Hey, remember 'Heavy Rain'? *Spoilers, but it's been out for ages*

[Blame]

I'm posting on here mainly to look in to people's experiences of the PS3's "Fahrenheit 2," 'Heavy Rain.' Quite a while has passed now and, while at the time I honestly thought it was quite a big moment in gaming, I had to be reminded by a recent podcast, (Total Biscuit's TGS Podcast, in case you were wondering,) that the game ever existed. While my experience of that game was generally positive, I do remember being disappointed as I felt the game failed to deliver on the 'Pick your own adventure' style story scope that was advertised.

More to the point, I wanted to ask a question that none of my friends have been able to answer. Some people's impression of the game is that any character can die at any point in the game, whereas it was my experience that each character had a certain moment when they could die, and only at that point. I remember desperately trying to get the Father, Ethan, killed on the free-way but, like Steven Seagall, the guy just would not die.

Am I right in thinking this? Or am I remembering wrong?

Also, what are your thoughts on the game? How did it feel on the PlayStation Move?

 

[GiantRaven]

All I know about Heavy Rain is that I'm still disappointed that it isn't available on the Xbox 360. I really want to play it gosh darn it.

 

[putowtin]

The game was enjoyable and had so true "What the hell!" moments, but for me (and alot of others) there was no replayability, if the origami had changed in each playthrough then I would have played it again, but as you knew who the killer was "'im... over there" then it was soon forgotten.

 

[Smertnik]

Of course there're multiple ways for each character to die. It's just that you can't actually die during the trials, if I recall correctly, you just fail them and don't acquire any information.

As for my thoughts about the game, I found the execution excellent, I especially loved how intense the action scenes were. That's a great example of QTEs done well in my book. The writing sucked pretty badly, though, unfortunately, although it wasn't as terrible as in Fahrenheit. There're so many plot holes, inconsistencies, cheap tricks and unexplained matters, it's not even funny. If it was a movie it'd be a cheap flick airing after midnight.

 

[Jazoni89]

The game was enjoyable and had so true "What the hell!" moments, but for me (and alot of others) there was no replayability, if the origami had changed in each playthrough then I would have played it again, but as you knew who the killer was "'im... over there" then it was soon forgotten.

Yeah you're right, Still, It makes a great piece to show off to your friends and family. I thoroughly enjoy watching both my Brother in law, and my Sister play through it from beginning to the end, seeing what decisions they make.

Also, one thing that strikes me about Heavy Rain, is that I believe that most game reviewers, and the gaming public at the time, underrated it's graphics quite a bit. The whole game is frikken gorgeous, better than any of the Uncharted's, and hell It even looks just as good as some high spec PC games do. For a console especially, the graphics are truly remarkable, and impressive. When I first played it, I spent a few minutes just sinking all of it in.

One example of graphical splendour is the shop where everything is extremely detailed, and it proves that their's a lot of grunt in the ageing PS3, if only more developers would take advantage of it.


All of this, and it still runs in 1080p with a great framerate.

 

[Diddy_Mao]

I just finished this game a few weeks ago. (Bought it over a year ago and just never got around to playing it all the way through.)

I think it was a flawed but entertaining game. I'd really like to see more games like this in the future.

When I say it was a flawed game I'm speaking mainly about the story. A good murder mystery should have the "Big Reveal" moment where all the little hints that the author/director has been throwing directly in your face suddenly slam into place and you can't believe you missed how blatantly obvious it was the whole time.

As it stands Heavy Rain just has a lot of red herrings that point to several different people possibly being the murderer with the unfortunate side effect being that once it's revealed who the Origami killer is you're left with a bunch of unanswered questions and nonsensical character actions.

Examples:

Spoiler

During the scene in the Hospital with Madison you speak with the killer's mother trying to get her to remember the details of her life and reveal the killer's identity. When successful she whispers the killer's name into her ear followed by a stunned reaction and a slow purposeful determined walk out the door.

Why the shocked expression? Why the somber attitude? She's never met Scott Shelby before in her life. The reaction is only there to lead the viewer to believe that Ethan is the killer.

One of the major plot points is that Ethan believes he may has a dissociative personality and may actually be the Origami Killer. The evidence being that he frequently blacks out and then wakes up with a piece of Origami in his hand and memories of drowning kids.

Even if we assume Scott was planting the origami figures there's no way that he was following him around ALL the time just hoping he'd have a blackout. Even if that was the case there's no reason Ethan should be having memories of dead kids he's never seen.

Perhaps the worst of all isn't a false lead it's just a big gaping plot hole. Specifically the fact that you are in control of Scott during the scene when he supposedly wanders off to kill the old man in the antique shop.

 

[tippy2k2]

I just finished this game a few weeks ago. (Bought it over a year ago and just never got around to playing it all the way through.)

I think it was a flawed but entertaining game. I'd really like to see more games like this in the future.

When I say it was a flawed game I'm speaking mainly about the story. A good murder mystery should have the "Big Reveal" moment where all the little hints that the author/director has been throwing directly in your face suddenly slam into place and you can't believe you missed how blatantly obvious it was the whole time.

As it stands Heavy Rain just has a lot of red herrings that point to several different people possibly being the murderer with the unfortunate side effect being that once it's revealed who the Origami killer is you're left with a bunch of unanswered questions and nonsensical character actions.

Examples:

Spoiler

During the scene in the Hospital with Madison you speak with the killer's mother trying to get her to remember the details of her life and reveal the killer's identity. When successful she whispers the killer's name into her ear followed by a stunned reaction and a slow purposeful determined walk out the door.

Why the shocked expression? Why the somber attitude? She's never met Scott Shelby before in her life. The reaction is only there to lead the viewer to believe that Ethan is the killer.

