As Dusk Falls hands-on preview and interview – ‘I’m a game designer … I love video games’

metro.co.uk:

GameCentral goes hands-on with the new Xbox exclusive narrative game from one of the designers of Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls.

It’s fair to say that the games of David Cage have not been GameCentral favourites in the past. Titles like Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, and Detroit: Become Human are flawed experiences but they have been very influential for narrative games in general and, despite our misgivings, they’ve also been extremely successful. Although they’ve always been promoted as Cage’s work there is, naturally, a huge team of professionals at French studio Quantic Dream, including, at one point, designer Caroline Marchal.

Marchal is now CEO and creative director of London-based indie developer INTERIOR/NIGHT and while her new game As Dusk Falls does have some similarities with Quantic’s output, the immediate impression is they’re much closer in tone and gameplay to Life Is Strange, originally created by French developer Dontnod.

You may remember As Dusk Falls from Microsoft’s not-E3 showcase, with the graphic novel inspired visuals that feature no animation – just cross fades to different poses and expressions. There are 3D cut scenes, and a moving, cinematic camera, but the distinctive presentation is definitely a polarising one. We can’t pretend to have been instant fans, but we have a feeling it grows on you, because after having played the first chapter of the game itself we’re now a lot more excited about experiencing the whole thing.

As Dusk Falls tells the stories of two families across 30 years but starts in 1998 with a robbery in a (very) small Arizonan town. You play as both the father of a family moving across state and a teenage boy talked into taking part in a robbery of the local sheriff. There’s