Do we need a quicktime event for peeing? (A Heavy Rain conversation)

By Lowkey. 06/02/11, 01:18 pm

One of the most important things about writing, and especially writing movies, is if you don't need it, take it out. Keep it interesting. You'd assume that would count for games as well. As the quote goes: there are no drycleaners in Hyrule. The last thing you want to have floating around unnecessarily are mundane things you can go do in real life for yourself, right, unless they move the plot along. Have you ever read a book or watched a movie that so much as mentioned going to the loo?

Please explain to me where Heavy Rain gets off ignoring this rule?

The stretched out quicktime event is alright in some places, although why you fail at opening a door or washing your hands, I don't know. I guess the game can't be completely made up of fights. Still, why do we get a shower scene for Madison? Is this a character introduction? Does it add anything besides showing you her under-rendered tits?

As a big advocate of storytelling in games, I feel like Heavy Rain is a step backwards. Recognize the game as the form, don't make a movie with quicktime and add superfluous shower scenes to show off the quicktime. So much of this game could be chopped. Would you have a feature length game left? Probably not, but that's a sign that this is a failed experiment.

Agree disagree? Contribute to a list of scenes in Heavy Rain that could have been chopped or shortened? (Spoiler tags are your friends).

By zephyrine. 07/02/11, 03:59 am

Haven't physically played it myself yet, but watching my bf fail at brushing his teeth was pretty lol.

Yeah, it's a ~~bit~~ lot longwinded, but it just adds to the game. It's a bit more interesting than the usual PRESSXTOINTERACTANDTHINGHAPPENS. Occasionally it gets a bit tedious when you're trying to do something fiddly, but it's part of the game.

Norman Jayden is my favourite. I do have to wonder if Horatio Caine owns a pair of those sunglasses.

By acidpinkbunny. 07/02/11, 05:09 am

Personally I think the little things like, yes peeing, and helping set the table and feeding Shaun and things are actually what the game relies on in order to be the game that it is.

Mundane every day things would be totally out of place in most other games, you wouldn't expect your character to stop and pee in the middle of COD for example, and nobody stops to shower in Silent Hill, but that's because those are games made for action and action only.

I think that Heavy Rain was designed to be mundane at times, it's designed to remind you that the people in it are real people with real lives who have regular bodily functions and are at times just a little bit boring. The reason that doing well in this game is so fulfilling is because their lives ARE for the most part boring. Ethan isn't some superhero who's arms are bigger than his head, Jayden isn't some super cop who's never had a mark on his record, and sometimes the characters are just outright jerks. And I personally believe the every day stuff you have to do with the characters makes the more extraordinary stuff more poignant.

If Heavy Rain had advertised as an all out action-thriller that never had a dull moment then I'd be pretty irritated, a lot of people were mad about the ridiculously long cutscenes in MGS4 for example, but I honestly don't believe HR ever gave that impression. The whole point of the game is how far regular people are willing to go to save somebody, and for that I think every boring slow task has its important place.

This is all just my personal opinion though! ^_^

By Lowkey. 07/02/11, 05:40 am

Quote :: It's a bit more interesting than the usual PRESSXTOINTERACTANDTHINGHAPPENS.

Example of where this occurs in another game?

MGS4 tells a story in its cutscene.

My argument with Heavy Rain is that it's more movie than game but it doesn't take anything from the rules of movie writing. You can show how human somebody is in shorter, less tedious ways than asking the player to shower one of their characters.

The problem for me with this game is that people quickly rush to defend it with "if they did this, it wouldn't be the game it is," or "wouldn't work for this game," when I'd like to question if it's actually a game and not just an interactive movie. If they had made a movie, they would have cut all these things: in a movie, these scenes would bore us; why is it different in a game? We believe these characters are normal people (eer, kind of) because the creators hammer us in the head with it. You know something is going to happen to Shaun when everything starts to go right with your relationship with him. Who wakes up in the morning, picks up a photo of their wife and them together, smiles, and puts it back down when he slept right next to her the night before? It's obvious and overtold. I don't think it's fair to say that these mundane actions make the characters human when the rest of the storytelling is heavy-handed.

Thought: Gears of War III is going to have a "tourist / easy / cakewalk" mode that allows people to play it for the plot without being challenged by the gameplay. Question what you like, but Gears has an exciting if not strictly good plot. The actions you'll be taking will be exciting. There will be no unnecessary toilet break. I know, it's comparing Space Opera with crime fiction, but it's the principle. Heavy Rain is pretty bog standard big-name crime thriller paperback anyway.

By **JVCA**. 07/02/11, 06:01 am

I'll admit now I've only skim read the topic, but I'd like to put in my two cents and highlight that Heavy Rain (and indeed, all Quantic Dream publications) are not games but interactive movies. There's a trophy in Heavy Rain that tells you as much.

IMO, such superfluous capabilities are designed to make the game more immersive - 'this is like real life'. You can pee in real life - you can pee in Heavy Rain! You wake up in a cold sweat at night? You can take a shower! (also, boobs, basically. I will not hesitate to say there's an element of sex sells in this game. Unfortunately that's just the nature of a large part of our media these days.)

That said, the peeing, the shaving, the teeth brushing - they're all actions that you 'can' do, but you don't 'have' to do, so why take issue with it? Just don't use the bathroom if it bothers you then.

From a media studies/communications POV, though, I would say that such banalities are designed to illustrate the transformation of the character's lives from that which we can relate to (peeing/showering/looking after family) to this surreal crime thriller. The number of opportunities to use the bathroom get less and less frequent, until they stop altogether as the game progresses.

Another thought, too: This is a game that is set 'in real life' (supposedly). 'Real life houses' have bathrooms, so they must be included to keep the game real. I guess the game makers just figured if they needed to put them in anyway, they may as well be usable?

