Heavy Rain And The Birth Of Interactive Film

I remember a number of landmark moments in my personal gaming experience – titles that changed my perceptions of what games could do, and what I wanted out of the games I played. Super Metroid. Final Fantasy VII. Halo. GTA III. Guitar Hero. World of Warcraft. Having had the chance to play through a pre-release version of Quantic Dream’s new game, I'm now adding Heavy Rain to the list. I don’t want to veer too far into hyperbole; Heavy Rain isn’t a perfect game that redefines everything about the medium. It has plenty of flaws and inconsistencies that I will leave to its reviewers to enumerate. What it does do, however, is change my understanding of interactive storytelling, and simultaneously create a new genre – the interactive film.

Heavy Rain is more film than it is game. Unlike most games, it cannot be won or lost. Except on its hardest “difficulty,” it doesn’t demand inputs that are particularly challenging or difficult to complete. There’s no standard button layout for swinging your fist or shooting a gun. In some ways, it’s a scaling back of player control over the onscreen actions, as your commands often dictate entire scripted actions rather than individual motions. At the same time, your degree of control over the unfolding of the plot is far beyond anything else I’ve experienced.

At times, the game’s control scheme is less about navigating a character through a sequence of encounters (the traditional model), and more about steering the emotional tone and dramatic beats of your favorite TV show or movie. Seemingly unimportant events became meaningful because you are directing them into place. How long you leave the main character of the story standing, disconsolate on an empty balcony in the rain, is suddenly a viable question.

Certainly, games have come before with similar structures. Quantic Dream’s last project, Indigo Prophecy, prototyped the design. God of War (and a million copycats) gave cinematic control over dramatic actions to its button pressing quick time events. Heck, Dragon’s Lair had players scripting story events way back in 1983. But Heavy Rain is something new. It has the artistic daring to attempt an interactive narrative without anything else to back it up. There’s no fantasy backdrop. No game-like puzzles. This is simply a story – placed into your hands, with only you as the viewer/player to determine its outcome.

The emotional tension of Heavy Rain is born of this player-driven approach to plot development. Every scene seems targeted to elicit certain responses from its players. Because we’re invested in the lives and experiences of the characters, we care deeply for how those scenes play out. Familial love of a child, intense physical pain, the ennui of a sleepless night, or uncontrollable terror – as the characters in the film experience these sensations, we’re along for the ride.

That vicarious habitation of a character’s emotional state creates a voyeuristic thrill to this new genre. It’s a feeling unmatched by the cheap attempts at the same from the crop of over-scripted reality TV and formulaic cop shows that get jammed down our collective throats on weekly prime time. Heavy Rain delivers the same titillating glimpses of flesh, sordid character relationships, and morally questionable behavior. But, ironically, it feels more real than those live-action shows, because we dictate the outcome that feels most genuine. We not only peer through the window, we tell our subjects where to stand so we can get the best view.

I suspect you’ll hear a phrase spoken all over the place about this game: “not for everyone”. It’s true. Heavy Rain isn’t going to thrill the entire gaming public. It’s a strange phrase we use in gaming that tends not to show up as much in film and literary circles. The implication, of course, is that games should be for everyone. It’s the fact that Heavy Rain isn’t that makes it so special. It’s a brave, flawed, surprising project that will stay on your mind weeks after completion. It’s the first piece of unabashed interactive film, and I hope everyone does play it – if only to argue about how much they love – or hate – what it represents.