Heavy rain

Heavy rain
Heavy Rain logo
Studio	Quantic Dream
Publisher	Sony Computer Entertainment
Erstveröffent- lichung	PlayStation 3 February 18, 2010 February 23, 2010 February 24, 2010 February 25, 2010 February 26, 2010 PlayStation 4 March 1, 2016 Microsoft Windows June 24, 2019
platform	Microsoft Windows PlayStation 3 PlayStation 4
genre	Interactive film
Game mode	Single player
control	DualShock 4 , PlayStation Move Keyboard & Mouse
medium	Blu-ray , download
language	German , Spanish , Italian , French , English , Portuguese , Dutch
Age rating	USK PEGI

Heavy Rain is a video game developed for the PlayStation 3 by the French developer Quantic Dream under the direction of founder David Cage . It belongs to the genre of interactive films with elements of an action adventure . It was released by Sony Computer Entertainment worldwide in February 2010. In June 2015, Sony announced that Heavy Rain would appear as a remastered for the PlayStation 4 along with Beyond: Two Souls . This PS4 version of the game was released worldwide in March 2016. On June 24, 2019, the PC version of the game for Microsoft Windows was released on the Epic Games Store and on June 18, 2020 on Steam .

action

Main story

The plot of Heavy Rain is dependent on the decisions of the player and his success in skill passages. The course of the plot is slightly influenced up to the finale, whereas the finale and the future of the characters are more influenced by these decisions.

The basic story takes place in 2011 and depicts a series of murders against several boys in an unspecified American city. This series of murders has always been taking place in the fall for two years; the murders always follow the same pattern : the boys disappear and a few days later are found drowned on fallow land near railroad tracks. Their faces are covered with mud, an orchid lies on their chest and an origami figure is placed in their hand . Because of this fact, the killer is called an origami killer .

Ethan Mars becomes involved in the case when his son Shaun disappears while visiting the playground. He later receives a letter that takes him to a locker. In it he finds a box with five origami figures, a cell phone and a weapon. Each of the five origami figures contains a task that he has to master in order to prove his love for his son and thereby find him again. Mars flees from reporters who besiege him after his son's disappearance to a motel , where he meets Madison Paige. This helps him and is also by his side after the tasks: Mars has to travel several kilometers in a car against the lane on a highway , in an old power plant crawl through a narrow corridor whose floor is covered with broken glass, through a row of capacitors climbing, cutting off a phalanx, killing a drug dealer and swallowing poison, which begins to work after an hour. After successfully completing a task, he receives a film for his cell phone that shows Shaun in his prison - a shaft into which more and more water rains and Shaun slowly drowns - as well as part of the address of this place.

Norman Jayden and Scott Shelby are independently investigating the case. Jayden in collaboration with the local police and Carter Blake, Shelby claims to be on behalf of the families of the victims. At first, Shelby was mainly concerned with interviewing the parents of the deceased children, including Lauren Winter, who later joined him.

Jayden and Blake pursue two false leads before they consider Mars a suspect, according to a testimony from Mars' ex-wife. After a visit to Mars' psychologists , this suspicion is confirmed. They track him down in an old apartment building, where Mars has to do his third task - cutting off a finger joint. Madison Paige also arrives and wants to help Mars escape. This succeeds either before the arrest, or after the arrest during the interrogation with the help of Norman Jayden, who is convinced of Mars' innocence.

Scott Shelby and Lauren Winter also continue their investigations and meet, among others, the industrialist's son Gordi Kramer and his father Charles, who oppose their investigations, want to bribe and harass Shelby. During a visit to the antique dealer Manfred, he is also murdered by the origami killer.

Further sections of the game are unlocked if Jayden and Paige successfully investigate: Among other things, a sequence in which Jayden investigates in a junkyard, one in which Paige gets into a crazy surgeon or a sequence with Jayden and Paige in a disco. The playable characters get into situations in which they can die several times in the course of the plot. If this is the case, the game is not over , but the player can use the remaining pieces to reach the goal of the game, namely to save Shaun Mars.

Finale and plot variations

Both in the person of Madison Paige and in the person of Norman Jayden, the player can find out that Scott Shelby is the origami killer. He investigated himself to cover his own tracks. If the player fails, the identity of the murderer is revealed in a sequence. Shelby lost his brother as a boy after he got stuck playing in a sewer pipe and drowned. Shelby's father, an alcoholic , was unable to save his son due to being drunk. Shelby, who was traumatized by the event, wants to find out with his actions whether there are fathers who would do anything to save their sons.

