I recently read an interview with David Cage, the mind behind Fahrenheit (or Indigo Prophecy, as it is known in the US) in which, when being asked what genre would be more appropriate for his game, he replied that he likes to think of it as an “Interactive Drama”. So, what’s with the strange categorization, you may ask. Is this guy so arrogant that he sets out to create his own genre? Well, David Cage is not arrogant at all, but brilliant (in my humble opinion at least), because Fahrenheit is a game that cannot be easily associated with any single game genre.
After so many developers got it wrong, the French company Quantic Dream headed by Cage, has managed to release a game that is original beyond any doubt. Just for the sake of being objective and not too cocky, I will call Fahrenheit an adventure game, although you won’t have any puzzles to solve or an inventory to manage during your playtime. Instead, the emphasis in Fahrenheit is on character interaction and story and also on the player’s ability to make certain decisions that can affect the progress and even the ending of the story.
The first thing that sticks out when playing Fahrenheit is that the game is very similar to a movie. It’s true, we’ve seen many other games that tried to create a more cinematic experience for the player (Mafia: City of Lost Heaven being the most successful), but Fahrenheit manages to achieve this feeling for its entire duration. The most tried and true approach to this concept was, until now, the use of letterboxed cutscenes that popped up every now and then during the game to advance the story. In Fahrenheit, this “cutscene look” stays with you for the entire duration of the game, even when you have full control of the characters.
Sometimes the game even employs a comic-book stile split-screen technique in order to show multiple events happening at the same time without ruining the continuity. And because of this, you’ll often find yourself staring at the screen waiting for the cutscene to finish, oblivious to the fact that you already have full control of the character. Even the tutorial, with its “behind the scenes” look, adds to the feeling that the whole game experience is actually a movie. The introduction is made by David Cage himself (albeit in a virtual replica), who, with the help of Bob (a controllable crash-test dummy) will explain the basic concepts you need to master in order to play Fahrenheit. In all, the tutorial is a pretty original gimmick that says a lot about the idea behind the game.
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