It's been longer than I thought since I last wrote but since then I bought myself a PS3 and have been playing lots of games :-) One of which is Heavy Rain.
I really enjoyed this game. Actually, enjoyed might be the wrong word, as I'm not sure I've played anything that's made me feel the way Heavy Rain has, especially in terms of experiencing guilt. I should probably post the obligatory SPOILER ALERT here as I will be discussing what happened when I played the game, though I won't reveal the identity of the Origami Killer. I don't want to spend half this post telling you about the game itself though, as this is less of a review and more a way to document my own response to it. For those who know little about the game though and don't plan on playing it go here for a synopsis.
So first off, it's probably worth knowing that I didn't play the game on my own. My friend Paul came round and we took turns playing (on three seperate session). I'm not sure how I would of felt playing it on my own, but we both came away from it feeling like Heavy Rain could be the start of something very exciting, with Paul suggesting it might even be the start of a new genre. From the start, when we were given instructions on how to make an origami figure from the paper that came with box, we knew it was going to be an immersive experience. Yes it did feel a lot like a movie, in fact it felt like one of those books from when we were kids that asked you to make a decision and then turn to the appropriate page once you had - just a lot more effective! And ok, there is definitely room for improvement - the controls could get annoying, there were some plot holes, a pretty gratuitous sex scene (and a little unconvincing given how beat up Ethan was, and how little time him and Madison had spent together) while I think we were mostly deliberately lead astray about the identity of the origami killer - but overall, I would thoroughly recommend playing it.
The reason I do is because of how I felt when I played it. I felt helpless when Jason (Ethan's oldest) died as there was little I could do. I felt pleased with myself as Agent Jayden when I managed to calm a suspect down and get him to lower his weapon only to feel incredibly guilty when the suspect spun round during his arrest and I shot him, only realising too late he was holding a crucifix and not another weapon... I liked playing the hard-drinking private investigator who also seemed soft-hearted because though you fought people, you also had to change a baby's diaper and rock it to sleep after rescuing it's mother from a suicide attempt. I felt relief when I was Madison and I went to visit a creepy doctor to get some more clues and then left before he came back in the room (after having found the clue I needed and refusing to drink the drink he gave me - I'm not sure what would have happened if I did but I know it wouldn't have been good!).
But the guilt came back when I was playing the investigator again and I ended up in a car at the bottom of the river with Lauren, a prostitute whoose son had been murdered by the Origami Killer and was helping me with my investigation. A lot of the tension in the game involves having to react to quick time events, and this was a particularly tense situation as I had no idea how much time I had. Though I managed to cut my own ropes and free myself, in my panic to escape the car I ended up kicking my way out without rescuing Lauren... I felt terrible, and the only thing I could think to say to Paul afterwards was that we really need to save Shaun now! As if somehow it would makes Lauren's death worthwhile...
I think the fact that we played the game together made it even more interesting though. Depending on what we were doing and how connected we felt to the character we were playing at the time, we would refer to the character by name, as "I" or even "we". The Origami Killer sends Ethan a series of tasks to complete (each more dangerous than the last) and in one of them you are supposed to go to someone's house and kill them. After going to the house, there is a struggle and you end up pointing a gun at the guy in his daughter's room. Paul just turned round to me and said, I don't want to do it. So I said ok, even though we had failed the previous task (and so were now going to miss out on two clues), because that's not who we wanted Ethan to be. After almost every scene we would discuss what had just happened, reflecting and wanting to make sure we had done the right thing. Interestingly there were also a couple of moments where we didn't actually want the responsibility of having the controller - knowing that our decisions and ability to react could influence the outcome, meant there an awful lot of pressure on who was playing not to mess up. And that was the feeling I had during the final task Ethan had to carry out, which asked him to drink a poison that would give him enough time to rescue his son, but would then kill him. I actually paused the game at this point so we could discuss what we should do (and I think it was the only time that we stopped mid-gameplay to do so). After a lengthy discussion we decided that we weren't going to do it, because it would really suck if after everything that happened, Shuan survives to lose his Dad as well.
You can replay bits of the game but we wanted to play it all the way through first. After we finished, we did go back and try different things out to see what would happen - turns out the poison dilemma wasn't as serious as we thought, and that Madison being able to get to Ethan before the end is what you'd really want to not mess up. I'd like to see some of the different endings but I'm not sure I really want to replay the whole game from start to finish again. While it's an interesting "what if" exercise, I think it could become a little tedious, and won't ever compare to playing it first time around.
