, the creator has agreed to sit for half an hour with us. A great opportunity to discuss his next production, but also to talk about the man's style (he does not spare his opinions), and who has never seemed so self-confident. Interview.
Where are you now with the development of Beyond?
Development is progressing well, we finished the shoots of performance capture. It was a big step for us, as it represents 12 months of almost non-stop shooting. Every day, more than 160 actors on the set. The technology is also progressing well, since we have a version of the engine which has been running since very early in development, which is important because we try to push the hardware as far as we can. We want to show you progress from Heavy Rain, especially on the engine, which we have almost rewritten from scratch.
You've just mentioned the term "performance capture". What meaning do you put behind these words, as opposed to the traditional "motion capture", for example?
What we did on Heavy Rain, and many games still do today, is to have an actor record the face and dialogue on one side, in a sound studio. Then you go into a Heavy Rain studio, and you play once again the dialogue that you just recorded, with an actor who will play the body and animations of the text that you've just recorded. So, it does work, roughly speaking, we can say that it works. However, this presents a huge disadvantage, because you cut the performance in half: the head then the body. At the end, when you superimpose both halves, you can see that they were not recorded simultaneously. This is an exercise that is difficult for the actors, and makes us lose a lot of quality.
Since then we have seen, like everyone else, the work of James Cameron on Avatar, and we thought it would be possible to record everything together in one coherent capture. So we invested in R&D, in equipment, in a MoCap studio, and we shot our prototype Kara - a short film designed to test the technology and its implications. And we could see the gain in quality of the acting with this performance capture solution. That's when we decided to "shoot" Beyond that way, because it's in our opinion the best way to get emotion with the actors.
Precisely, let's talk about it. Ellen Page will be the main star of Beyond; why have you opted for an actress famous from movies and more importantly, why her?
I was not looking particularly an actress who was famous, it was honestly not my specifications. I did not want a name that shines, to put on the game box, but rather an actress that fits the role and who can give the character a real existence. It's a role that is quite difficult, because we will control the character of Jody between age 8 and age 23. Obviously another actress will play young Jody, but from 14 years up to 23 years, we wanted the same actress. We needed someone who could credibly play a teenager and a young adult. I was looking for someone who had a real range of emotions in her way of playing, who can make you smile, cry ..
Also, and it was very important to me, we sought an actress who takes video games seriously. We met many actors, known and unknown, who have said or thought "ah, video games, that kid's thing, I'll do the minimum - sometimes without telling you - since it will be sufficient, it's just for games ". And we had to say no to very famous people, simply because we did not see things the same way. With Ellen, we contacted a very simple way: we sent her the script, a copy of Heavy Rain and a nice letter to her agent. And she responded by saying she loved the script, that she wanted to be part of it. At that stage, we did not talk about money, contract, nothing. Just tried to know if she was interested. And we met in Los Angeles, we talked only about the role, story, performance capture, about what we would expect from her, what emotions, etc.. And she accepted, again without money being discussed. She wanted to see where the project was headed to.
It was an extraordinary experience for the studio, especially for me because I had the opportunity to direct David Bowie on The Nomad Soul, to now work with someone like Ellen. It is extraordinary to have such talented people with you.
Heavy Rain revolved around the theme of father-son relationships, sacrifice... On what emotional threads, and what themes, will Beyond: Two Souls draw from?
It's a very different game from Heavy Rain, yet again with the goal of emotional immersion for the player. This is not a copy, where we use the same narrative tools, the same methods.With each game, we start with a blank page: technology, concepts, scenario. What interests me in this game is to tell the story of a person through fifteen years of his life and show how he grows, how he changes physically and psychologically. Try to show how what you live makes what you are, with good and bad times. I want the player to be with this character, living her life with her, and eventually know her by heart. You've been with this girl, you saw her when she was a kid, you know how it went by. I wanna give you the feeling that you know her, really.
