Heavy Rain Is Supposed To Be Mature, Ratings Boards Could Stilt That.

Not dark in the immature sense. No, Heavy Rain isn't interested in exploding heads and blood littered corridors. Heavy Rain is interested in genuine mature gameplay.

Of course, in the video game medium, maturity is often stilted. And that has us worried about Heavy Rain. Even the slightest tweaks to the game's "shock" moments could make the game less of an experience. Take for example the strip-scene involving one of the game's protagonists Madison Paige. The uncomfortable nature of the scene invoked reactions usually invisible in this medium; discomfort, disgust. Remove scenes of that kind and you lose much of the game's individuality.

With rumours of a sex scene going into the game, our concerns at the ratings board only emphasise. Executive producer Guillaume de Fondaumiere reckons we should stop worrying, as the game is being tailored to fit guidelines across the different regions.
[quote]
"We wanted to have pretty much the same game everywhere, be it Europe, in the United States, or in Japan, of course, with slight adaptions, for instance, the Japanese version," he said. "I don't think the changes we made will make a big difference, so that those are real modular things.  We felt the need to adapt the content to the culture."</blockquote>

We're totally fine with adaptation for culture. At the end of the day that's Quantic Dream's decision and this is their product. What still concerns us is a politically correct rating's board turning around and saying, "hey, you can't depict in video games what movies and TV do everyday - change it."

We want to experience David Cage's vision in full.