First Person Writer – Heavy Rain

Note:This article contains spoilers of the first few scenes of the game.

I sat in the chair as my friend clacked his analog stick at the screen, which he mistakenly thought was trying to tell him to make a “swooping” motion with the stick of his controller. What it actually wanted him to do was pull out an expensive piece of paper that came with his game and fold it into an origami bird. Neither of us did.

The game starts. I notice how beautifully the light shines through the massive windows in the home of a man lying face down on a bed in the early morning. The man stands up. I hear him belch out something about taking a shower and getting dressed before going downstairs to start his day, his arms carelessly flopping about as he walks out onto his deck and admires his backyard. I can’t help but blurt out a laugh; upon first impression the man comes off as functionally retarded.

“If you keep making fun of this, I’m not going to like it!” my friend says.

I do my best to keep quiet, as the man goes about his business, shaving and showering.

Of course, I still have to chuckle at the butt-shot.

The man drinks his orange juice, and sits at a table. I watch him create art faster than anyone I’ve ever seen before, but something is strange about this scene. I suddenly want to take this game seriously. My friend with the controller repeatedly forces the man to pick up another pencil or eraser and work on a drawing until a well thought out sketch of a black and white building lies on the table. Talk about presentation.

The man’s family arrives home, and helps his wife with the groceries and sets the table. Then something else happens.

After being questioned by his wife for playing with an RC car, he goes outside to play with his two sons. He picks the first one up and swings him around in circles by the child’s hands.

“Ha! I remember doing that shit when I was a kid!”
“I never did that.” my friend remarks back.

The man gives a piggyback ride to his other son, who zooms along with his arms outstretched and manages to stay atop the mans shoulders, despite my friend’s best efforts to send him head first into the side of a play structure.

I remember doing this, too (riding on my father’s shoulders, not trying to make small children cry).

This game has immediately sent me back into memories of my childhood; memories of innocent and undemanding times. While the game had me reminiscing for a second, it quickly brought me back to more recent days. Literally within the past few months I have sword fought with my little brother in our backyard, the same as these characters now were doing. My friend purposefully threw the fight, something I never do with my brother.

I know exactly what this game is trying to do. Not just teach my friend the mechanics of it’s gameplay, but to setup who this man is, and to get us to care about his dilemma. I know things are about to turn south at some point, but I wasn’t fully prepared for the next scene.

From previews of this game I had serious concerns about the ability for it to deliver on it’s promise to make me care at all about it’s tale or characters, especially with some of the voice acting I’d heard. Still, even having made fun of the game earlier, I didn’t find the “press X to Jason” moment as entertaining as I thought it would be.

I am not playing this game. But I find myself becoming rigid with tension as I watch the man search all of his pockets for money to pay for a balloon before struggling through a crowd trying to find his son, his only guiding mark a red balloon that floats slowly above the air of a mall crowd. The camera tightens in closer to the man and shakes with a certain amount of controlled violence. He is bogged down to a slow wade as he makes his way through a sea of bodies towards his child. As I watched this man try in vain to save the life his child I find myself shaken. Only a handful of games have had an emotional effect on me, and while it wasn’t totally overt, this one stabbed at me in a place no other game had before.

My friend had intended to stay awake all night and finish this game in one sitting. After witnessing the outcome of that scene, and the dry bleakness of the one that followed, he decided he wanted to be fully awake for the remainder of the experience.