I Heard Rain is a Popular Trope in Noir Stories
Posted by Carachan on March 18, 2010 | Permalink
To quote Max Payne 2: “The rain was comin’ down like all the angels in heaven decided to take a piss at the same time.” It’s storm season in Kagoshima, Japan it seems, and it’s always when I’ve got to go to the gym or Iaido practice that the angels really need to go.
It’s been a while, and since my last post many games have gone by. But let’s have a look at the heavyweight shall we? Heavy Rain.
Heavy Rain is like the soul mate you knew was out there but you didn’t quite know when they would arrive. And then when they do arrive, they bring a great thriller movie with them as well as the next best thing in videogames.
I don’t want to give any spoilers, so I’ll avoid talking in detail about the plot as much as possible. Unfortunately the plot is where the meat is. Perhaps I should begin by a few early observations, let my mind wander over the idea of storytelling in games, and then follow through with my opinion of the game as a whole.
I guess the first thing you notice about Heavy Rain is that it has beautiful graphics. Everything, even up to the gore and grime, is kind of beautiful in Heavy Rain, and everything has a sharp focus that makes you curious about the environment. It is obvious they spent a long time on getting you creeped out, unsettled, and on edge – and part of this is provided by how detailed and in focus your environment is. You play several different main characters which switch between chapters. These characters (it’s 3rd person so you can gaze endlessly at the main characters’ perfectly formed butts) also move convincingly and organically and look beautiful at the same time. That in itself adds to the weird creepiness.
The second point of note, even in the beginning, is that the atmosphere is overbearingly weighted with apprehension. Even from the first scenes in Ethan’s idyllic family house you wonder if a piano is going to come crashing down on his head. I think perhaps this was the first signal to me that Heavy Rain knew exactly how to engage my feelings and twist them for all it was worth.
Quantic Dream is good at hooking an audience and unloading tense situations on them, but last time they made a game that seemed to have great storytelling promise, I felt a little betrayed.
It’s not something that I’m proud of, but doubt about Heavy Rain’s ability to follow through started to creep into my mind about the time that I noticed its ability to get me emotionally engaged. I unfairly judged Heavy Rain by its vastly inferior predecessor, Fahrenheit. Fahrenheit started out engaging me like this; except that halfway through the game it was obvious that not only was the main character schizophrenic, but the game was too. And not in a good way.
The problem with Fahrenheit? They set the game up in a fantastic way, and then bottled telling you the story that you really deserved; the one that they promised. I think in literary terms this is called breaking the “Author/ Reader contract”: in the beginning of a narrative, certain obvious gambits are employed by the author that indicate the way the story will pan out. An author fulfills his or her “contract” by satisfying the readership’s expectations of a logical, satisfying ending, and treating the reader as an intelligent and active reader – especially in mystery stories. In return, we as readers give up time, money and suspend our disbelief in an act of trust.
Unfortunately this trust was broken with Fahrenheit. I think I’ve complained before to many people that games claim to be made for adults these days and then end up treating us like we’re children before long. Any suspension of disbelief that I did have for Fahrenheit was broken by the sheer out of the blue ridiculousness of some of the plot twists.
In Fahrenheit, you end up having to battle an Evil Anthropomorphic Internet Artificial Intelligence (which seemed to base its appearance on eighties fashion), when you thought you were on some sort of gritty noir-style plot line. There was no indication that this Tron-inspired AI nightmare was going to happen; and it made even less sense to the plot that we were going there. Combined with an ill advised delve into ancient Mayan history (or something), and a fortune-telling granny with an overly pivot-happy wheelchair (we span her around madly, cackling for hours at the bizarre lack of animation and the hilarious imagery before us), Fahrenheit descended into farce. Ironically, in the early scenes they were trying to make it look like the main character may have lost his mind, when really it looked like halfway through the game development the designers had lost their sanity instead.
But as I said, I was unfairly prejudging Heavy Rain.
Heavy Rain is through and through gritty, wholesome noir with a great deal of thriller and a splash of horror thrown in. Gone are any references to megalomaniac AIs from the eighties; it seems like they really got on their “game” (so to speak). The story is solid, the characters believable, and there are some little corners of the game, although entirely incidental to the main plot line, that are completely delightful. For example, one encounter with a crying baby can lead you to change its nappy and feed it (should you choose), simply because his movements and sounds are so damned lifelike. And believe me, I have a real phobia of becoming a mother. When the thing giggles after feeding you almost feel kind of proud. It kind of leads me to think that they really did mocap the baby. (Does “Mocap the Baby” sound a bit like an 80s rap song to you? No, me neither.)
I was blown away by the power Heavy Rain had to string me along, addict, and bring the story to a satisfying, believable close. The most satisfying thing about this game is the story, and this time, the trust is never broken. It’s engaging, it’s scary, it’s full of tension and intrigue – it has twists that are genuinely surprising and still don’t break that authorial contract. You’re in safe hands.
Some of the voiceovers are dodgy, yes, and occasionally the lines were so cliché my toes curled in on themselves – and sometimes, the sheer “emo” vibe (“Emoitude”? “Emocity”?) that constantly radiates from it made me think the makers were going to segue some Fallout Boy into the soundtrack … (SPOILER: There is no Fallout Boy! /wrists) But these things are insignificant compared to the developers’ achievements.
Heavy Rain uses its videogame format to bring the kind of involvement in a story that a movie can’t provide – it’s difficult to come out of the bubble once the game sucks you in. Any main character can die during the span of the game, obviously dramatically changing the way the story plays out; and you can miss vital clues or choose to alienate other characters. I really dislike Quicktime Events in games that put them in just to punctuate the experience – but this game has developed them to a fine point so that almost all your gameplay is done through a mixture of button choice and split second reaction times. It works very well. I highly recommend it if you like your movies erring on the side of the thriller, or you miss the old school point-and-click mystery. All in all, a seminal gaming experience. Also, Madison’s arse was very finely crafted. And I want to steal her jacket. (Any ideas where I can purchase it? Thought not.)
P.S. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking you want to get a copy of Fahrenheit just to battle the Evil Eighties AI and wheel a granny around. I curse you all!
March 18th, 2010 at 4:59 am
Kudos to my friend Iain, who, when I was in Tokyo, let me in on the Heavy Rain secret.
March 26th, 2010 at 7:53 am
Man, i had a conversation with a friend who mentioned heavy rain the other day, and it quickly degraded into me ranting about the backstabbery we suffered and the pain i still feel from playing fahrenheit. I also loved the wheelchair comments, i had forgoten about that but now its come flooding back clear as day and it makes me laugh to myself