In contrast to many adventure games , where only one solution leads to the goal, Heavy Rain has several ways to save the boy. Even if the player is not aware of it when playing through for the first time, some decisions that the player must make are not mandatory. For example, the father of the kidnapped child does not have to face the tasks of the perpetrator, because the child can be saved by the other game characters Madison Paige and Norman Jayden. In the best case scenario, all three characters can help Shaun Mars. The origami killer / Scott Shelby himself can be killed by one of the three game characters in a final fight. If all three characters fail to find the boy, there is a possibility that the origami killer will be killed by Lauren Winter if she was previously saved by the player. So there are several possibilities to compensate for an unfavorable decision in the course of the game.

Depending on the course of the plot and the number and identity of the surviving characters, there can be several different endings. These endings range from one in which Mars and Paige become a couple and move into an apartment with Shaun to one in which Mars is arrested as an origami killer and admitted to a psychiatric clinic and hanged himself there in his cell.

Heavy Rain Chronicles

The Heavy Rain Chronicles are stories that precede the main story. The first episode The Taxidermist (in the English original: The Taxidermist) was 1 April 2010 as additional content on the PlayStation Network offered. It was also included in the original game if you pre-ordered the game from certain retailers, as well as on the Special Edition and Heavy Rain: Move Edition .

In July 2010, Quantic Dream's David Cage announced that the Chronicles had been postponed indefinitely because the production of Heavy Rain: Move Edition was taking up the time. However, he also said that work on the Chronicles will likely continue once the Move Edition is completed.

In the first episode, Taxidermist , you play Madison, who visits taxidermist Leland White to interview him about the origami killer. Finding the house empty, she breaks in and finds several female corpses, stuffed and in various positions, as well as a freshly gutted corpse in the bathroom on the second floor. After Madison collects the information, she hears Leland's car and hides in different rooms of the house. Eventually she escapes and reports to the police. However, at the end of the episode it is resolved that he is not the origami killer. Multiple endings are also possible in this episode.

Playable characters

• Ethan Mars is a divorced architect . Two years before the game's story begins, his older son Jason is killed in a car accident that puts him in a six-month coma . Depressed and overwhelmed by grief, he separates from his wife and increasingly distances himself emotionally from his younger son Shaun. When Shaun is kidnapped by the origami killer, he is still ready to do anything to save himself. Ethan has had agoraphobia since the accident with Jason .

• Madison Paige is a single photojournalist . She sleeps temporarily in motels because only there she can overcome her chronic insomnia . She is drawn into the case of the origami killer and conducts her own investigations into the arrest of the perpetrator.

• Norman Jayden is an FBI - Profiler , which supports the local police in the investigation Origami Killer case. Jayden owns high-tech glasses (ARI) that make crime scene investigation and evidence easier. He also struggles with his addiction to the fictional drug triptocaine and at times suffers from withdrawal symptoms. He condemns the crude interrogation and investigation methods used by Carter Blake and therefore clashes with him several times.

• Scott Shelby is a retired police officer who works as a private investigator . On behalf of the families of the previous victims of the origami killer, he is investigating the case.

Supporting characters

• Lauren Winter is a prostitute whose son was killed by the origami killer. After Scott Shelby asked her about it, she joins him and temporarily helps him with his investigation.

• Carter Blake is a lieutenant in the police force and is also investigating the origami killer case. He is brutal and ruthless, often jumping to conclusions and trying to force suspects to confess.

• Jason Mars is the older son of Ethan Mars. He is killed in a car accident at the beginning of the game.

• Shaun Mars is Jason's younger brother and is kidnapped by the origami killer. However, he has been very withdrawn since his brother's accident and his parents' separation.

Game principle and technology

The game has a control system, in which the forward movement of the character is not carried out via the analog stick , but via one of the buttons (R2) on the gamepad . The analog function of the button allows the character's movement speed to be controlled by pressing it harder or softer. The viewing direction and, depending on this, the direction of movement is controlled via the left analog stick. The character movement should be detached from the camera perspective selected with L1 in order to prevent the player from becoming disoriented. The further control of the interactions takes place via a context-sensitive menu , which consists of the current thoughts of the character and is called with L2. These thoughts are buzzing around the character's head and blurring from time to time, which opens up the possibility that they might be chosen at the wrong time and that the character might say or do something wrong.

