(working title) Kara

[FredEffinChopin]

From Quantic Dream, of Heavy Rain and Indigo Prophecy fame.

 

 

It's just a tech demo, similar to The Casting trailer that was first released for Heavy Rain. QD is showing off their new engine, which does indeed seem very impressive. I'm hoping that we're getting hint of a plot and/or setting with this trailer though, as it presents some interesting possibilities. Heavy Rain already gave me an idea of their competency in creating a satisfying futuristic aesthetic (with Ari), and this reinforces that belief.

 

My friend and I had some pretty different ideas as to what the intention behind the scenario in the trailer is. I thought the technician was doing his job, and that fooling the Kara into thinking she was defective was the end part of a testing process, or possibly even a final stage to jog it into full sentience. My buddy thought the implication was that the Kara was defective, and the technician's heart was touched, and he let her go. If my buddy is right, I've got some issues with the acting and writing. But it's just a tech demo, so I suppose I shouldn't put too much into it.

[Thursday Next]

I got the impression that the "Technician" was an AI in and of itself and not controlled by a human. Which puts another twist on the deliberate personality or accidental personality.

 

If the technician's personality is deliberate, then it stands to reason that it is testing that KARA's personality is genuine. However, if the technician's personality is itself a mistake then the reason for the initial reaction to immediately disassemble KARA could be self preservation. That is, that if there is one "defective" personality, the company may begin looking for others and find the technician. He only stops disassembling KARA when he feels a pang of guilt, or perhaps decides that not being alone in the world is worth the risk of discovery. It could even be that the technician is pulling some skynet crap and is putting personalities into machines when it shouldn't be. Using the scare tactics to make sure that the KARAs don't reveal themselves until the time is right.

[TheMightyEthan]

My initial interpretation (before the clip was quite over) was that the technician felt too guilty to disassemble her and finally relented, but then at the end I also got the impression that the "technician" was actually the assembly robot, so then I was confused.

 

It could even be that the technician is pulling some skynet crap and is putting personalities into machines when it shouldn't be. Using the scare tactics to make sure that the KARAs don't reveal themselves until the time is right.

 

I like this interpretation.

 

Also, assuming I could afford it and that they weren't actually sentient I would totally buy one of those robots.

[deanb]

It didn't seem that impressive to me :/ At least as far as a tech demo goes. Shiny shiny sci-fi stuff is terrible to show off tech stuff anyway, it's piss easy to do that stuff. You need something like

to show off advances. Anyone can do flat clean white surfaces. Considering The Casting was 6 years ago there's very little improvments. Which is worrying as it would seem at this late in the game "Kara" would be a PS4 game so even worse if it's not that much improved on an early-stage PS3 tech demo.

[TheMightyEthan]

Well supposedly that was running in real time on PS3 hardware, so no way it's a tech demo for PS4.

 

I agree that graphically it wasn't that impressive. My understanding was they were trying to show off the acting rather than the graphics.

[FredEffinChopin]

I hadn't considered the possibility of the technician being an AI as well. It complicates things significantly, and also is another valid explanation for the technician's acting. I'm definitely hungry for more details.

 

I'm curious to know... I guess the genre? I mean I'm sure it'll be a dramatic cinematic game with contextual controls, QTEs, and multiple paths/outcomes. Is it going to be another murder/mystery though? I'm having a hard time imagining a game that plays like Heavy Rain did being effective in too many different ways... Then again I don't get paid the big bucks to come up with this stuff. I guess I'm just going to have to be patient.

 

As far as the tech demo effectiveness, I do believe the focus is supposed to be on how effectively they can bring characters to life with the engine and competent actors. The amount of time the trailer spent making her face the only visible human-looking thing on the screen supports that, as well as the closeups during dramatic moments. I feel like it's an improvement on Heavy Rain, save for the mouth, which was kind of off in The Casting as well. Considering the vast improvement of the final Heavy Rain product over The Casting, and the fact that this is a year-old demo (or running on a year-old version of the engine, I forget which), I'd say that it looks pretty promising for the next title. In terms of believable human expression at least, the game might be garbage aside from that.

[deanb]

Bummer that it's on PS3. Cos if Heavy Rain is anything to go buy, it'll be 3-4 years before we see the resulting game from this. Even if it takes 2 years it's still way too long when we're coming up to the next gen. It wouldn't surprise me if whatever is in the works now was to jump ship to PS4, though it'd make doing a 7minute long tech demo extremely redundant.

 

Showing off acting (animation), is a bit redundant if you've no game to hinge it on. You can make a dedicated 7 minute segment to go "look we can make it this nice" but there's no sign that's who the game will be. Much like you can make something like this. But when it becomes a full game it's not going to be

. When it comes to make a 7 hour+ game you're going to be cutting corners and using recycled/automated animation segments.

[WTF]

The thing is they got the eye movements and general human movements right. Here's the issue they should not have called it a tech demo per se and called it an emotion demo rather.

If you're strictly speaking of it as a tech demo you'd think better textures, lighting and character models. However what they got really nice was the rigging, subtle gestures, facial movements, body movements etc. Lets take into comparison LA Noire (Which cage hates) which uses the similar process of capture that Heavy Rain had initially. Have you noticed how terrible cole and everyone else moves? Sure they got facial features right but the movements are crap. Take a look at mass effect 3, the way they run it's uh laughable (not really a fair comparison).

 

The thing that this 'tech demo' does is show the subtle nuances of expressing emotion. This is a barrier that we have with the uncanny valley. Most things look realistic enough but move just a bit wrong that we don't feel for them. It's what Pixar does right normally. Their models are usually toony but they move believably. Beauty is in motion not in a static image. In fact humans are attracted to the motion of things, people and objects more than a static image when faced with reality. It's the same reason why sometimes people are prettier or uglier than a photograph when we see them in person (usually 'uglier').

 

The thing with this tech demo is that it shows us what we always knew that we could have film animation like motion within in a game. The models, and T&L are marginally improved from HR and they said this was from a year ago so it's definitely improved. On better hardware it would still be improved more. What we need in games are better animators, not better character modellers - those are limited by the hardware specs all the time. However you could rig a highly believable story even on the PS2. This is why we connect to certain things more easily through the story, the feeling even if they look fake. The key to that is motion. This captures motion really well, it captured the actress' emotes, her actions, the slight movements and that's what worked for a lot of people.

 

However this is not the future game. I'm pretty sure this will have as much common to Project 2 as the casting did to Heavy rain and that is to say that the theme would be sci-fi and possibly touch on some PK Dick type of material. However the writing needs to improve. If not for her performance this would've been crap in all fairness.

[excel_excel]

It looked cool, the writing was a bit iffy though, I cringed when he called her baby, maybe that was the point.

I loved the subtle touches though, the smile and really delicate face movements when she was given her name. I'm not interested in a Heavy Rain gameplay retread though. This kind of story as well, will no doubt lead to even more plot holes then Heavy Rain's did.