Then, the game itself talks about different things: growing, changing, accepting who you are. But it also evokes death, which is an important theme because Jody has a link with a strange entity, a kind of spirit... The player will also be able to discover what can happen on the other side, what happens to us when we're dead. We wanted to do it in an original way, far from religions, and give other explanations.
You mentioned it earlier: has the way people look at video games, and more specifically your work, fundamentally changed with Heavy Rain? Can we talk about a breaking point in your career?
Concerning me and Quantic Dream, yes: Heavy Rain was a huge break. Beforehand, we were a studio among many others, trying to do something a little different. Sometimes it fell on a guy who had played ​​The Nomad Soul, or Fahrenheit, and we were super happy. Today, things have really changed, especially with support from Sony, who believed in us since day one, without constraints. When we went to them with Heavy Rain, a game based on the abduction of children, we knew it was not the kind of plot that publishers in general are fond of. Traditionally, they will rather ask you the number of guns, of cars, what you jump onto...
With Heavy Rain, the big change is that it has sold well. It's a commercial success, in addition to a huge critical success worldwide, which has enabled Sony - and us - to make money.Especially, we showed that there was a market for what we wanted to do, and it interested people. The huge change, for example here at gamescom is the amount of fans, people who follow us and tell us about their gaming experience. Those who cut their finger (you can mutilate yourself in Heavy Rain, ed), those who managed to save the kid, etc... It's a complete metamorphosis. It's also a great freedom with Sony, since we finally have the means to do what we want, without constraints. When I finished Heavy Rain, Sony did not come in asking me to make a sequel, but rather: "What do you want to do next?" And that changes everything to have a real partner. If you can have the creative freedom of an independent developer, and the means of a AAA studio, you're really lucky. Thank you to Sony, to the players, to the press which followed us massively.
But we can't rest on our laurels: Heavy Rain for me was a step in one direction, but it was not a culmination. Game after game, we want to keep moving, discover and improve.
In 2011, you said at a conference here in Cologne, that video games were held in a certain immaturity because of classification systems (PEGI, ESRB). Is the situation improving?
Censorship is a real problem. And personally I find it hard to admit. If you walk the aisles of gamescom, you see lots of games in which you can kill hundreds of people, blow up their heads, slit their throats, dismember, in short, anything you want. And it's ok. However, if you make a game where you try to have a different approach, with emotions of the characters who live difficult things, suddenly it becomes problematic. All that's related to sex, especially, it's unbelievable. Honestly, we do not do porn, we hardly show a female breast, a mildly sensual scene, but nothing you would not see in an ad for shampoo at 8:30 pm on French TV. Plus, the classification is not the same in all countries: in some of them it's a nightmare, and in others it's alright. We go from 12+ to 18+ depending on the territories. What is the logic in that? Why are there constraints that are completely different from films'? We are still very far from what we can allow in a mainstream film.
I have a very hard time with that, precisely because we try to work on games that cater more to adults. We try to do so seriously, putting them into context, giving it meaning... and having a censor who looks over your shoulder and refuses things, or requests that you change them, it gets annoying. We fight against it, even if it changes over time. A few years ago, before Heavy Rain, we had the famous Hot Coffee affair, where people went like crazy on the censorship. Ban this, ban that. Now many territories at least take the context into consideration: "Have you shown blood gratuitiously, or does that blood tell a story, does it makes sense for your plot?". So, I think it's a matter of time.
But it's also about the game industry becoming more adult, and to stop doing excessive things just just because you find them funny. Hot Coffee, no, it wasn't funny. It put a bunch of developers into trouble, they suddenly found themselves censored, because three morons had fun, all alone. It was ugly, it was stupid, tasteless, and it had a lot of repercussions in the whole industry. I think we need to stop shooting ourselves in the foot and try to grow up.
But in the case of Beyond, can this censorship hinder your work in one way or another?
