I powered through Heavy Rain today.
Let me start by saying that this game is an incredible ride. In scene after scene it creates tremendous tension and delivers real, nail-biting thrills. The individual elements work spectacularly. I was totally engaged in the game moment-to-moment as I was playing it, and found myself constantly yelling at the screen in terror or exhaling in relief. I think Heavy Rain demonstrates that storytelling like this is legitimate and can be engaging and moving.
When you take those individual elements and think of them as a whole, there are some problems. There are definitely some significant issues with the plot, some major questions left unanswered and some simply misleading aspects to the narrative that seem designed solely to string you along and don't seem plausible within the overall story of the game. An effective but not exceptional Hollywood thriller might be forgiven for one such plot problem over the course of its two-hour running time. At around five or six times the length of such a film, Heavy Rain also features around five or six such plot problems. They certainly don't ruin the experience, because the game is so good at delivering thrills that while you're playing it, you're probably too caught up in the excitement of the moment to let them bother you too much. But they're there.
The environments in this game are exceptional. The architecture of the motel feels completely authentic. The old-fashioned design of the refrigerator in Scott's apartment is beautiful. So many wonderful details like these work to really pull you into the world of the game.
And the ARI stuff didn't bug me the way I thought it might after playing the demo. I like how they decided to have a little fun with it, letting you do stuff like bounce the virtual ball against the virtual wall while waiting for the police captain. It worked for me.
Do you think love can bloom, even during a murder investigation?
The big question: To play it again or not? I probably will at some point. But not right away. Going back in and deliberately making different choices just to see how it affects the plot would be fun on one hand, but it would also reveal the machinery behind the game's storytelling, the THIS ACTION = THAT RESULT formulas, which might, as David Cage said in an interview, "kill the magic" a bit. Right now I'm content to live with the way things played out for me.
And now a few specific details about some of my issues with the game. If you care about this sort of thing, I strongly suggest not reading the spoilers unless you have completed the game yourself. I do reveal the identity of the origami killer and go into detail about some aspects of how the game played out for me. I don't want to hear any whining!
The biggest plot issue for me is probably...
***SPOILER*** Ethan's blackouts, waking up with the origami figures. What the hell is that about? It seems to serve no purpose other than to make you think he might conceivably be the killer. How is that happening? Is the actual killer drugging him and putting origami figures in his hand or something? I just can't figure out how that makes any sense, unless maybe it's explained in some scene or plot departure that I didn't experience. I also found it really hard to accept that he actually believed he had some kind of split personality and had kidnapped his own son but just couldn't remember where, which he stated during a police interrogation scene.
Another huge story issue is...
***SPOILER*** Madison's dream sequence early on. So far as I can tell, it exists solely to mislead the player, to make you believe that she's actually staying at the motel because of terrible insomnia and nightmares, when in fact that's not it at all. Also, I'm pretty sure that when I first arrived at the motel as Madison and saw Ethan, she referred to him as a "stranger," in her own thoughts. But didn't she know exactly who she was, and wasn't she there solely because of him?
And a question about Scott...
***SPOILER*** Was he actually hired by the families of the victims? In the end, I really didn't think so. I thought that was just a ruse so that he could go around and collect evidence. And never once do we see any such person who has hired him, or hear their voices on the phone or anything. But then during a news report in my ending, the reporter makes reference to this again, him working for the families of the victims. Weird.
One other minor factual slip-up I encountered:
***SPOILER*** When you're at the first crime scene, Jayden says it's 2011. I'm almost positive that at some point during some ARI investigation while I was looking over victim profiles or something, some reference was made to a date in 2012, leading me to believe that maybe a year had passed since that initial crime scene investigation. But then during the ending, a tombstone of a character who died during the climax of my game read 2011, so this clearly wasn't the case.
And now a quick run-down on a few of the major points of how my game played out, and the ending I got.
***SPOILER*** I didn't complete the fourth trial. I didn't feel that murdering someone was justifiable.
There was a moment when Madison, the incredibly sexy girl, said, "Time to play the sexy girl." Girl, PLEASE!
Lauren died in Scott's car as it was sinking. I felt bad about that. I don't know if she can be saved or not. I liked her. I kinda wanted her and Scott to form a lasting father-daughter-styIe relationship. I had the sense that they would be good for each other. Of course, that was before I knew about Scott.
After Lauren died, Scott went on a spectacular spree of vengeance back at the McBucks' (whatever their name really is) mansion. That was awesome. During that sequence, there was something in him for me of an older, fatter Bud White, the angry cop played by Russell Crowe in L.A. Confidential.
Not having completed the fourth trial, I didn't have a complete address to work with in the end, and had to pick just one location to check out from three possibilities. That was a terrific moment in my opinion, needing to use the sound clues to pick the correct location. I really felt like a huge amount was riding on my choice and that it needed to be right.
As implausible as I thought much of the narrative was, Shelby's twisted motivation for doing what he did--trying to find a father who was willing to do what was necessary to save a child in that position, after his own father, drunk and negligent, failed to lift a finger to save his drowning brother--worked for me on a purely emotional level.
In my ending, Ethan saved Shaun, and Madison showed up and walked out with him to face Blake and his snipers. Jayden and Shelby fought on an elevated conveyor belt and Shelby wound up falling to his grisly death.
Ethan, Madison and Shaun then move into a new happy home. Jayden, apparently having kicked the tripto habit, is now a celebrity after helping to bring the origami killer's rein of terror to an end. We see him on a talk show. Then we see him working in an office with the ARI glasses. Some miniature, computer-generated tanks crawl up onto his desk. He takes off the glasses but can still see the tanks! Say whaaaaa?! THE END!
