[Opinion] Heavy Rain and its delay

Today, it was announced that the long-awaited PS3 exclusive Heavy Rain by Quantic Dream will be delayed a few months from its initial release date of late 2009 into early next year. The reason for this was the following:

"A game like Heavy Rain needs space, needs to be explained and shown. At the end of the year, people can't afford to buy all those games so we wanted to give Heavy Rain the chance to have its own release window, and for us to really talk about it so people really understand it."

(via Computer and Videogames)

It makes sense, Heavy Rain does not seem like the kind of game that you can play in-between of multiplayer rounds in Call of Duty, instead as with most story-based game you need to invest time in it. Fair enough so far. But the next statement by the Quantic Dream co-CEO was a more controversial one.

"If Heavy Rain doesn't succeed it's going to have important implications for other developers and for ourselves - maybe people will think 'those innovative games don't work, games cannot really convey realistic emotions.' And they will continue to do the standard shooters and the like that we have been doing for however many years,"

To put it in a highly sophisticated, eloquent way:

Poppycock. Spare us.

I understand the need to build hype for an upcoming game, especially for one that is exclusive on just one console (a rarity these days), but saying that your game is essentially the one last hope for "innovative" (whatever that means) games is simply pushing it. Especially from a publisher with such tarnished track recored as Quantic Dream.

Don't get me wrong, I want Heavy Rain to be good. I love story-based games. Much like I was really looking forward to Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy especially after playing the demo, the only truly great part of the game. But after being burnt badly by the aforementioned game, I'm keeping my expectations low. Maybe it's for the best.

Back to the original point, however. Claiming that your game, any game, is the last hope of such and such is almost akin to hubris. If nothing else, Portal is a direct result of one of those "standard shooters" and its success, and who could argue that it's not an innovative game that conveys real emotions? Not to mention that it does so without any cutscenes at all, nor any convoluted control schemes.

This "shooters are ruining the industry, bad shooters!" finger pointing has gotten old. Quake did not kill adventure games, and neither will Call of Duty or Halo kill "innovative" games. Assigning blame at the wrong targets is not the way to make the industry better.

Hell, if anything, this scene from Call of Duty 4 (spoilers abound) and its aftermath conveyed a whole lot more emotions to me than the ridiculous story and Simon-says gameplay of Fahrenheit.

TL;DR version:

If you want to make bold claims, it's good to be able to back them up. I want to believe that Heavy Rain will make me eat my words, but I'm frankly skeptical after this nonsense (Fahrenheit spoilers) :



In all fairness, Quantic Dream's first game Omikron: The Nomad Soul, was held back mostly by the limited technology of its time rather than bad writing and design decisions. So here's hoping they get it right this time.