Any listener of the Big Red Potion podcast would tell you that I have been a huge supporter of the upcoming PS3-exclusive adventure title, Heavy Rain. The game—spawned from David Cage, the mind behind Indigo Prophecy and Omikron—allows you to inhabit the bodies of four distinct characters, each of which is somehow involved with the dreaded Origami Killer. The catch here is that all of these characters can die at any point during gameplay, and there are no extra lives to be found. Heavy Rain bucks thirty years of video game tradition by not allowing you to resurrect a character that has been lead to an untimely end. Instead, the game continues without them, promising infinite replayability as you see how many branches this tree has to explore. Heavy Rain is obviously ambitious, but whether the gameplay would hold up to the fascinating premise was always uncertain.

As the E3 demo began, Cage was genuinely excited. He clearly wants the game to resonate with players in a way that no other interactive experience has. The demo began with our character—an attractive brunette in a red dress—walking into the Blue Lagoon club, a techno-fueled dance hall packed with partiers. We are told that the girl was looking for a link to the Origami Killer, and would need to talk to the owner of the joint to get the information that she needs. As she walked through the crowd, she brushed her hand along the dancers’ backs to maneuver them out of her way. Although subtle, this little animation added a gloss of realism to the world, as the main character was merely part of a crowd instead of a focal point of everyone’s attention. Also worth noting is that each inhabitant has their own unique animation, making the backgrounds feel more organic and less mechanical than most other games.