Heavy Rain: Squeezing magic from the mundane

And the Lord spake: "This one! Saw this finger off!"

Spoiler alert: The following article contains a great many spoilers of plot points and choices someone can take while playing Heavy Rain. If you’ve not yet played the game, consider yourself warned. Also, if you’ve not yet played the game, well, you probably won’t be interested in what I’m talking about anyway.

When it was released, Quantic Dream’s interactive drama Heavy Rain received a wide range of reactions. While most reviewers (including us) were generally positive about the game and the experience it tried to create, it’s also quite well recognised that the game still had it’s flaws. One of those flaws, and the subject that I’d like to talk about today in this long, rambling diatribe, is the game’s slow pacing.

The game’s prologue puts the player in control of the most mundane of day-to-day tasks, like brushing your teeth, setting a table or even catching up on a character’s workload. Functionally, these rather dull acts serve as the player’s tutorial, giving them the basic run-down of how the game’s control system works and the variety of different ways that on-screen prompts have to be executed. Emotionally, on the other hand, what the game is trying to achieve is a crash course in bonding.

I’d argue that this bonding is actually far more important than the player’s introduction to the control scheme. When Heavy Rain is at it’s best, it creates a very deep empathy for it’s characters, and this means that the player’s reactions will be executed according to their personal feelings on a given situation. When the game successfully holds this empathy, it’s being played the way David Cage wanted it to be played, putting the player in the shoes of otherwise unfamiliar characters and asking you to make their choices for them.

Unfortunately, this perfect pitching of pathos isn’t how many of Heavy Rain‘s chapters play out, as it’s almost impossible to maintain this emotional investment for the entire length of an eight-hour game. Especially considering the game is asking you to invest yourself with four completely separate personalities.

Personally, I found that Heavy Rain had an odd dynamic, and one that I certainly wouldn’t have expected from early reports. For me, the game was actually at it’s weakest when it was attempting to create a sense of tension or suspense, and strongest when it portrayed everyday emotion for the player to relate to. To illustrate my point, I’d like to compare two different scenes that utilise Ethan’s character in almost polar opposite situations. Those two scenes are The Lizard and Father and Son.

I’ll begin with Father and Son. This scene begins directly after the prologue, and starkly contrasts Ethan’s previous domestic bliss with life after the death of his son Jason (for whom he X’d his heart out). Ethan has separated from his wife, and now shares custody of their remaining son Shaun. His office implies that he’s kept his job, but the layer of dust and location of his new residence would suggest that it’s been a while since he taken regular work. He’s also wasted all your grooming efforts in the tutorial, and grown himself a mighty fine Beard of Sorrow.

But the Prologue has accomplished a lot, despite the delightfully ham-fisted shopping centre scene. Ethan’s loss has hit him hard, and Father and Son makes the player feel this, no matter how you choose to play it. After being late to pick up Shaun from school, the game gives Ethan the rather simple task of taking care of his son for an evening. He has a schedule written out on a board (in itself a sad sign of how far things have deteriorated), and the player can either choose to look after Shaun or not. No matter your choice, the scene will be filled with a sad series of vignettes that solidly connect with the player.

I'll not sully this moment with a flippant caption

If you choose to play the good father, you’ll find that Shaun isn’t particularly interested in talking. He’ll answer any questions you ask him with short, quiet replies, all the while staring at the TV. When you cook him dinner, or ask him to do his homework, he’ll sit at the kitchen table, eyes down and tight lipped. In fact, I thought one of the most powerful images Heavy Rain managed to create was Ethan watching his son do his homework. It so accurately portrayed a man who is emotionally broken but still cares for his family. If you play the responsible parent through to the end you’ll be rewarded with a rather muffled “I love you” as you tuck Shaun into bed, a phrase I imagined to be heard only rarely in Ethan’s new life, and one that actually seemed to mean something for both the character and the player.

For those playing the withdrawn father, the experience can be equally profound. You’ll soon discover that Shaun has come to expect a certain level of neglect from his dad, and will grab a snack and cook himself tea if you fail to do it for him. You can choose to silently play basketball in the rain the entire evening, if you so choose, only returning to the house to carry the slumbering Shaun from his spot on the couch up to his bedroom. His numbness mirrors your own inaction with this style of playthrough, and this gives Father and Son a real heart-breaking feel.

With either style of play, Father and Son gave me a real emotional response, something which so many games attempt to set up but inevitably fail with. Perhaps it’s the domestic setting, some paternal instinct or the fact that my father also used to abandon me on carousels, but the rather dull setting managed to create a solid and almost profound emotional link.

Now contrast this against The Lizard. The Lizard is the third test given to Ethan by the Origami (Origemi? Origahme?) Killer, and asks the player to undertake an act of self-mutilation for more details about the now kidnapped Shaun’s location. In this scene David Cage is attempting to advance the game’s core query, also used as it’s tagline, which is: “How far would you go to save someone you love?”

Up until this point, the Origami (Orahgami?) Killer’s trails have involved Ethan gaining the courage to face serious injury and continue. And slight though it might have been, both the first and the second trial offered Ethan the chance to complete them without hurting himself in the process. This chance is completely absent in The Lizard, as Ethan is informed in no uncertain terms that he’ll either cut off the tip of one of his fingers in front of a camera or leave without further information on his son’s location.

The situation is certainly shocking (if eight thousand other people haven’t spoiled it for you … kinda like I just did), and upon hearing the proposal the player will certainly be weighing up the cost of their actions or inactions. But The Lizard lost me the moment I began to search the room. A scene that any “normal” player should have played out in horror, had me laughing so hard that my Six-Axis almost pre-emptively chopped the finger off for me.

Wait ... swiftly and cleanly? Isn't that the way LITTLE GIRLS chop their fingers off, Ethan?

Any emotional involvement I had in the scene broke the moment Ethan picked up a timber saw. There are plenty of other implements scattered around the room: a hatchet, a large knife, a pair of bolt cutters. Presumably placed there by the killer (why else would they be in an abandoned apartment?), there is also a roll of bandages, alcohol and disinfectant to help lessen the risk of associated injury. If you’re really calculating, you can even heat up a handy piece of iron with the gas stove to allow you to cauterise the wound once the finger is removed.

But in what universe does a man, even pushed to the edge like Ethan, decide that he should slowly and agonisingly slice off his own finger with a fucking saw?

That was it for me. Any emotional connection I’d established with Ethan in that moment crumbled, as it was obvious that this implement was only an option for anyone who had the morbid curiosity to observe the painful results. The scene was no longer about what I thought Ethan would realistically do with this challenge, it was about what the player wanted to see Ethan do, no matter his feelings on the matter.

Acting rationally or irrationally, the saw would remain a desperate last resort implement.  Given the abundance of other sharp implements, why would Ethan even bother to pick it up?  Quantic Dream may as well have thrown a belt-sander or can-opener into the mix.

I think if we learn anything from Heavy Rain, or even it’s predecessor Farenheit, it’s that David Cage should really stop trying to write suspense stories.  They only ever seem to end up so ridiculous that it overshadows his actual talent for portraying the rather complex emotions of everyday people.  I mean sure, we’d all be laughing him out of the industry if he’d created a game where you babysit your child for eight hours (wow, it’s happening in real time!), but the whole “everyday people in extraordinary situations” routine can only end badly if you’re expecting a gamer to take complete control.