Kara: Heavy Rain Developers Quantic Dream Show Off Amazing Tech Demo

Is This The Future Of Video Games?

We've seen the future of video games. And it's amazing, if slightly creepy.

Heavy Rain developers Quantic Dream have shown off a tech demo at the Game Developers' Conference which, while running on current-gen hardware, is a huge improvement over virtually anything seen in current games.

Quantic Dream is explicit that the video (named 'Kara') is not a sneak peak into their next release.

However, they did take time to show off the demo as a hint of the quality - if not storyline - they'll be going for next time around.

Director David Cage told the official Playstation blog that the team wanted "to push the envelope" with the demo.

"We wanted to improve many things," he said. "Things that were not possible with the Heavy Rain engine. So we had to develop a new engine from scratch.

Cage said that for the demo Quantic Dream cast the same person as the body and the voice. The difference it makes on the quality of animation is abundantly clear.

"With Heavy Rain, we did what many games do - split performances, recording a voice on one side and a body animation on the other, putting everything together and crossing your fingers that you get a consistent performance.

"It worked okay for Heavy Rain, but you lose a lot of a performance by splitting into two and rebuilding it artificially."

Although adamant the resulting video is not a clue to the next game coming out of the studio, it did represent their 'DNA'.

"'Kara' is not our next game. It’s not the character, it’s not the world, it’s not the story … But I think that’s a part of the DNA of the studio, and hopefully something that people like about us – they never know what they’re going to get!"

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