History and background

Quantic Dream started working on Heavy Rain in February 2006. The project was announced on May 7, 2006, and three days later, a real-time 3D prototype technology demo was presented at E3 2006 at [Sony Computer Entertainment's booth. The demo, titled The Casting displays various technical features of the game engine in an emotional scene featuring a motion captured virtual actor. The prototype was allegedly created in less than three months, during which Quantic Dream wrote the script, developed the graphics engine, held auditions to find the virtual actress, and recorded the scene. The demo was initially designed to be an internal prototype not shown outside the company, but upon seeing the team's work-in-progress a few weeks before E3, Sony asked them to complete a working demo to be presented to the audience.

Details

Details about the story and gameplay of Heavy Rain itself remain scarce. It is known that the game is not a sequel to Fahrenheit, but a completely new game, with new story and new characters. Director David Cage noted that Heavy Rain "will be a very dark film noir thriller with mature themes", without any supernatural elements. The game will feature a story that is interactively "bendable", similar to Fahrenheit. It's been told by the creators that "the character control mechanism is an essential part in playing Heavy Rain", and is different from the system used in Fahrenheit. The player will be able to control different characters in the game. In a recent interview given by Quantic Dream co-CEO and executive producer Guillaume de Fondaumière to GameDaily.com, characters will be true virtual actors capable of showing highly realistic emotions.

According to a recent demonstration given to Edge Magazine, the game will use a unique control scheme. A trigger button on the Playstation 3 controller will move the character forward. It will take advantage of the button being an analogue button, allowing through the amount of pressure applied to the button by the user to control the speed of the character's movement. The left analogue stick will control the movement of the character's head and the direction the character moves in relation to where the character is looking. David Cage explains that this frees the movement of the character from the perspective of the camera.

Some game physics will be made available by the use of PhysX by nVidia. It is used for console physics in general in the game. Originally for the PC, there were going to be two separate versions of the game to handle cases of a computer being equipped with the appropriate physics processing unit, and to handle cases when it is not present on the system. However, now that the game has been announced as a PlayStation 3 exclusive, it is assumed that that won't be necessary. In the demo, the physics of the hair made use of the AGEIA technology. However, recently in the Dutch Magazine Chief on March 11th, Executive Producer David Cage gave gamers a teaser by announcing a few details about the game. He alluded to one of the main characters being a father trying to justify his actions, noting that the game is "purely about a father's love." Cage further explained that "the main story will revolve around 4 different characters, and we're putting the spotlight on their perceptions. The question 'what is good and what is evil' is the key here, that will be just a matter of viewpoint...I believe heavily in moral choices, I'm going to use them a lot. They're not about being good or bad, but about finding the right balance." On the setting, David Cage responded by saying, "I don't want to do a big free-roaming city like GTA, because the flow of the story will then be hard to control. Nevertheless, I do want to incorporate big sets, with a crowd, heavy populated areas like a mall and a subway are going to be in there. Of course, the gameplay has got to make use of that aspect too."

The Origami Killer poster

Some time in early 2007, a poster of Heavy Rain appeared on Quantic Dream's under-construction website. It features an origami model with blood dripping from one of its corners, and a new subtitle to Heavy Rain, reading The Origami Killer. Also notable is a list of (presumably virtual) actors (Ethan Mars, Scott Shelby, Madison Paige, Norman Jayden), and a tagline: "How far are you prepared to go to save someone you love?". A small image of the poster can be seen on the updated website, under "Game Studios", "Heavy Rain". Just above the words "Heavy Rain", writing can be seen.

On August 20th, a new trailer was shown at the 2008 Leipzig Games Convention. It featured a woman, now known to be the Madison referenced in the poster, dictating a time and day into an electronic device before entering a gloomy house. She explores the house and examines what appears to be a mannequin (later revealed as representing an actual woman's stuffed body), taking a photograph of it before being chased around the house by a man with a knife. The trailer ended with her dodging the man's knife, and then segued to a clip of her standing in the rain,the trailer ends with a release sometime in 2009