The Uncanniest Of Valleys
If I’m being honest, Heavy Rain doesn’t look as good as Uncharted 2. But that’s not really fair, because the close-ups (of the majority of characters) are staggering – they’re beyond the Uncanny Valley, and during the loading cut-scenes they look human. Not just in terms of modeling and texture, but the quirks, twitches and emotion of a human face are wonderfully represented. Staggeringly good.
But that’s not the whole story – despite most character’s ability to walk convincingly in a straight line, Quantic Dreams’ decision to rotate them rather than try to accurately model a more organic way of shifting direction is jarring. But it’s only frustrating because most other things look so utterly fabulous – if the rest of the game looked terrible, I wouldn’t care about the turning circle animations.
Elsewhere, the motion capture studio has really earned its money. Madison, in particular, moves fluidly throughout (and is the best acted vocally, too) and her actions seem the most graceful and dynamic, especially compared to Ethan’s (deliberately?) wooden performance. Character to character contact is poor, though, kisses don’t work, hand shakes look false and seemingly the studio had trouble with pockets.