In 2005, Quantic Dream unveiled The Casting, a short tech demo that explored the possibilities of the then nascent PlayStation 3. A short performance by a single actor that slowly increased in intensity and darkened in tone, it hinted at the new, expressive power of Sony's console, of how this generation could enable the kind of human drama that's typically been the reserve of non-interactive medium.
It's a drama that, to an extent, 2010's Heavy Rain delivered upon, and it's a path that Quantic Dream has largely travelled alone. The digital theatre of Team Bondi's LA Noire was strangled by awkward performances, while Naughty Dog's Uncharted games, for all of their technical achievements, were more concerned with matinee thrills than raw, adult drama.
Not that Heavy Rain was perfect, of course - for all of its cinematic pretentions it often felt more like a straight-to-video thriller, while its stars found itself at the foot of the uncanny valley.
Some seven years after The Casting Quantic Dream has again begun to explore, looking to find a solution to the problems raised by Heavy Rain, and to come another step closer to CEO and founder David Cage's own dream of providing interactive human drama.
"Our goal at the time with The Casting was to use the game engine to see how we could convey different emotions," Cage tells us prior to the GDC talk where he's unveiling a slice of what Quantic Dream has been up to since 2010. "We wanted to see what it would take in terms of the technology but also with the acting, and working with the actor on-stage to have this performance coming across in the game engine. We learned so much doing it for Heavy Rain, from the good things that worked very well but also from the mistakes that we made, and things we could have done differently.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012- ... reams-kara
