From Uncharted 2’s blockbuster action scenes to Modern Warfare 2’s gut-wrenching airport level, video games are pushing the boundaries of storytelling, leveraging the power of modern day hardware to deliver cinematic experiences that reach unprecedented levels of quality and impact. Quantic Dream’s upcoming cinematic thriller Heavy Rain looks to push the envelope even further by offering gamers something that can only be described as an entirely new genre: the fully-realized interactive movie.
Heavy Rain is not the first game to exhibit traits of an “interactive movie”: games such as Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace paved the way in the 80’s, even though they offered nothing more than rudimentary experience which relied on timed button presses and joystick movements during critical moments in the story. In the mid-90’s games like Sierra’s Phantasmagoria pushed the cinematic experience even further, showcasing adventure game mechanics paired with an adult story and full-motion video capture for every character in the game. Spanning seven CDs, the game was a massive adventure-horror experience not for the faint of heart.
Now, the tradition of storytelling in video games comes to a head with Heavy Rain. Building upon the work they did in their 2005 psychological thriller Indigo Prophecy (known as Fahrenheit outside of the U.S.), developer Quantic Dream have crafted a title so unique and life-like that it has the potential to represent an evolutionary leap not just for the genre but the industry as a whole. I was recently given an opportunity to play through the first 11 chapters of the game, and though I was only able to scratch the surface of the game’s creepy murder-filled story, it was a terrific glimpse into what Quantic Dream hopes to achieve with their next cinematic thriller.
Heavy Rain begins inconspicuously enough with the player in control of Ethan Mars, who wakes up to a sunny morning on the day of his youngest son’s birthday. Wandering around Ethan’s house, players are afforded a chance to adapt to Heavy Rain’s unusual control scheme. Almost no two actions share the same controller commands, though many of the contextual movements are performed by moving the right analog stick in a specific motion. For instance, to open Ethan’s dresser you might need to rotate the right stick counter-clockwise, or to turn on the water faucet so Ethan can brush his teeth you might push the stick downwards. Other actions require more precise movement: move the stick too quickly while Ethan shaves, for instance, and he’ll cut himself. In other games these mundane activities might grow tiresome fast, but in Heavy Rain it’s a great way to learn exactly how the game operates; it also has the added benefit of fully immersing you within the game world.
Aside from learning the control scheme, the opening section of game succeeds in establishing a sense of security. Ethan spends the day with his family, playing in the backyard with his kids and helping his wife set the table (and possibly giving her a love pinch while she’s doing dishes)-it’s all so nice and serene. The scene that follows is anything but, however: while Ethan at a crowded shopping mall, he loses track of his son. What starts as a feeling of parental unease slowly builds into genuine anxiety and the game changes visually in order to give players a feeling of Ethan’s panicked state. The skewed, pulsating viewpoint not only provides a glimpse into Ethan’s mindset but emphasizes the feeling of claustrophobia that comes from being surrounded by hundreds of strangers. The scene then escalates to a gruesome conclusion: Ethan finds his son wandering outside and just as he calls out to him, he runs across the street right into the path of an oncoming car. At this point, the game makes a very visible shift in terms of its presentation. Gone are the bright colors and brilliant sunshine that dominated the early scenes, and in their place are dull tones and the constant oppressive rhythm of the ongoing rainfall.
Tragedy is a common theme in Heavy Rain, and it not only haunts Ethan but the other individuals whose lives are interconnected. The game is full of characters who are struggling with the weight of their demons: There’s Scott Shelby, an asthmatic detective who is trying to track down the game’s central antagonist, the serial murderer known as the Origami Killer; Norman Jayden, an FBI agent who is dealing with a crippling drug addiction while also investigating the murders; and Madison Page, a journalist charged with covering the case for the newspaper, but who suffers from insomnia. Throughout Heavy Rain, players will get a chance to discover their darkest secrets and learn what role they play in the dealings of the Origami Killer. “There’s a little of me in all four of the main characters in Heavy Rain,” writer and director David Cage told us on the phone from Paris as he took time out from putting his finishing touches to the game. “It’s definitely the most personal thing I’ve ever written, and there are a number of scenes that are drawn directly from my own experiences.” Of note is that opening scene. “I lost one of my kids at the mall once,” said Cage, sharing a personal moment that any parent can fully appreciate. “It was honestly the most shocking and terrifying experience of my life. I must have looked for him for 10 minutes before I ultimately found him, but that surge of emotion was profound.” It was during this moment of parental terror four years ago that the concept for Heavy Rain was born. “When I started writing, I wanted to recreate this fear,” Cage explained. “I wanted to convey this very real emotion that anyone could relate to. This was the most intense emotional experience of my life, and it was so much more powerful than anything else I can ever recall.
