If you listened to the Heavy Rain Reviewcast, you heard Alex talk about the impact that it will probably have on the industry. You heard me say what an exciting and new type of interactive entertainment this game could bring about. Seeing as how we both enjoyed the game immensely, we hope that both of us are right about it. However, after spending a little more time with the game under a specific set of circumstances, I wonder just how far reaching this new form of participatory cinema will actually be. That simple question is the basis for this article. If Quantic Dream wishes to usher in a brand new form of interactive-narrative-drama-entertainment, have they found the right formula with Heavy Rain? I guess what I’m getting at is: Can your mom play Heavy Rain?
The reason I ask is because of that “specific set of circumstances” I said I was enjoying the game under. You see, I’m not actually playing the game a second time. I’m watching my wife play it. Although it’s beside the point of this article, I will let you know why I chose to be a spectator the second time around. I wanted to see another completely honest and natural play-through of the game. I wanted to see how our experiences differed without me intentionally “gaming the game” as Alex put it in his article. So what does this have to do with your mom? There has got to be more than a couple jokes here that a gent less classy than myself would make.
The correlation is simple. Your mom probably has just about as much experience with video games as my wife does, and unless you have some alien mom from Planet Awesome, that amount of experience isn’t very much. Heavy Rain operates on an assumption that I feel actually limits its ability to reach an audience that doesn’t already have a fairly competent set of gaming skills.
The assumption is an easy one. The game assumes you have the Dualshock 3 button layout memorized. Ok, now go ask your mom to draw the shapes of the four face-button layout in the correct arrangement. She can’t do it can she? Not having that little bit of information stored in your bean is a pretty huge detriment to a game that uses a pant load of Quick Time Events. What I found most interesting about this aspect of the game is that when choosing the difficulty level for the game, it actually asks you to base your decision on how well acquainted you are with the controller. I can’t believe that they actually had this issue in mind and didn’t think to completely exclude any sort of fast paced QTEs when playing on the easiest setting. For the record, my wife is in fact playing on easy, but the QTEs seem to come at the same pace. It seems like there might be fewer prompts, but there still isn’t enough time for her to look down and locate the button each time one pops up so she misses a few almost each time.
After seeing a few of her scenes play out the same way as mine, even with her missing some presses, I began to wonder how malleable the beginning of the story really is. Is that Quantic Dreams answer to this problem? Do they make the beginning play out more or less the same no matter what in order to give newer players time to learn the controller? While that may seem like an option, it somehow seems dishonest to me. They’ve sold us a game with the promise of pretty much everything we do having an effect on the outcome, and then they possibly limit that to only the end sequences. Doesn’t that make the early QTEs meaningless and pretty much contradict the point of the game? Why even do them then?
My wife actually does play the occasional Wii and DS game, is getting quite proficient at all the Bands and Heroes, and just recently got hooked on Plants Vs. Zombies on her iPhone. Even with that level of experience, most of which would be considered casual, she still has trouble wielding a traditional controller and, therefore, trouble playing Heavy Rain. Your mom could bowl a 300 in Wii Sports, and I would bet my life savings that putting a 360 controller in her hands would still scare the pants right off her. Again, definitely a pants coming off your mom joke here somewhere, but far be it from me to make it.
Let’s get one last thing straight here. I loved Heavy Rain. Loved. It. I would love for this type of game to become its own entertainment form and narrative medium. That’s the reason I’m so eager to have everyone I know try it. And not to just watch it, but to experience it and live it the same way I did, which means having to actually play it with the foreign object that is the traditional gaming controller. Nintendo wasn’t crazy when they simplified things control-wise with the Wii. Was there something Quantic Dream could have done differently to make this game more accessible to non-gamers? It has been suggested by a few people that complete motion control could be the way, but until Sony releases their magic glow wand, the Six Axis just isn’t powerful enough.
Heavy Rain is a fantastic experience. Even with the difficulties in control, my wife still had trouble setting the controller down every evening. It’s just that good. Maybe that is the magic. Maybe it’s the game that will teach everyone to use a game pad by the shear quality of its story and the feelings it creates in the player. Whatever it is, we can’t just hog all the fun. It’s time we share. Which brings us to your homework assignment. Find a friend or relative that doesn’t play games, but loves a good story, and let them play Heavy Rain. See how they handle it, and report back. I’d love to hear how it goes. Hopefully it will go well, and this won’t be the last we hear about interactive drama. As for your mom, don’t worry; I’ll let her borrow my copy when I see her.