David Cage, founder of developer Quantic Dream, has revealed that at least 72 precent of gamers who started Heavy Rain played the celebrated thriller through to its climax .
And in an industry where the average completion rate clocks in at around around 20-25 percent, the statistic certainly carries some clout, we think you’ll agree.
The news comes following a panel at the Game Developers Conference this week, where Cage also expressed his desire to see developers churn out more adult-orientated software.
Specifically, the Quantic Dream boss described how he feels he’s not able to weave a compelling narrative if the player’s interactions are limited to running and gunning.
As such, Heavy Rain afforded Cage the chance to ‘free’ the central protagonist by allowing him to partake in an assortment of activities. Kissing our wife and playing with the kids as Ethan certainly felt like an invigorating experience to us, anyhow.
“We wanted to offer varied interactions for a very simple reason: I don’t know how to tell a good story if my hero can only shoot and run,” he commented.
“I don’t think there is a good story to be told when that’s all you can do. We needed to find a way to change that; to allow our hero to do whatever we wanted him to do. It was about freeing our characters.
“Of course, the consequence of wanting to change all this is that you need to experiment with new paradigms. You need to take risks. You need to dare to fail – and dare to fail miserably, but at least fail trying. We needed to invent new rules; to see an end product in a different way.”
Cage further highlighted his desire to see the industry shy away from cobbling together games for teenagers, instead focusing on creating “a meaningful experience” that goes beyond the generic good cop/bad cop paradigm.
“We wanted to create a meaningful experience; to go beyond the ‘I’m the good guy, you’re the bad guy’ and create something that would resonate with the player as a human being," he explained.
“You don’t have to create a game for teenagers. You can create a comedy, you can create a tragedy. You can create whatever you want. You can create something for adults. And that’s what’s really interesting to me.”
Heavy Rain has moved 1.5 million units to date since its launch in February 2010. If you’ve still yet to experience the Quantic thriller, we recommend checking out our review to see what you’re missing out on. You won’t regret it.