The varied characters also allowed Cage and his team to do some interesting things from a gameplay perspective. In the first chapter starring Scott Shelby, players encounter the game’s first “quick-time event” fight scene. The camera during non-fight scene segments of the game stays fixed, and players have the option of switching between a few set camera angles During fight scenes, the camera takes on a mind of its own so players can concentrate on inputting timed button presses. After questioning a prostitute in a seedy hotel about her son-a victim of the Origami Killer-Shelby runs into the woman’s abusive boyfriend and a violent fight ensues. But unlike the relatively simple quick time events of past titles, Heavy Rain asks gamers to do everything from hitting face buttons and shoulder buttons to rotating the right stick in a specific direction. Without any discernible pattern in the button prompts, this scene invoked a strong sense of anxiety which meshes well with the on screen life-and-death situation Shelby finds himself in. Heavy Rain’s quicktime events are also different in that missing a button prompt doesn’t automatically end in failure but rather results in a dramatically different outcome.
Subsequent scenes find players in control of FBI agent Norman Jayden. Jayden uses a computer interface called ARI to investigate and analyze crime scenes, and his first scene in the game is in a field during the aftermath of one of the Origami Killer’s slayings. Jayden can access ARI through a special pair of glasses, and by walking around the field players can gather clues that will hopefully help in tracking down the Origami Killer. Later on, back at a police station, Jayden exhibited his first noticeable drug withdrawal, which sent his hand into a twitching frenzy and made it almost impossible to control him. If players choose to put off taking the drugs, he becomes increasingly difficult to control, as with each step players are tasked with holding down buttons to keep his twitching hand hidden. This finger-twisting control method is used in a variety of ways throughout the game, and brings an element of physicality to the control scheme.
The fourth playable character in this early demo is Madison Page. Although little is revealed about her early in the game, she has been highlighted in a number of previous demonstrations, including Cage’s presentation at Gamescom in Germany earlier this year. In her first scene, Madison is seen waking up in the middle of the night, and exploration of her apartment demonstrates another gameplay mechanic that has only been briefly shown before; the ability to “listen” to characters’ thoughts. By holding a shoulder button, players can witness the inner dialog as individuals wrestle with their own demons, and then act on these thoughts. While walking around the apartment, Madison notices that her refrigerator is open; what follows is another quick-time fight with a group of masked men that are intent on killing her. This scene, like Shelby’s before, can play out in numerous different ways but all of them end the same way; with Madison being killed. After this, she immediately wakes up, realizing it was just a dream.
The first 11 chapters of Heavy Rain provided a brief glimpse into all the primary characters, but just barely showed how some of the character’s stories will overlap. Jayden has a run-in with Ethan Mars at the police station, but other than that there wasn’t much of the oft-mentioned crossover that Cage has discussed in his presentations. Based on this early glimpse, we were left wondering what kind of audience Heavy Rain will draw when it releases. It is clearly intended to be an adult game in the truest sense of the word, something that Cage explains in great detail in the February issue of GamePro, which goes on sale in early January. More often than not the gaming masses have proved that games that provide instant gratification have tended to dominate at the expense of more thoughtful experiences. Even games that Sony has strongly promoted in the past exhibit this trend; the heavy-hitting shooter Killzone 2 has more than doubled the lifetime sales of the artful Shadow of the Colossus in under a year. Who Heavy Rain connects with in the end is anyone’s guess, but it’s clear that Cage is intent on pushing games in a very new direction.