02-19-2010

By, Daniel Brown, TheGameHeadz.com

PSN, XBox Live : VgcGames

Heavy Rain Is set to officially release Tuesday, Febuary 23, 2010, unless you live in Paris, which is where Quantic Dreams held their Launch Party for Heavy Rain. the Party was accompanied by a Hollywood level of Media reporters, and a video featuring Samuel L. Jackson, and other Hollywood elites, talking about the game, and how far they would go for Love. All of this, Courtesy of the Playstation Blog.

I hope you’re ready for lots of Heavy Rain content, because while we were at the big Launch Party in Paris this week we managed to secure a nice amount of interview and video content which should tide you over until well after the game comes out next week. To kick things off we’ve got a short teaser video and some photos which should give you an idea of what the launch event was like. I would’ve loved for you all to have been there with us, but hopefully this is the next best thing.

The event took place at the Gaumont Cinema on the Champs Elysees in Paris, where David Cage (Writer/Director), Guillaume de Fondaumiere (Executive Producer), Pascal Langdale (Actor – Ethan Mars), Sam Douglas (Actor – Scott Shelby), Leon Ockenden (Actor – Norman Jayden) and Jacqui Ainsley (Actor – Madison Paige) met members of the film and game media and members of the public. After having played through the game last week, it was very surreal to see them walking around in the real world. The event involved much red carpet walking, hors d’oeuvre nibbling and industry mingling. Plus an ice sculpture in the shape of an origami. No, really.

A cut down video edit of the first section of the game was shown to media on one of the Gaumont’s many cinema screens. There aren’t many games which can be confidently displayed on the silver screen in front of dozens of members of the press but, if the applause was anything to go by, they seemed to love it. After this, director Neil LaBute stepped in to present a short film, which he had directed specially for the event, based on Heavy Rain’s central premise: how far would you go to save someone you love? It’s a short seven minute talking heads piece involving a wide range of film industry members, such as Samuel L. Jackson, Hanif Kureishi, Nicolas Roeg, Stephen Frears, Ben Chaplin, Nicholas Hoult, Peter Bogdanovich and Jean Marc Barr. Check it out for yourself below.

This was followed by a Q&A panel involving Mr. LaBute alongside David Cage, Terry Gilliam, Martha Fiennes and Mathieu Kassovitz, during which they discussed how the film and game industries were merging. It was a pretty lively debate and we’re hoping to get you a video of that in the next week or so. It was great to see the enthusiastic responses from these respected industry veterans towards Heavy Rain.

The second day of the event was only slightly less glamorous, but no less interesting. Media had interviews with the actors, David Cage and Guillaume de Fondaumiere and you can see our interviews with them begin to appear next week. Thanks again for answering my request for interview questions. I’ll leave you with the teaser video taken at the red carpet event and you can look forward to plenty more Heavy Rain content on PlayStation.Blog in the coming weeks. Plus, you’ll be able to pick up the game and play it for yourself on Wednesday in mainland Europe and Friday in the UK (and Tuesday in North America).