Heavy Rain - The Illusion

Pre-Scriptum: This entry might seem less cohesive than usual. I am simply dying to go play God of War III. I'll make it up to you next time.

"What choice do I have?", reflected Ethan Mars as he grabbed the vial of poison in his hands. The last few hours flashed before his eyes while he ingested the liquid. And like it, his acts disgusted him. No matter what, in an hour, it would be over.

Game director David Cage (in)famously said that Heavy Rain was not a game that should be replayed. I must admit that he was right. Your first (and ideally your only) play through of Heavy Rain is a fantastic gaming experience, filled with particularly tense moments. But as soon as you replay some of those chapters, you realize that amidst all those choices, not all of them have lead to a different result. That is without counting those scenes which must be played no matter what.

I will mention two specific scenes where the illusion of choice is seriously shattered. Now, I do understand the technological aspects of these things, but once again, my problem is one of writing.

The first scene features my favorite character, Madison Paige. It is in fact her first scene. At some point in the scene, while being chased by "men",  you have a choice of heading left or right. When we first played through it (my girlfriend and I), we wondered what would have happened if we had selected the other direction. Of course, when I replayed the game, I chose the other path. To my dismay, I was pushed in the other direction by the man. I let the scene end on its own, by failing at every action, rather disappointed that my choices did not necessarily have different ends.

Most shocking is Scott's first scene. I voluntarily acted like a total a-hole towards Lauren. Did try to ask many questions, barely talked with her, did not even turn back to help. I was wondering if Lauren would still show up without any justifications. Once again, my hopes were in vain and Lauren did show up with the envelope.

These are but two of the scenes where choice proves to be an illusion for their resolution is inescapable and very far from malleable (and with more than 10 endings, no end is truly inescapable in Heavy Rain).

For a game sold on its many paths, choices and ends, it fails dramatically (pun intended). I truly wonder what were the branching paths at same point in the development. Which choices were taken out of the game? How close is Heavy Rain to Cage's vision? What compromises were made?

At the end of the day, however, I believe this will be the end, for now, of my little mental exercise (a light one at that) on Heavy Rain. I will reiterate that you should most absolutely play this game if you enjoy videogames and especially adventure games (à la point and click). It may not be perfect, but it dares to be different and offers a rather unique experience. The illusion does work stupendously on your first play-through.

So where do we go from there? Do we pursue this form of interactive drama? I personally hope so. I believe it is a good match for episodic content. As you can see, it raises a few interesting questions, it's just a question of seeing where all this rain leads us to.

Once again, my apologies if certain paragraphs seem disjointed but Olympus awaits and gods shall fall.

Next time on A Dad and his Blog: Uncharted 2, toddlers and getting old.

Heavy Rain - Part 1 - What not to say to someone who lost his boys...

As he looked through the gate, he saw his son. After all these trials, all these atrocious acts, all these horrors would finally end and his life would get back to normal. That's when he heard footsteps on wet metal.

This is one of the numerous ways in which Heavy Rain can end. Now, being a Trophy Addict, I did everything I had to do to get the Platinum Trophy (speaking of which, this guide was extremely helpful to get all the endings). Seeing all of the endings in less than three hour threw more than a few flaws of the game in stark relief. Although it would be fair to argue that this is not the way the game was meant to be played, watching all of these endings definitely made me detest Madison.

From the ending Tears in the Rain: Ethan is looking over his son's grave, Madison walks up to him. She talks about moving away and forgetting. Ethan tells her: "I can I forget that my two sons died because of me. I loved than more than anything in the world but I could not protect them." To which Madison replies: "I want you to give me a child. A little boy with your eyes." The scene ends with Ethan shooting himself.

As a father, I found Madison almost insulting. She is not trying to help Ethan through this, she just wants him to move on and forget. However, once you have a child, there is no going back. Once again, Madison proves how lost she is. I dare not call her stupid or dumb as there are some indications that she might just be crazy or insane. Which brings me to something else that bothered me with the game.

Madison seems somewhat out of place. A female character tacked in just to have a female character (which you must undress not once but twice throughout the game). Unlike the other characters, her motivations are never fully explored, she is never given anything significant to do (that only her can find) and, she appears to control differently (must be because of her butt). I have yet to play the Taxidermist chapter, so there might be some of that in there, but at the end of the day, within the main game itself, she definitely feels like she is out of place more often than not.

That being said, my first playthrough the game was a memorable experience filled with exciting and intense scenes that were fun to play through, even though they were QTE. If you like point-and-click style adventure games, you owe it to yourself to experience Heavy Rain. I believe that being a parent does add to the experience, though I would be interested to discuss the point with people who played the game but don't have kids.

For the record, in our playthrough (I played the game with my spouse) Ethan and Jayden saved the day, while Madison jumped through a window to save herself from the fire. In retrospect, I'm glad we  got the ending with Ethan and Shaun alone in the appartment, Madison "Let's forget" Paige similar ending is grating to say the least. And believe me, you should have seen my girlfriend when she saw Madison throwing herself at Ethan... Heck, even Bayonetta has more self-respect.

Next time on A Dad and his Blog: Is Heavy Rain a one trick pony?

Lost Nightmares and the Yellow Light of Doom

The Spencer Mansion. An historical construction associated with many memories. As I watched the master of unlocking execute her craft, I couldn't help but smile. There is where it all began, it's good to be home. (Little aside: Some would argue, and I count myself amongst them, that the original was inspired by Lovecraft, featured a man called Carnby, but we'll leave that alone in the dark for now (with a very bad pun at that too)).
Now, I'd already completed this new chapter the past night, but there were a few more trophies to be obtained. The first screen appeared, only to disappear seconds later. The Yellow Light had struck and the machine had swallowed my birthday gift from last year.

So here we are, one PS3 Slim later, an opened one, and a few bucks short. Not a great way to start a weekend I must admit. Admittedly, I wanted a bigger hard drive, a third controller just in case and a quieter system, but not necessarily at the expense of backwards compatibility. Here's to hoping that Sony will indeed patch the systems to be backwards compatible someday, after all, it's still possible to create memory cards.

The most annoying thing: Having to replay games to unlock the hardest difficulty level. Other than that, losing saves isn't that bad (although...it does mean I will have to replay LBP completely...not so bad).

I could talk about numerous things right now (a big fight, why did I not write in so long, and what's up with the Scribblenauts hood), but here are some thoughts on Heavy Rain instead.

Seriously, I wish they'd use that engine and game idea (with a tighter plot and maybe less characters) and do a Blade Runner game with it. Imagine, a grim and gritty noir story where you play as a Blade Runner and the replicant he/she is trying to catch. Now, I would increase object interaction a tad as well as reduce the number of possible outcomes (for the simple reason that sometimes, characters' motivations were pretty thin in Heavy Rain). I also think an episodic delivery is ideal for these types of games. Just some random thoughts.

More tomorrow or tonight.

Recent Platinum Trophies: God of War I & II, Bayonetta. Working on Heavy Rain.