TL;DR: I just rambled about crap, and you can disregard it entirely if you like.

By acidpinkbunny. 07/02/11, 06:04 am

I know, I actually love MGS4, I'm just saying it made a lot of people very angry because there were hour long cutscenes in which you did nothing at all.

I think the issue is that I'm defending that the game does what it always said it would do. I know that if it were a movie it would follow movie conventions, but the whole POINT of HR was that they were trying something new.
I acknowledge that maybe it didn't work for everybody, I've talked to a few people who weren't that inspired by it, but it wasn't supposed to stick to conventions.

I'm not saying it's a perfect game, it can be buggy at times and there's a whole section of plot that actually seemed to go nowhere.. But the game is what the developers said it would be.

You're perfectly right, nobody would watch a movie that is what HR is (well.. maybe some people would Razz

), but it's not a movie, and as a game it worked for me.

I think the other issue is that it's quite hard to defend HR without sounding like a pretentious idiot XD Basically my overall point is: I enjoyed it, and it wasn't any more or less than I expected from what it had been advertised as.

By Lowkey. 07/02/11, 07:48 am

JVCA wrote:: I'll admit now I've only skim read the topic, but I'd like to put in my two cents and highlight that Heavy Rain (and indeed, all Quantic Dream publications) are not games but interactive movies. There's a trophy in Heavy Rain that tells you as much.

Then I think they should use movie logic. They deviate further from movies than from games. The day we reach virtual reality, the first thing we're going to make is a porno, because porn watchers are early adopters. After that, I think most human bodily functions will be edited out of VR tracks. I don't mean they shouldn't try and break through conventions, but could they do it in a less banal way? I think the rules about cutting flab are there because most people really don't really care, after a point. Re: they have to have a bathroom, well, yeah. I have an appendix, too. I mean yeah we need to pee and I don't probably need my appendix, but there are plenty of objects you can't interact with.

I can see the logic behind the mundane anchoring the story so the crazy psycho killer sugar honey iced tea stands out more, but there's still flab outside of "I can pee!" -- where those two kids are running through the construction site? seemed too long. I liked that you had to change that lady's baby and it was good character building for Scotty, but it dragged on too long.

@acidpinkbunny: I make a habit out of sounding and generally being pretentious (hi guys) ; you can never do worse than me. Debate away. /thumbs up

I guess it boils down to that I think HR failed at a conceptual level. Although judging from its popularity people were keen to give it a try, to me it feels like to a film or a game what a choose-your-own-adventure is to a novel. And I think it's written really badly.

By Sonic Reducer. 19/02/11, 08:33 am

Lets face it. For the most part organility is dead. We've seen every shooter imaginable and they're still whats selling. Platformers for the most part can only go as far as changing what the characters look like and we've just about covered every instrument for music games. Adventure gaming genre is dead really and Heavy Rain tried to make it come back in an accessable area.

Back when computer games were first big the popular ones were adventure games. Police quest, leisure suit larry, Monkey Island etc etc. Many of these games featured pointless little novelties because the games were more about the journey than the destination. They thought "what if the player wanted to order a drink at the bar and then wanted to take a poo?" it added nothing to the game but players at that time got a kick out of it.

I read a story once that Al Lowe said when he first showed off his game Leisure Suit Larry to a group of business men. He asked them to suggest commands to try out as opposed to him just showing the game off (which is really all you get these days). They first things the suggested? "masturbate". when Al typed it in the games response was "the whole idea was to QUIT doing that".

My point is this was an era which followed a less stream lined experience and the gamer had much more free will. Many of us will miss the little experiences now because we just want to rush through it. I missed Madisons shower scene (which seems to be what bugs you most) the first time playing it. Second time I discovered it purely from wanting to see every little thing I missed. I wanted to absorb the surroundings as mundane as the may be.

I love the direction the game took. It harkens back to the games I grew up on to and why I got into gaming. I think more than anything this game was targeted at gamers like me. Who grew up in that real era of player interaction. Sure there was a linear story but you picked what to do. We try to bring it back but it will never take off again. Thats why we are seeing more linear Final Fantasy games. Because gamers no longer want that little bit of novelty of exploration.

Sorry for the long rant but....im just a bitter old man

By Lowkey. 22/02/11, 09:36 am

Sonic Reducer wrote:: My point is this was an era which followed a less stream lined experience and the gamer had much more free will. Many of us will miss the little experiences now because we just want to rush through it. I missed Madisons shower scene (which seems to be what bugs you most) the first time playing it. Second time I discovered it purely from wanting to see every little thing I missed. I wanted to absorb the surroundings as mundane as the may be.

I love the direction the game took. It harkens back to the games I grew up on to and why I got into gaming. I think more than anything this game was targeted at gamers like me. Who grew up in that real era of player interaction. Sure there was a linear story but you picked what to do. We try to bring it back but it will never take off again. Thats why we are seeing more linear Final Fantasy games. Because gamers no longer want that little bit of novelty of exploration.

I think you're mistaking an open game with a game that forces you to do mundane things. If you have the option in Final Fantasy Twenty Seven and a Half, to go take a shower or pee, before you go out and slay Super Flans, that's not the same at all as when your entire game consists of peeing and mundane acts.

Look at Rant, Chuck Palahniuk's novel, in which there is technology allowing people to record their life and play it back: full VR video streamed right into your head. One of the main characters doesn't understand why everybody wants to cord in softened up feel-good mundane sea-shell hunts and birthday parties and strawberry picking. Mundane things with no emotion highs, just a constant sigh. That might be an accurate prediction of what non-interactive mediums could grow to look like, the problem is that interactive mediums need to look at their genre / medium. They need to be out of the ordinary.

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