Actors Lend Heavy Rain Their Voices AND Their Bodies

Heavy Rain

Perhaps you thought Quantic Dream wrote the story, designed the characters, and then sought out voices to go along with those characters. Well, not quite.

In reality, they got the actors and then created the characters in the story based on the hired voice talents' physical appearances. Therefore, when you're controlling Ethan Mars, Scott Shelby, Madison Paige, and Norman Jayden, you are taking control of the virtual images of Pascal Langdale, Sam Douglas, Jacqui Ainsley and Leon Ockenden respectively. If you want proof, check out CVG; they show you some photos of the actors alongside their on-screen personas in Heavy Rain. You will notice that Madison's hair is short and black while Jacqui Ainsley's hair is long and blonde but beyond that, it's the same body and face (a hot body and face, too). But the other actors are all very, very close to their virtual counterparts; Scott Shelby is Sam Douglas, for crying out loud. They also don't show you Aurélie Bancilhon, who plays Lauren Winter and again, the real and virtual version of that woman is spot-on. If you caught the tech demo featuring her some time ago, where she acts out a scene (not from the game) for an audition, you know who she is. She was also in the demo; she was the prostitute in "Sleazy Place."

When you get the game next week, you can see even more after unlocking extra content when playing. There are audition scenes for each of the four major actors, plus that tech demo for Bancilhon, and they even take you behind the scenes for motion capture. All those action scenes you see, like when Madison is attacked in her apartment? Acted out in real-time by real actors, my friends.