Cage comments on Heavy Rain DLC freeze

A couple of weeks ago, Guillame De Fondaumiere of Quantic Dream revealed in an interview with Game Informer that the planned DLC for Heavy Rain was to be put on hold while the team work PlayStation Move controls into the game. Speaking with NowGamer, Heavy Rain‘s creator David Cage is claiming that the hold may actually be a permanent one.

“We proposed three episodes about one hour long and being focused on the background of the main characters. I thought fans would really enjoy these episodes because they explained many aspects of HR and why characters are who they are.” Collectively known as Chronicles, the first and only DLC was called the Taxidermist featuring Madison as she sneaked around a suspect’s home. While it was more ‘gamey’ than the campaign it still offered an extended narrative to Madison and from the sounds of it, all of the characters were in for a similar treatment. But Sony has a motion-controller to sell: “Unfortunately, Sony preferred to ask us to focus on Move to support the device rather than on creating new content,” said a disappointed Cage. “On our side, we did not want to spend more time on HR, which would have meant delaying new projects.” He went on to say how happy he was that Quantic Dream are able to support Move but saddened at the fact that fans “could not finish the story of HR the way we intended.” Heavy Rain certainly left areas open for an explanation or two and maybe they were to come in the form of DLC. Not anymore however, we have Move to look forward to instead. Thanks…

Heavy Rain DLC put on hold thanks to Move

In order to ramp up Move development, some studios have had to make a few sacrifices to their games at the instruction of Sony. In an interview with Game Informer, Quantic Dream’s Guillame De Fondaumiere broke the sad news of Heavy Rain‘s DLC getting shelved while the developers implement Move controls to the game. Sony have been the encouragement for shelving and what’s worse is how De Fondaumiere states that it’s unlikely that anymore DLC will be made as Quantic Dream starts to work on their next project.

It’s frustrating that a game which works perfectly well using a normal controller (bar a few navigation niggles) will have the extension of its fiction ignored in favour of an unproven peripheral. Madison’s exposure to a murderous taxidermist in the DLC of the same name was a brilliant bite-size addition to Heavy Rain and the thought of not getting more of these add-ons makes me want to shed the tears I comfortably held onto while playing the game.

Review: Heavy Rain (PS3)

Prologue
First and foremost, is Heavy Rain a game? Yes. Despite director David Cage wanting a new classification for it, this is still very much a game. The overall concepts and certain interactions aren’t far enough removed from videogames to be considered anything else. This is by no means a derogatory comment at all and don’t expect to be hiding behind cover or gliding up the sides of buildings but do be prepared for one of the most heartwarming and crushingly tragic tales to date. Heavy Rain shows how mature videogames can be and tackles subject matter that may be painful to experience but you should fight back those tears and persevere to the very end – even if that end doesn’t quite live up to everything that came before. You may spend more time watching Heavy Rain than interacting with it but when you do, the smallest actions could have the biggest consequences.

Heavy Rain collector’s edition announced

UPDATE: This collector’s edition is now available exclusively at HMV

Heavy Rain may not have an official release date in Europe but our continent’s PlayStation blog is teasing readers with news of a collector’s edition. This was the very reason why I haven’t yet preorederd a copy as it was only a matter of time before such a bonus was announced. The collector’s edition enhances a conventional box-art with a fancy rain-effect slip case. Sparing now expense, the box is embossed, probably varnished in places and spot colours used to give the illusion of 3D rain-drops. Nice. Bundled within is a voucher codes to download the first piece of DLC called Heavy Rain: Chronicle 1 – The Taxidermist where we can “Experience Madison’s dangerous investigation in full, before it’s available on the PlayStation Store”. To prick the ears of music enthusiasts, the official soundtrack will also be part of said collector’s edition as well as a Dynamic XMB theme. No more information – like where we can preorder it – has been released yet but the usual suspects are GAME, Play and amazon. One of them is bound to have it soon!