When I write, I consistently refuse to censor myself. Never, never, never. I prefer to clash against censorship committees, and to defend my scene, rather than thinking that certain things won't pass and not write them at all. The second I do that means I'm no longer doing my job. You're no longer a creative, you're just a marketing guy. I'm not ashamed of any scene, I can explain them all and defend them with arguments. So no, no discomfort with Beyond, although some scenes are not easy to make pass. They touch sensitive and strong things. But it's my job to make them pass, I'm not here to write sentimental stories of soldiers who massacre aliens. It's OK, there are other games doing that. I'm obviously not the only designer to try to do different things, but this is how I see my role.
With Heavy Rain, the inspiration came from your personal experience as a father, among other things. Are all your productions drawn from your own life?
It tends to evolve. When I was a young writer -because, yes, I was once a young writer- I wrote a lot to do my version of this or that film, my version of that book. And then after a while I ended up wondering what I had to tell which would be my own. And you try to hear your own voice for the first time. In my case, it took some time: I feel that it's with Heavy Rain that I heard my voice as a writer. Not to say it's the most incredible story in the world, it's just one thing that touched me and I wanted to talk about. It corresponded closely to the time when I became a young father, where I had a son for the first time. This unique relationship I had with this child that you love without expecting anything in return, I wanted to talk about it.
So yes, we then made it in the context of an investigation, etc. But Heavy Rain really was my way of showing how far one can go for love. On Beyond, well, once you've heard your voice, you no longer want to talk about spaceships and zombies. You just want to continue exploring this path because it's something fascinating : to touch other people with personal things. No one goes back after that. On Beyond, I have, like many, lost someone in my family whom I was very close to. And death is a strange experience when it touches people you really like, and disappear overnight. Gone, nowhere. And this is something scary, this feeling of emptiness, final, of something definitive, brutal and hopeless. You fight an illness, you can fight to get a new job, you can fight against anything that may happen to you in life. But losing someone is final.
That's a strong emotion, a disturbing one, about which I wanted to talk with Beyond. I'm an atheist, I don't believe in God. But I think it's human nature to find a meaning to things, and I wanted to make sense of it even though in reality, it's probably not. That was the starting point of writing - then, it's a story with a girl, an entity, etc.But the origin of Beyond is personal, and rather intimate.
As such, has Heavy Rain been a learning experience on design, on how to tell things?
You know, there is no game that you complete and that you tell yourself that you did everything perfectly. Otherwise, you might as well stop your career and move on. We were dissatisfied, obviously. On Heavy Rain, it was an extraordinary experience for the team, because nobody believed it. We've learned a lot and with each game you start with a blank page. It's our purpose at Quantic Dream. Beyond will be different, at all levels. This is another approach to the way you play, we will review the interface, navigation... but there are things we can not go back to. Making another game where you have a button to shoot, one to run, one to jump, I can not do that. I do not feel like working on these games there, because I'm much more interested in what happens in your head, than by what you do with your thumbs.
I know it fascinates people, some are interested in their level of skill, precision, the sporting side of games. I want to create a journey that makes people feel things. Interactivity is the heart of it, because I did not want to make films. I am not a frustrated filmmaker, I had 10,000 opportunities to go make TV series or cinema in France and the United States, and I've never done it. It's video games that interests me. I believe in this medium, I think everything is yet to be invented, I don't want to do movies or 45-minute cutscenes. I want to do a game where your choices change the story, and we are working on how to do it. But interactivity is not the alpha and omega, there is also feeling. Sometimes I have interviews where the guys ask me which button must be pressed for such and such action. But how is this important? What the hell?! Seriously, which button you press to do this or that... What does matter is whether you have a gaming experience that is satisfactory overall, and where you feel like you've experienced strong things. Whether you press Cross or Square doesn't matter.
But to answer your question, yes we fully rework the gameplay, the GUI aspect and the famous QTE that were so shocking to some players. We want a better way to mix interactivity and narration. Beyond will hopefully progress compared to Heavy Rain, and I hope the next games will be even better.