There is probably loads more I could say about how this game affected me but this has already turned into an essay. I think I just want to say that though Heavy Rain didn't do everything perfectly I was fascinated by the ethical discussions we had about it, and thoroughly engrossed while both playing and watching it. Maybe the game gave us the illusion that we had more control than we did (despite a large number of possible endings there is still a limited number) but maybe that illusion is more important than actually having a completely open ended experience. Maybe it is more like a movie than a game, but so what? It still felt more engrossing than watching a film about the Origami Killer would. And maybe I would have felt less positive about the game if we hadn't saved Shaun and got one of the "better" endings but I still think I would have enjoyed the process.
I think this is the first time I've been able to experience the way games can provide us with such powerful emotional experiences and it's something I'd like to see a lot more of, both in commercial games as well as educational. This is something that games can do in a way other media can't and I for one would really like to see how these sorts of games develop.
The reason I do is because of how I felt when I played it. I felt helpless when Jason (Ethan's oldest) died as there was little I could do. I felt pleased with myself as Agent Jayden when I managed to calm a suspect down and get him to lower his weapon only to feel incredibly guilty when the suspect spun round during his arrest and I shot him, only realising too late he was holding a crucifix and not another weapon... I liked playing the hard-drinking private investigator who also seemed soft-hearted because though you fought people, you also had to change a baby's diaper and rock it to sleep after rescuing it's mother from a suicide attempt. I felt relief when I was Madison and I went to visit a creepy doctor to get some more clues and then left before he came back in the room (after having found the clue I needed and refusing to drink the drink he gave me - I'm not sure what would have happened if I did but I know it wouldn't have been good!).
But the guilt came back when I was playing the investigator again and I ended up in a car at the bottom of the river with Lauren, a prostitute whoose son had been murdered by the Origami Killer and was helping me with my investigation. A lot of the tension in the game involves having to react to quick time events, and this was a particularly tense situation as I had no idea how much time I had. Though I managed to cut my own ropes and free myself, in my panic to escape the car I ended up kicking my way out without rescuing Lauren... I felt terrible, and the only thing I could think to say to Paul afterwards was that we really need to save Shaun now! As if somehow it would makes Lauren's death worthwhile...
I think the fact that we played the game together made it even more interesting though. Depending on what we were doing and how connected we felt to the character we were playing at the time, we would refer to the character by name, as "I" or even "we". The Origami Killer sends Ethan a series of tasks to complete (each more dangerous than the last) and in one of them you are supposed to go to someone's house and kill them. After going to the house, there is a struggle and you end up pointing a gun at the guy in his daughter's room. Paul just turned round to me and said, I don't want to do it. So I said ok, even though we had failed the previous task (and so were now going to miss out on two clues), because that's not who we wanted Ethan to be. After almost every scene we would discuss what had just happened, reflecting and wanting to make sure we had done the right thing. Interestingly there were also a couple of moments where we didn't actually want the responsibility of having the controller - knowing that our decisions and ability to react could influence the outcome, meant there an awful lot of pressure on who was playing not to mess up. And that was the feeling I had during the final task Ethan had to carry out, which asked him to drink a poison that would give him enough time to rescue his son, but would then kill him. I actually paused the game at this point so we could discuss what we should do (and I think it was the only time that we stopped mid-gameplay to do so). After a lengthy discussion we decided that we weren't going to do it, because it would really suck if after everything that happened, Shuan survives to lose his Dad as well.
You can replay bits of the game but we wanted to play it all the way through first. After we finished, we did go back and try different things out to see what would happen - turns out the poison dilemma wasn't as serious as we thought, and that Madison being able to get to Ethan before the end is what you'd really want to not mess up. I'd like to see some of the different endings but I'm not sure I really want to replay the whole game from start to finish again. While it's an interesting "what if" exercise, I think it could become a little tedious, and won't ever compare to playing it first time around.
There is probably loads more I could say about how this game affected me but this has already turned into an essay. I think I just want to say that though Heavy Rain didn't do everything perfectly I was fascinated by the ethical discussions we had about it, and thoroughly engrossed while both playing and watching it. Maybe the game gave us the illusion that we had more control than we did (despite a large number of possible endings there is still a limited number) but maybe that illusion is more important than actually having a completely open ended experience. Maybe it is more like a movie than a game, but so what? It still felt more engrossing than watching a film about the Origami Killer would. And maybe I would have felt less positive about the game if we hadn't saved Shaun and got one of the "better" endings but I still think I would have enjoyed the process.
I think this is the first time I've been able to experience the way games can provide us with such powerful emotional experiences and it's something I'd like to see a lot more of, both in commercial games as well as educational. This is something that games can do in a way other media can't and I for one would really like to see how these sorts of games develop.
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