It’s been a while since I lost my interest for adventure games. There are great titles in the genre, but I just got tired of the frustration of being locked in a room even though I have an axe in my inventory, or having to limit my dialogue to certain pre-defined options.

So I decided to wait for the next big evolution, something that would expand in a significant way the possibilities of interactions I had with these virtual worlds.

One of the biggest advances in the field of artificial intelligence applied to virtual characters can be found in Façade. Even though it’s not exactly a game, and despite having some problems and limitations, in Façade the characters talk and interact with each other and the player in a really “lifelike” way (well, not all the time, but still).

That’s why I was surprised to see Façade mentioned in this article (via Noah Wardrip-Fruin) about the new game by Quantic Dream, Heavy Rain.

Heavy Rain made a good first impression awhile back, with the impressive “audition tape” video, but today we know it doesn’t bring anything really innovative to the gaming experience (as suggested by certain members of the hype-media).

At least in the mentioned article, the author makes the difference clear:

As a first step, Façade tried to solve this problem by replacing the parrot with something more like a brain-damaged human; Heavy Rain, by comparison, is probably the best-trained parrot in history

He even quotes Michael Mateas, one of Façade creators:

It’s not a problem that can be solved by budget (…) With Façade, there’s lot of ways we failed, it’s a hard problem. But at least we tried to take it on for real, instead of trying to find some trick around it. We hoped people would move on from that, and they haven’t.

If they are so different, then why make the association in the first place? Oh well…