Heavy Rain: What would you do?

Heavy Rain is, if nothing else, a property that will keep you thinking long after the credits have rolled. The newest title by French studio Quantic Dream, a developer known for making complicated, story-driven games like Indigo Prophecy, it is the evolution of many types of media. You effectively “choose your own adventure,” but that would dismiss the strong cast of characters and world, and “interactive drama” (a term used by the developers to categorize it) may be misunderstood and neglect how the distinct way you play makes you feel the intensity of the onscreen action. The most apt description is that it is what a moviegoer so often wants when in the theater. Watching a film is a passive activity where you observe and cannot control the events leading up to the outcome. A game requires you control the action, but plot less often drives you forward than does the prospect of a badder-ass gun. Heavy Rain creates the truest sense of a self-made cinematic experience yet where everything is up to you. You are the storyteller, and the audience.

The story is, effectively, a murder mystery: you play as four characters – a private eye, a FBI agent, a photographer, and a father desperately trying to save his son – all searching to stop a serial child killer, known as the Origami Killer, before another victim is claimed. It is mature in a way games typically don’t dare touch – there are no space marines exploding dudes, and there are no sex mini-games. The four leads are normal people with human problems existing in a real, lived-in world. It’s a story for adults, not the typical Halo crowd. The search for a killer is where it starts, and where it ends is up to you. You decide how these protagonists proceed with their respective investigations, and your actions determine whether they make it out alive.

Yeah, your characters can die, and I don’t mean a normal video game death. There is no “Game Over” screen or extra lives. Death is permanent. It’s possible to save everyone in the end, and it’s possible for your story to conclude with everyone lost: there are a lot of outcomes within that spectrum. The others characters’ arcs will continue after a character is killed – as Writer/Director David Cage puts it, each of the protagonists is “important, but not vital to the story.” I began wanting to keep my characters alive to feel like I had really “beat” the game, but my motivation matured as the story unfolded. I grew to care about them and their weaknesses. They’re all a little effed up, and I wanted to get them through in the hope that the search for Origami would free them a little from their demons. Film has elicited this sort of drive from me, but I could only hope that everyone would come out for the better; Heavy Rain challenges me to make it happen.

That isn’t to say that getting everyone through it alive is the best conclusion. It’s simply one way to tell the story. Judgments are never made about what is “right” or “wrong.” Many of the decisions you make in the course of the game come down to more of a lesser of two evils. It asks some very difficult choices of you, and there is no “correct” choice. Ambiguity is at the core of the game.

So we have a gripping story, but how is this different from any other well-written game? While it has already been hotly debated, I think that the unconventional control scheme bridges the gap between feeling these emotions, and experiencing them. What they attempt, and achieve, in quick-time button presses and flicks of the analog sticks is to give context with the events on the screen. Think about the motion your arm makes to pull a door knob or open a refrigerator door, and that’s what you do with the right analog stick (instead of just pressing a random button). You’ll move the stick carefully to shave or rock a baby to sleep. You’ll hold an increasing number of buttons down in order to simulate the difficulty it takes to move up a muddy hill or work your way through downed power lines. You’ll use the PS3’s motion control to shake yourself free of restraints or swiftly move the controller in a direction to kick in a door. Additionally, the cues for these executions are unobtrusively placed on the screen where the action is happening—you never have to take your eyes off of what’s happening in order to play. There are plenty of moments where you can meet your end, and they made me connect with the game in a way I’ve rarely experienced in film or games primarily because I felt what my character was trying to do in controlling him.

The freedom of choice, the intense story and the contextual controls come together to bring truly thrilling, and sometimes frightening, sequences. One chapter halfway through the game sees your photographer, Madison Paige, going to a disgraced doctor to get information to further her investigation. Using her actual insomnia as a cover, she arrives asking to buy sleeping pills from the old gentleman. Once you’re inside, do you accept his offer for a drink? Do you actually drink it? How do you get information out of him, or better yet, get him into another room so you can sneak around looking for clues? The section can end many ways: I imagine you could find clues without alerting the good doctor, buy your pills and leave. While I will say I survived that chapter, my experience wasn’t nearly that…uneventful. I had to fight like a dog for my life, and I felt the fear from that struggle because of the presentation and the way I controlled Madison. I could have lost her at several points. My heart was pounding throughout and well after because that life-or-death situation felt real to me, even though it was just a game.

There are minor quips, like with anything, but what Heavy Rain creates is worth your time. I probably got the best possible ending – all of my characters lived and (mostly) had happy endings. I would typically start a second playthrough right away to tell a different story and see what happens, but I think I’ll take Cage’s advice and not play the game again for sometime. The magic lies in how my choices created my story. No two stories will unfold the same way because of all of the decisions, both small and large, so I’d rather reflect on the story I crafted before I return. Its ability to produce so many outcomes in the framework of a compelling, emotionally-charged story is beyond what we come to expect from a game. Hell, it’s even kind of beyond what is within a film’s power. And that’s why I’m still thinking about it.