How Far Would You Go?

...to save the one you love?

This is the question posed by the most recent of French developer Quantic Dream's works of art, Heavy Rain, for the PlayStation 3.

This video game is such that it can barely be classified with other kinds of games, not just for its unique control scheme, but for its adult-oriented, mature, and deep storyline. Story and emotion are everything in Heavy Rain, and the entirety of the game, from beginning to end, is a weighty and involving piece of art that forces the player to think in ways that, hopefully, they may never have to in the real world.

The story concerns an ordinary man, architect Ethan Mars, who is living an idyllic, perfect life. The player guides him through a simple, beautiful, elegant tutorial in which they learn the controls by watching as Ethan takes a shower, brushes his teeth, sets the table for his son's birthday party, and finishes up some of his work as they watch a drawing of a beautiful home created from scratch. Faint, warm piano tones give accent to this one perfect, sunny day in Ethan's life...before it is all torn apart.

The player watches, guiding Ethan as his son Jason is lost in a shopping mall. You search frantically all over the mall, feeling the same nervous dread that Ethan does, until your heart skips a beat right alongside Ethan's, his son running outside and being struck by a moving car. He is killed, and you feel shame for allowing it to happen.

The story takes further twists, the player along for the ride, as Ethan's second son, Shaun, is kidnapped by an enigmatic killer known only as The Origami Killer who kidnaps young boys, leaving them to drown; the bodies always turn up with an orchid on the chest, and an origami figurine half-crumpled in the hand. The fathers of the sons are given a series of trials by the killer, to test just how much they will do to see their sons again. This is how the game asks you....how far would you go, to save someone you love?



Ethan is only a single character in this twisting, dramatic story. Three other characters come into the fold; Norman Jayden, an FBI Agent addicted to a drug, triptocaine, and also with access to cutting edge technology in his pursuit of the Origami Killer. Scott Shelby is an aging, asthmatic private detective questioning the victimized families left without sons by way of the Origami Killer. The final is Madison Paige, a woman living alone in a downtown loft whose insomnia brings her out at night...

Each character is presented in such a way that they might be real people, each with beating hearts and true emotion shining from beneath eyes so realistic that they appear to genuinely have souls. These characters are pitted into circumstances that challenge their character, distort their minds, wrack their bodies, and in turn test the character of the person playing the game.

Many games these days employ a morality system of choices that can be made; one choice for good actions, one choice for evil actions. The interesting thing with Heavy Rain is that throughout the game, choices are available, but they are simply that; choices. Do you tell your son to go to bed on time, or feel bad for him and leave him up later to watch TV? Will you remember to shut the cabinet so your son cannot get into the medicine cabinet? What will you feed him? The pizza, or the roast chicken? Each of these questions has an impact, and it is never clear just what impact that is, until you see the action unfold in front of you.

I am not afraid to admit, and to even be proud of, the fact that video games can make a person cry. I cried while playing Heavy Rain, I cried for the people I played as, and I felt shame for choices that in retrospect, I am not proud that I made. How often is it that a video game can offer insight into the kind of person you are? How often is it that a game can give you a taste of what it is to be a divorced father, just trying to win back the love of your only remaining son? How it feels to watch him, and feel that he wants nothing to do with you, blaming you for the death of his brother? What would you do in that situation?

Even more of a question is, how often is it that death has true consequence in a video game? Each of the characters you play as can die, should you make the wrong choices. If that character dies...they don't come back. There is no happy ending. The story moves along without them, and the world keeps turning.

I might have gone on too long, but I have a good feeling that a book or two could be written on the subject of just this game alone.

I've got nothing but the HIGHEST recommendations for Heavy Rain, and am proud to have this work of art be a representative of this hobby of mine.

As a tasty treat, check out the official trailer for Heavy Rain, below!