Indigo Prophecy Post-Mortem at 1UP

[mister_slim]

1UP (http://www.1up.com) has a Indigo Prophecy/Fahrenheit post-mortem (http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3143998&did=1) up, written by writer/director David Cage. It's an interesting look at the different ideas and thoughts that he took into development and the concepts he attempted to capture in the gameplay and interface.

This quote, to me, demonstrates the value of the Nintendo Revolution controller.
The idea of having contextual actions quickly appeared to me as being the right solution. I would have an infinite number of possible actions that I could use depending on the situation. The final missing piece in this puzzle was to make the player forget the interface. Often, the controller is just a remote control to move a bunch of pixels on screen. For Indigo Prophecy, it had to be a part of the experience, an extension of the player's physical body in the world of the game. I wanted him to touch objects, make the moves with his character, to feel how his character feels.
In the article, he talks about how attempts at doing what the Revolution controller will do had to be abandoned due to the limitations of current interfaces. The post-mortem appears to have been written before the Rev controller was unveiled, and makes no mention of it, but I hope to see his opinion at some point.

[Zurik]

You'll be spending most of the time doing a Simon says/DDR type game for all the action sequences anyway, the revolution wouldn't have helped much there.

[Chagrinful]

Well the revoulution controller would have had you doing more inventive things than that retarded simon says/ddr shit, thats for sure!

[KamaItachi]

Hmm, having a fully realised room with everything as an actual object and full interactive control with the rev controller would either be the best thing since sliced bread or incredibly dull. But a full fledged adventure game/police detective story using those principles (and Cage's imput) could be fantastic.

I really like what Cage did with Farenheight/IP. I found the most emersive parts of the game the parts where very little was going on story-wise. Especially little elements that fleshed out the characters and going about their everyday routines in their own homes.

[Kefkataran]

Very interesting read. Thanks for the link.

To all those haters, the simon says gameplay aspect may not have been perfect, but the game still kicked ass and got closer to achieving Cage's stated goal of interactive storytelling than any other game has done so far. I'm very interested in seeing what more comes from Cage and co, and I hope other people use the gameplay system Fahrenheit has set up in the future.

[TheKeck]

Very interesting read. Thanks for the link.

To all those haters, the simon says gameplay aspect may not have been perfect, but the game still kicked ass and got closer to achieving Cage's stated goal of interactive storytelling than any other game has done so far. I'm very interested in seeing what more comes from Cage and co, and I hope other people use the gameplay system Fahrenheit has set up in the future.

I am not a hater. I'm loving Indigo Prophecy. But I absolutely think the simon says stuff falls apart. It feels tacked on; like they felt they had to put it in in order for it to merit being a video game. I just want the David Cage people to know that it's ok, we'll like your game even if it is mostly a movie.

[Kefkataran]

Interesting point, Keck... very interesting point.

[Cupelix]

I'm still only a few hours into Fahernheit, and I'll say that for my part, I wish there were more "puzzles" involved in the game. I'm all about having story driven games, but I agree that most of the time, it's simply pushing on the controller to move the story forward. The game is about what you do or do not discover, rather than actually using your brain to figure out what to do next. That's somewhat disappointing, but the strong narrative is enough to keep me interested.

[MasterKwan]

I picked this up the other day for the PC. For me it could have been a great game but, it's crippled by stupid design issues. Example, how it saves. There's no visible indication when it saves. I get an hour into the sections after the diner and exit. No indication or warning. I just lose an hour of fairly boring game play. Same thing happened to my son. Why do I have to listen to the boring bits again on replay? Why can't I shortcut the dialog and cut scenes after I've already been bored by them once?

The reaction time gameplay sections don't work that well on the keyboard. Clearly they were designed for a dual analog controller. Maybe for the PC you should have limited it to the directional keys (key pad in my case) because I normally keep one hand on the mouse.

It irks me when stupid things mar a perfectly decent game. What's so fing hard about a save button? Not letting people shortcut the cut scenes is purely an ego thing. I have just finished "Fatal Frame 2" in which, while it's only an OK game, they got all of these bits correct.

[AntB]

I hate the stupid "reaction time" gameplay. It's a retarted concept. No puzzles in this game either. It's just an interactive movie.

But I love it.

I must say it's a great interactive movie, and this would work great in the future, I think it's more of a proof of concept of where Hollywood should move. It would be great sitting down with your friends and just watching a movie where you can interact, *minor spoiler*deciding whether the guy should take the Taxi or the Subway like in the beggining of the game. Leaving a trace if you took the Taxi. */minor spoiler* And solving some puzzles together.

This is a great game where everyone around you can enjoy it because it doesn't require *too* much interaction.

[dr_qwandry]

I thought it was a great game, I couldn't really imagine playing it without the DDR/Simon Says thing. On a related note, Quantic Dream will steal your soul: Omikron 2

[TheKeck]

Interesting point, Keck... very interesting point.

Thanks. :)

[TheKeck]

I picked this up the other day for the PC. For me it could have been a great game but, it's crippled by stupid design issues. Example, how it saves. There's no visible indication when it saves. I get an hour into the sections after the diner and exit. No indication or warning. I just lose an hour of fairly boring game play. Same thing happened to my son. Why do I have to listen to the boring bits again on replay? Why can't I shortcut the dialog and cut scenes after I've already been bored by them once?

The reaction time gameplay sections don't work that well on the keyboard. Clearly they were designed for a dual analog controller. Maybe for the PC you should have limited it to the directional keys (key pad in my case) because I normally keep one hand on the mouse.

It irks me when stupid things mar a perfectly decent game. What's so fing hard about a save button? Not letting people shortcut the cut scenes is purely an ego thing. I have just finished "Fatal Frame 2" in which, while it's only an OK game, they got all of these bits correct.

I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but I'm confused about the saving thing? Did you turn autosave off in the options menu? The game definitely saves several times per scene for me. Granted if you could save any time you wanted OR skip those damn cutscenes it would be better, but I have found it manageable.

(I can understand that, given the nature of the game, David Cage wants us to see the scenes, as they consititute the bulk of his game. But, if he's so die-hard about this issue, they could have kept track to make sure you watch something ONCE, and then let you skip it in repititions.)

[MasterKwan]

I started a game with normal difficulty, played till I got pissed (reaction thing during bug attack) then exited. The save mode it whatever the default is while running the game from scratch. I assumed, perhaps uncorrectly that in the absence of a save button, it would save a regular intervals.

[TheKeck]

I started a game with normal difficulty, played till I got pissed (reaction thing during bug attack) then exited. The save mode it whatever the default is while running the game from scratch. I assumed, perhaps uncorrectly that in the absence of a save button, it would save a regular intervals.

That really sucks. I'm sure that autosave was the default for me, but you may want to check your settings. I assume you hit "continue" or "chapters" to make sure there was nothing there. Whenever it saves your game, a little red icon pops up in the corner.