Heavy Rain Preview

 What is It?

Heavy Rain: The Origami Killer is Quantic Dream's mature-rated murder mystery thriller, which draws inspiration from films like "Seven." When they say mature, they're not messing around, but we'll get to that shortly. One of the hooks to Heavy Rain is that you'll have four protagonists instead of just one, with intertwining stories that come together to paint the big picture.

Heavy Rain makes a powerful first impression thanks to its nearly photo-realistic graphics and its eccentric take on interactivity. All the challenges in the game are presented by seemingly random button presses and controller commands, taking advantage of the many different inputs the Sixaxis controller offers.

While Heavy Rain's style of gameplay may turn out to be an acquired taste, the game's subject matter makes for far more interesting preview analysis, especially in light of what I've recently seen.

What's New for E3?

It was only a short while ago when I last got my hands on Heavy Rain. I was impressed by what I saw from Quantic Dream founder and Heavy Rain writer/director David Cage in terms of storytelling and intensity, but I was completely taken aback by what I just saw at E3. We were shown a scene that was so disturbing and that affected me in such a way that I haven't been able to stop talking about it.

It began with our introduction to Madison Paige, a photojournalist and one of the four investigators on the hunt for the Origami Killer. Madison is an insomniac, who only manages to get a proper night's sleep by checking into motels. In the course of her investigation Madison has learned that a nightclub owner named Paco Mendez may know something valuable. Just in case, she packs a small-caliber pistol in her purse.

A Dangerous Night on the Town

Madison visits Paco's club to investigate, dressed in an orange short-sleeved shirt and a knee-length black skirt. Multicolored lasers and thumping music keep the club goers moving with the beat. Madison wades through the dancing crowds, nudging her way past the shaking booties with an animation unique from her normal walk.

Paco is a sleazy dirtbag sort of character, lounging in a VIP area guarded by the kind of suit-wearing heavy that is as likely to shoot you as kick you out of the club. They forbid Madison's entry, so she has to get creative. Noticing that Paco has a thing for pretty girls (he invites one of the nearby dancers over to join him), Madison tries to draw his attention by stepping on stage herself to dance her way into his good graces.

Like any major action in Heavy Rain, dancing is a button-pressing and controller-moving mini-game. Unfortunately, Paco simply isn't interested in Madison, at least in her current state. This is where things start to get just a little weird.





Let's Put on Makeup!

To draw his attention, Madison decides that she has to get a little sexier, so she heads to the restroom for an impromptu makeover. She first applies dark mascara and a pink shade of lipstick. Then she unbuttons her blouse, revealing more cleavage. Thinking this isn't quite enough, she rips off half of her knee-length skirt, turning it into the shortest of micro-minis. Mind you, none of these sequences were cut-scenes; everything is interactive and made part of the gameplay through various Sixaxis challenges. If you don't move the analog stick properly when applying mascara, for example, you'll jab yourself in the eyeball and have to start over.

Now that she was satisfactorily made more conventionally attractive, Madison stepped out to hit the stage one more time. This time, her dances drew plenty of attention from Paco, who invites her over. Wanting a little private time to get the information, Madison and Paco retreat to his nearby office, though he has something else entirely in mind.

Entertain a Slimeball

Sleazy Paco puts on a little mood music for the pair, something that sounds like a porn soundtrack, complete with fake-sounding moans. Madison plays coy at first, and Paco will have none of it. He takes Madison's purse away from her and ushers her towards a couch, where he proceeds to sit and ask her to start taking it off. When Madison hesitates, he draws a gun, points it at her, and tells her to stop wasting his time.


This emotional distress affected the rest of the scene's gameplay. Madison proceeded to take her shirt off, and the simple unbuttoning of buttons was made difficult by her mental state, so you could potentially fail and draw Paco's ire. The idea here was to survive long enough to find a way out of this situation without being killed or raped.


You Just Can't Say That

Cage had the difficult task of keeping the audience entertained and in a positive mood, despite the rape fantasy playing out on screen behind him. His approach was to take his commentary relatively lightly, with lines like, "if we get raped, at least we get the information!" I'm relatively thick-skinned, but even I was somewhat shocked at these comments.

Held at gunpoint, and stripped of her dignity and clothing, Madison came up with a plan (relayed to us through her internal dialogue) to free herself. She began to dance for Paco in her bra and panties, shaking and gyrating in a sequence that many gamers will feel uncomfortable playing through, especially around their wives or mothers. The idea was to distract him while she grabbed a nearby lamp and smashed him over the head.

Madison's plan works, and Paco wakes up bound to a chair, with Madison now fully dressed and ready to extract information. When one of Paco's guards checks in from outside the door, Madison is clever enough to loudly fake an orgasm, sending the hired help away with ease. She then slaps Paco around and points her little gun at him, but none of this works. What does work is grabbing his Paco juniors and giving them a twist. The anguished Paco then spits out what Madison wants to hear, and the demonstration closes.


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