This includes, but may not be limited to, hiring voice actors who can, you know, fucking act with their voices. When presentation is all you’ve got to offer, when your gameplay consists solely of mashing buttons, pushing sticks, and shaking the controller at prescribed times, you’d better be sure that the presentation is polished, buffed, and polished again to rival the sheen on a ferengi bartender’s skull bumps. Incidentally, this observation is coming from a guy who spent about a hundred hours last summer with Sacred 2: Fallen Angel, so I can say without guile or reservation that piss-poor presentation is generally not a deal-breaker for me. Normally, that would be a noteworthy accomplishment, but I guess once you consider that Heavy Rain is not really a game, but an “interactive film noir,” it all makes a kind of murky, poorly acted, badly written sense. This is the first time I’ve had a game’s presentation ruin the experience for me. If you liked BioShock, continue from here. If you liked Indigo Prophecy/Fahrenheit, stop here.
Shrieking, you run from the room in horror, because you suddenly realize that it’s worse than you’d feared - it is, in fact, the end of time, and garbage is all that has survived.” “You pick up the entire cast’s performance from Heavy Rain and hold it up to the light. Amazed, you put it down again and stand back reverently, because you suddenly realize that you’re in the presence of greatness.” You carefully inspect it for creases, stiffness, and visible seams.
“You pick up Armin Shimerman’s performance as Andrew Ryan in BioShock and hold it up to the light. Because you silly Americans won't buy anything unless it has breasts on the cover.