Heavy Rain
Another game now. "Tonight is the first time you have truly seen this game." It's Heavy Rain. David Cage, the president of developer Quantic Games, is taking the stage.
We can't call him Dave too. We'll call him Cagey.
He's banging on about how Quantic is based in Paris and they made Fahrenheit. Come on Cagey, show us the crying lady with the gun.
Quantic wants to centre the game on "narrative and emotion", and "mature content" and "complex stories".
However, it's got to be accessible to a broad audience too. No guns, cars etc. - it's about the emotional experience, empathy, contextual actions and moral choices. You will play the story instead of watching it; you will be the writer, director at the same time.
They wanted to make a game where the story is told through players' actions, not cut-scenes. A picture of a crying lady is on the screen! That's more like it.
"We think about it not like a videogame, but as a different kind of experience based on emotion." I once had a similar experience with Pac-Man World 3.
Time for a trailer. "Actual gameplay footage," apparently.
It's raining in what looks like a suburban US town. Kids skip about on porch step. A lady gets off a motorbike infront of the house and climbs through the window, which slams shut after her. She walks into the lounge. The windows are boarded up, mannequins are posed in strange clothes.
There's a man in the house - they start fighting. He's got a knife. They face off across a table then into the bedroom. The scene ends abruptly, and cuts to the image of the woman's face when she was still outside the house, wet with her tears or the rain - it's hard to tell.
"Full time 3D and playable," says Cagey. During the demo shape button icons appeared, suggesting context-sensitive play - a bit like Quick-Time Actions. Hmm. That's all Dave's got to share with us this year.
He didn't set up the rhyme with meaningless words.
As you predicted or assumed everything was calculated
Every word had purpose just not always on the surface.
But you couldn't look below, life is fast when you're shallow.