Heavy Rain – 15 years of Quantic Dream’s experiment in ‘interactive drama’

Heavy Rain’s emergence into the light of day didn’t contain a shred of gameplay. In fact, the scene depicted in its initial teaser is nowhere to be found in the final version. French game designer Quantic Dream chose to unveil its debut title for Sony’s PlayStation 3 with a casting call for a fictional film; one that just so happens to also be called Heavy Rain. Their cinematic aspirations shouldn’t have necessarily come as a surprise. After all, players of their prior release Fahrenheit (known as Indigo Prophecy stateside) were beckoned to start a ‘new movie’ on its main menu. Regardless, it was unorthodox that any developer would pitch their next-generation project on a monologue instead of mechanics. 

Unfolding across its anonymously dreary version of Philadelphia, Heavy Rain is a detective thriller focusing on four individuals’ pursuit of the Origami Killer, labelled for the delicate origami creatures deposited at the scene. The ensemble forms a delectable rogue’s gallery of archetypes. Ethan is the father desperately struggling to prevent his son from becoming the next victim. His quest eventually collides with Madison, an investigative journalist whose motivations seesaw between compassionate and exploitative. The remaining half occupy our detective roles; Scott a private investigator entangled in others’ personal scrapes while Norman is a plucky FBI agent dangerously addicted to his Minority Report AR glasses.

Billed as an interactive drama, Heavy Rain positions itself as a punk rebellion of traditional game design. Instead of defeating bosses or maxing stats, players reel from shocking plot twists or rabidly speculate on fan theories. There was a water-cooler component to its storytelling rivalling the likes of HBO’s output or a premonition of Netflix’s binge-able popcorn spectacles. Games were hardly alien to evoking cinematic stylings at the time. Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid transformed perfunctory cutscenes into self-contained epics while Naughty Dog’s Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (released mere months prior to Heavy Rain) was lauded for audacious setpieces — its most iconic echoed on-screen in Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning’s denouement. 

Heavy Rain adopted a controversial modus operandi. Quick-time events would be the predominant means of engagement. Button inputs flash, fade or shake across the screen with the outcome solely determined by response time and one’s studiousness in learning their controller layout. Sometimes these icons hover leisurely in the world. Often they’d abruptly invade dialogue or scripted action. Cinematics and gameplay could no longer be clearly distinguished from one another; the cinematics were the gameplay. 

In practice, the end result evokes – of all things – Don Bluth’s Dragon’s Lair if the sublime fantasy were substituted for David Fincher’s urban pulp. Other inspirations are equally eclectic. A fondness for split-screen compositions echoes the likes of Mike Figgis’s Timecode (2000) while the grisly aughts spirit of Saw is alive and well in one standout sequence. Any resulting clunkiness in casting such a wide net was arguably countered by the subsequent broad appeal. In a period defined by audiences foreign to games flocking to the Nintendo Wii’s offerings, Heavy Rain appealed as counter-programming with its promise of adult storytelling paired with identifiable screen aesthetics.

Sealing the deal necessitated a bold design swing: eliminating the ‘game over’ screen. Unlike the notoriously punishing Dragon’s Lair in which a single failed input wipes progress, Heavy Rain’s story stubbornly marches onward. In a feather-ruffling interview for Quantic Dream’s following title Beyond: Two Souls, writer-director David Cage criticised the concept of game overs as a “state of failure for the game designer”. Supercilious remarks aside, the approach enticed audiences who found comparable console heavyweights otherwise mercilessly intimidating. 

That’s not to say Heavy Rain is a walk in the park. Slip up and any one of the four protagonists can bite the bullet — or meet a far more gruesome fate. Permadeath modes are often signposted as the apex of a particular game’s difficulty; ludicrously masochistic challenges of skill and patience. Besides a toggle easing the pressure of its quick-time events, there are no such modes in Heavy Rain. Permadeath is the default experience. In moments where players are commanded to hold four buttons at once, as if enacting a dextrous ritual of digit Twister, what was once ostensibly accessible morphs into a somatic punishment. 

Eliminating the impasse of player failure conversely permits immense authorial control. Conforming to genre tropes is far from mandatory; there are even several resolutions in which the Origami Killer can walk away scot-free. Tonal execution is afforded equal malleability as the branching narrative beats. Character locomotion is often determined by the speed at which players trigger certain quick-time events — in one tutorial, Ethan can either lurch or erringly hover out of bed depending on the force of a left analogue stick gesture. Deliberately sabotaging every prompt in a high-octane pursuit meanwhile results in a riotous slice of Chaplin slapstick. 

Upon willingly consenting to the upending of its maudlin self-importance, Heavy Rain finally truly thrives as a player-directed story sandbox. Each scenario offers multitudes in which to enact them: managing your son’s after-school routine, fleeing a sadistic doctor or hollering the name Jason. Heavy Rain’s world is a stage – and for once, it felt like anybody could be a player.