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In my first blog, I talked about how the controls and little details were awesome to me. Here, after my second playthrough, I’m going to talk more about the story and how it changes depending on your gameplay, so be aware there will be many spoilers! (Seriously, don’t read this if you wanna have the killer’s identity stay a secret to you.)

In Heavy Rain, you play four characters: a father looking for his kidnapped son, a female journalist who stumbles upon him and is intrigued, an male FBI agent working on the case of a series of kidnapping/murder incidents, and a male private investigator that is talking to the parents of the victims of these incidents. My first playthrough, all of them lived. The story ended with a big plot twist. One of my characters was the killer. Ethan, the father, and Scott, the PI and revealed kidnapper, meet where Ethan is trying to save his son. There’s a fight between Jayden, the FBI agent, and Scott. Madison, the journalist, comes to save Ethan and his son. In my first playthrough, everything played out well (except Scott died since he was the “bad guy”). This is because I was alert and played the game carefully.

But after it was over, I decided it was time for a second playthrough. In it, instead of saving everyone, when there was a fight scene or QTEs that needed to be hit in a timely manner, I put down the controller. I watched as my characters got beaten, tortured, shot, and put in jail. Madison and Jayden died at the first available points in the story where they could be, meaning their later scenes in the game just didn’t exist. Ethan got put in jail so he couldn’t save his son. I sat there and let everything go wrong, on purpose, to the point where the second half of the game was only three scenes long instead of twenty.

It was kind of a moral dilemma to me: I liked these characters and wanted to help them, but in order to see what happened, I had to abandon them. This made a big disconnect between me as a player and the character. While I would call this a role playing game because of the amount of decisions you can make, the fact still is that in order for me to see some of the decisions, I had to step outside of myself and do nothing.

What kind of game has been designed where in order to progress, you have to lose? That is something interesting about Heavy Rain that I don’t see in other games: there is NO game over screen. When you fail, the game keeps on trucking, and your true game over scene is at the end, when you look down into those grates, and know Ethan’s kid has been killed and you as the player couldn’t — or didn’t even try to — save him.

I woke up the other morning, went to the bathroom, took a shower, got dressed and went to the store to buy Heavy Rain. When I got home, I started up the game, made the cool little origami figure that came along with it while it loaded, and then started the game.

I woke up, went to the bathroom, took a shower and got dressed. (I guess Ethan shaved his face, but I didn’t.)

That’s really how Heavy Rain starts out, a day you have at home. What do you feel like doing this morning? Do you want to sit and watch TV? Turn on your stereo and listen to a CD? How about reading a book and then playing with your kid’s remote controlled car?

I decided to actually get work done, and so I sat down and drew a picture out of quick time events. The QTEs in this game don’t work like any I’ve ever seen. In Resident Evil 4, a rock is flying at your face and you quickly press X to block it. Heavy Rain doesn’t just have a “quick jab this button before you die!” method of play. While doing my architecture work, I had to slowly tilt the right analog stick in a half circle. Later, I had to walk up a muddy hill by holding down a series of buttons. By the end, I was using both hands and my nose to keep them all pressed.

The small details in this game keep it interesting to me. I don’t want to talk too much about the plot obviously, but you play as four different characters and take turns with them. The decisions you make effect big things from whether or not the character lives or dies. But they also make small ones. While going down that muddy hill, I decided to not press any buttons to see what would happen, and Jayden slid down the hill. He was covered in mud. And even when he got in his car and drove away ten minutes later, he was still covered in mud.

That’s not all though: The first time through, I avoided this big fight I didn’t have to do. Later, I allowed that characters to brutally lose the fist fight. His face became more and more bloody during the scene. The next part of the story didn’t involve him, but when we came back to him in his next scene, his cheek was completely beaten up. That amazed and intrigued me, that every decision made changed something.

I want to talk more but I’ve said enough already. My first playthrough of this short game went well. I played on Hard and I got through without any of my characters dying. But now, I am playing through again to allow everyone to die to get what may be called “the bad end.” The game is as deep as an RPG and as beautiful as any PS3 game can be. I’ll probably end up writing more on it next week too.