Heavy Rain developer wants emotional impact of Team ICO games

FPS and fighting games can be the life of the party, but the games that have a real impact on us are the ones that we connect with on an emotional level. ICO and Shadow of the Colossus are two such games, and developer David Cage says that’s the kind of impact he wants for Heavy Rain.

FPS and fighting games can be the life of the party, but the games that have a real impact on us are the ones that we connect with on an emotional level. ICO and Shadow of the Colossus are two such games, and developer David Cage says that’s the kind of impact he wanted for Fahrenheit, and now for Heavy Rain:

I really think [Team Ico‘s Fumito Ueda] has something interesting and something unique. He has a real sense of poetry in his games. It’s very different from how I see games and what I want to make, but I really love his work.

I think the more it goes, the more this industry will need art directors and less producers. We’ll still need producers, of course, but we need to feel that there are people behind games. I’ve always loved games that have a soul, where you can feel the people behind them, and it’s rare these days.

Knowing how Heavy Rain‘s story involves a guy with the handle “the Origami Killer,” I don’t think he means the “oh, I’m holding her hand!” kind of emotion. So what’s his idea of a game with “soul”? LittleBigPlanet! Sackboys have souls under all that burlap too you know.

LittleBigPlanet is a game with a soul. And when you play it you love this game, because you play so many games that are just cold fish. It can be a beautiful fish! It can smell good, it can taste good. But it’s just a dead fish. And here you feel that there are human beings behind it.

No, I don’t think he means the “warm and fuzzy” kind of emotion either.

• Quantic Dream’s Cage: Interactive storytelling is the new videogame narration
• Death is not the end: Heavy Rain story continues even if main character dies

Via Eurogamer