One of the major plot points is that Ethan believes he may has a dissociative personality and may actually be the Origami Killer. The evidence being that he frequently blacks out and then wakes up with a piece of Origami in his hand and memories of drowning kids.

Even if we assume Scott was planting the origami figures there's no way that he was following him around ALL the time just hoping he'd have a blackout. Even if that was the case there's no reason Ethan should be having memories of dead kids he's never seen.

Perhaps the worst of all isn't a false lead it's just a big gaping plot hole. Specifically the fact that you are in control of Scott during the scene when he supposedly wanders off to kill the old man in the antique shop.

*Note: SPOILER warning is in the title so I'm not going to use spoiler icons. Why are you here random user who doesn't want it spoiled!?!

I 100% agree with the spoiler part, although with Scott, you did briefly control the Lauren (hooker lady if you don't remember her name) during that part (a complete bullshit way to do it).

I think it would have been much better with one of two things:

1. The obvious, the killer changes based on your actions. All of the characters have a possible thing that points them as the potential killer.

2. Control Scott but with the knowledge that he's the killer. My actions as him would have greatly changed had I known he was a psychopath. Laura getting her ass kicked in the beginning? Whatev, I'm a psycho. Convenience store robbery? Sucks to be that guy, I'm a psycho. And so on....

I greatly enjoyed the game but it went from a 9 in my book down to like, a 6 or 7 due to that ending leaving such a bad taste in my mouth.

 

[MisterShine]

Am I right in thinking this? Or am I remembering wrong?

If I remember right, there are several points in the game where a character can die, however not all of the scenarios where they're being "threatened" or in a dangerous situation count. For ex, Ethan can't die on the highway scene, but he can still die in a few other scenes later on.

Also, what are your thoughts on the game?

The game kind of cheated for me. I had my 2-month old daughter sitting next to me throughout much of the game, so it pushed some very personal buttons. Namely I was screaming at that pussy Ethan just because he had been crawling through broken glass for a couple of minutes. YOUR LITTLE GIRLBOY NEEDS YOU MAN, GET OFF YOUR ASS!!! Also I was surprised and a little concerned with how guiltless I felt about capping the dude for the Origami challenge, which Ethan didn't get charged for actually..

Also the ending enraged me something fierce, it was such an opportunity for brilliant writing to give Shelby thoughts that at first you thought were innocuous or just confusing on your first play through, but later turned out to be insidious when you played through again knowing that he was the killer. I was so pissed off about that, I sold the game twenty minutes after I beat it, never played it again.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I played the game before the PS-Move was named (or maybe I was just ignoring developments in gaming hardware). I beat the game with what I'm fairly certain was the best ending since nobody (except for the bad guy) died. After that it took me a few weeks to forget about it and a couple of months to reconsider my decision to pick up the PS3 at all. The game just seemed really inconsequential looking back on it. As for Move I thought the controls (outside of QTEs) were pretty bad as is.

 

[CCountZero]

While I liked Heavy Rain quite a lot, I've always been rather hesitant to call it a "game", seeing as it's mostly just as series of QTEs. I've always felt like it needed an entirely seperate label, like "interactive movie" or something along those lines.

Control Scott but with the knowledge that he's the killer. My actions as him would have greatly changed had I known he was a psychopath. Laura getting her ass kicked in the beginning? Whatev, I'm a psycho. Convenience store robbery? Sucks to be that guy, I'm a psycho. And so on....

Keep in mind though that being a psychotic doesn't mean he wouldn't do it, but only that he might have had a different motive than yourself. Helping Laura could easily be him trying to get in her good graces.

 

[tippy2k2]

While I liked Heavy Rain quite a lot, I've always been rather hesitant to call it a "game", seeing as it's mostly just as series of QTEs. I've always felt like it needed an entirely seperate label, like "interactive movie" or something along those lines.

Control Scott but with the knowledge that he's the killer. My actions as him would have greatly changed had I known he was a psychopath. Laura getting her ass kicked in the beginning? Whatev, I'm a psycho. Convenience store robbery? Sucks to be that guy, I'm a psycho. And so on....

Keep in mind though that being a psychotic doesn't mean he wouldn't do it, but only that he might have had a different motive than yourself. Helping Laura could easily be him trying to get in her good graces.

Maybe psycho was the wrong word. How about this?

There are a lot of actions I would do differently by him based on his philosophy that he gives during his fight with Jayden. I think it boils down to two main points:

1. Everyone has to fend for themselves/be able to take care of themselves. This does not seem to include children due to point 2.
2. Finding the perfect father; a person willing to sacrifice everything for their kid

Lauren getting beat down? Help yourself, my daddy didn't help me. I'll come back later for my info (although he already knows the killer, I seriously can't figure out why he's actually investigating. I'll chalk it up to his messed up head and say that he might help out for info. Maybe if I play it again the hints are there and I missed them).

Convenience store clerk? He might step in to get information.

The rich kids father? He did all of that to protect his son (including kill, which I thought was Scott's biggest test and the only one that I couldn't bring Ethan to do), which might be Scott's perfect father. However, it seemed like he was going to kill Ethan anyway after Ethan went through all his tests and Jayden was the only thing that stopped it. I suppose this could have changed based on other factors in your game.

It might seem like a small thing since a lot of the results would be the same but for me, his reason for WHY he does the actions he's doing is just as important as what he does. I played each character to what I thought that they would do considering their own personalities (for example, I don't think Ethan had it in him to kill the drug dealer).

 

[Blame]

Lauren getting beat down? Help yourself, my daddy didn't help me. I'll come back later for my info (although he already knows the killer, I seriously can't figure out why he's actually investigating.

From what I could tell, his motivation wasn't in 'investigating' as much but cleaning up after himself. Collecting evidence and taking it away once the father had died.