Heavy Rain: The Origami Killer promises a non-linear and cinematic which is intended to be play without any reloading according director David Cage, who spoke with CVG this week.

“There will be the opportunity for players to reply as much as they want from where they want, but we would really like to encourage them not to do so — to continue to play with one story bearing with the consequences of their actions,” Cage told CVG.

The story can even survive the deaths of its multiple player-controlled characters, accommodating all player choices, even fatal ones. Is this the end of the Game Over screen?

“This is what’s exciting about it,” said Cage. “This is a story that you told. It’s pretty unique. So why would you want to do everything perfect and change what you’ve done. You will be able to redo what you like but we recommend not to.”

Cage is the founder, CEO and auteur of French studio Quantic Dreams. His last effort was 2005’s Fahrenheit (aka Indigo Prophecy), which also featured a non-linear story, told through bare-bones controls and heavily scripted quick time events.

Judging from these early previews, Heavy Rain is a definite improvement over Fahrenheit and may establish new conventions for interactivity in storytelling when it comes out for the Playstation 3 last next year.

Mistakes and pitfalls always break the mood in games. They pressure or outright force the player to flip back a few pages and rewrite the story correctly. Some recent games have broken from the trend of checkpoints and quick-save/quick-load.  BioShock allowed players to continue after dying by restoring the hero at the nearest Vita-Chamber — a kind of in-character checkpoint.

Heavy Rain will liberate players from the constraints of failure by offering in-game consequences rather than a forced reboot and maintaining immersion in the plot rather than ending it.