Heavy Rain is "interactive drama" - Sony
Played more with heads than pads.
Sony Worldwide Studios bigwig Michael Denny has described Heavy Rain as an "interactive drama" that will be played in people's heads more than it is on control pads.
Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Denny revealed that the game had been made to appeal both to core and casual gamers, using mature content and situations with real consequences.
"Looking forward to next year, a game like Heavy Rain, it's trying to do something very new, whether you call that the adventure genre, action adventure, we're calling it interactive drama, and it's about trying to create an emotional connection with the game," said Denny.
"We have a hope for that product that both core and casual can get into it. It's a game that when you look about and when you understand it, it's really not played on the control pad, as much as in your head. It's about making choices and consequences, it's not about twitch gaming and how good you are.
"We feel that the mature nature of the content can appeal to the core and then the consequence-based gameplay can appeal to a newer audience, a more casual audience as well," he added.
French developer Quantic Dream is making Heavy Rain exclusively for the PlayStation 3. The studio has had success in the adventure game genre with Fahrenheit and Omikron.
Heavy Rain was announced proper during the Leipzig Games Convention this August, in which a trailer showed a lady pull up on a motorbike and enter a suburban house. Some shocking discoveries later, and Madison - the woman - was desperately looking for a hiding place as an ominous figure approached.
Context-sensitive controls will be central to this cinematic and emotional experience, as will Quick Time Events. But Madison, apparently, will not be. The trailer shows a separate and unrelated story, which left us all a bit confused.
And we still are, as concrete details on Heavy Rain - due late next year - remain scarce.
We hope to uncover a few of those secrets for you very soon. Until then, head over to our Heavy Rain preview from August to find out more.