I watched, briefly, while my wife tried out her sister’s copy of <i>Heavy Rain</i> last night. From what little I saw, and from what I was told of the game as the three of us chatted, my impression of an unpolished interface was strong. The graphics were adequate but stiff, and Eileene struggled to push buttons to activate the choices she intended. And all these limitations are huge <i>endorsements</i> of the game.
See, highly polished games, with top-of-the-line graphics and sound and a perfectly integrated user interface only get that way by refining what the designers have seen in a lot of other games just like it. That’s not inherently wrong; a well-polished game is a thing of beauty. <i>World of Warcraft</i> and <i>Bioshock<i> do just that, and deserve the praise they got. But a really new idea can also be a thing of beauty, and if a designer wants to strike off into new territory, he’s operating by definition without a well-established interface to polish. A certain clumsiness is one of the hallmarks of a really new idea; witness the many primitive qualities of the original <i>Civilization</i>, <i>Warcraft<i>, and <i>Doom<i>. Imitators came along and improved on these basic formulae, but all these games were awesome for offering a truly new experience. If that novel idea is executed well, small kinks hardly matter.
<i>Heavy Rain</i> aims to strike into new territory that way, and all the reports I hear indicate it executes its idea very well. Rather than making moment-to-moment choices for the protagonist only in combat scenes, and returning to the narrative only in fixed cut-scenes over which the player has no control, <i>Heavy Rain</i> gives the player control of the narrative itself moment-to-moment: the subject of the internal monologue, the ability to flick on light switches or start the laundry machine, and yes, combat too—but expressed as a simple narrative decision (X: shoot punk; circle: talk him down) instead of a series of tactical choices (freeze ray followed by shatter, while an ally peppers him with arrows). And, unlike <i>Dragon Age: Origins</i>, where the consequences of your decisions are telegraphed, or <i>Bioshock</i>, where the game patiently waits for you to make the one and only choice offered, <i>Heavy Rain</i> keeps track of all your petty choices and decides whether you’re actually capable of executing your decisions or whether stress and lack of sleep get in the way. Maybe you can shoot the punk, or maybe you miss and a hostage pays the price; maybe you can talk him down, or maybe obsessing over your collapsing marriage and career means you say things less tactfully than you might, and again a hostage pays the price. And not to decide is to decide; the clock is ticking, and simply standing idle means missing potential game events. So does the kind of completist approach of examining everything mandatory in point-and-click adventures.
That’s some pretty heavy lifting for a game engine. To keep things manageable, I’m told, the game events are sharply linear: you meet the same people, they depart or kill or bake cookies or whatever in strict order, and you face the same major decisions. But, again unlike DO:A, the meaning of those decisions changes in unexpected ways.
Interesting stuff, and a very promising approach to electronic RPG design. I’m eager to see how this breakthrough develops as imitators in turn polish and refine it to a smoother experience.
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