Action sequences, for example when the player is attacked, are shown as quick-time events . Here, the player is presented with various symbols that require that he press the appropriate buttons in good time, move the right analog stick in a certain direction or shake the controller.

At the end of September 2010 the version with Move controller support appeared .

In the Windows version, the characters can be controlled with the mouse and keyboard. Here come u. a. Mouse gestures are used instead of the analog sticks.

Production notes

development

Quantic Dream started working on Heavy Rain in February 2006. Details about the game content were initially only sparse. On the official website of the distributor Sony Computer Entertainment, only the tagline “How Far Will You Go To Save Someone You Love?” Could be found on a poster “How Far Are You Prepared To Go To Save Someone You Love?” (How far are you willing to go to save someone you love?) .

Demo The Casting

A first demonstration of the technology used was shown at E3 2006. This was done using a real-time calculated scene called The Casting , which showed a fictional audition for a female role. The demo presented a complex interplay of gestures, facial expressions, real-time calculated tears, wrinkles, skin shades and synthetic image features such as depth of field , spherical surface functions , exposure , HDRR in a short emotional story. The virtual actress is based on the Franco-American actress Aurélie Bancilhon , whose facial expressions were recorded by motion capture with Vicon MX40 cameras and expanded with a muscle system. At the time of making this prototype, the research and development of the game itself was not very advanced, it served as an example of what can be achieved in a short period of time. The technology used enables the animation of hair, tongue, eyes, pupil changes and fingers using the physics engine , which also supports post-processing in real time.

Introduction of the characters

At the SCEI press conference at the Games Convention 2008, Madison Paige was introduced as a new character in a demo entitled The Origami Killer . Another trailer was shown at Gamescom 2009 that introduced the last two playable characters, Scott Shelby and Ethan Mars. In addition, the first playable demo versions were shown at this fair.

Demo version

Shortly before the release, a playable demo was released on the PlayStation Network in February 2010, which included two playable sections.

Developer views

David Cage outlines Heavy Rain as a film noir - thriller with adult content, provides the everyday situations without supernatural elements. However, executive producer Guillaume de Fondaumière clearly denied that it was a life simulation . David Cage literally on the game's key message:

"The real message [of the game] is about how far you're willing to go to save someone you love."

"The real message [of the game] is how far you are willing to go to save someone you love."

For David Cage, the game is a medium to tell stories in which the player can participate interactively with all emotions . For him, this medium is currently the most exciting. After Heavy Rain, he was no longer interested in developing conventional shooters , jump-'n'-run games or the like, he said in an interview. In order to make the scenes particularly detailed, the game world is kept quite small.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack for the game was composed by Canadian composer Normand Corbeil and recorded at Abbey Road Studios in London .

Actors and dubbing

The synchronization was made under the direction of 4-Real Intermedia GmbH in Offenbach.

actor	role	German dubbing voice
Pascal Langdale	Ethan Mars	Johannes Steck
Jacqui Ainsley (acting) Judi Beecher (voice)	Madison Paige	Claudia Urbschat-Mingues
Leon Ockenden	Norman Jayden	Moritz Brendel
Sam Douglas	Scott Shelby	Richard van Weyden
Aurélie Bancilhon	Lauren Winter	Nora Jokhosha
Mike Powers	Carter Blake	Oliver Krietsch-Matzura
Paul Bandey	Captain Perry	Helmut Winkelmann
Norman Stokle	Manfred	Michael Deckner
Michael Rickwood	Brad Silver	Mario Hassert
David Gasman	Hassan	Achim Barrenstein
David Gasman	Sam Walker	Mario Hassert
David Gasman	Paco	Michael Lucke

continuation

David Cage said in an interview at Gamescom 2010 that a sequel is unlikely:

“I'm not sure there will be a heavy rain 2. I'm not a guy who does sequels, because, when you work on a story, you have something to say. It's a response to a moment of your life and what you want to express. [...] I mean, there are so many great stories to tell. That's why just doing sequels of sequels of sequels doesn't make any sense. "

“I'm not sure there will be Heavy Rain 2. I'm not the type of sequel because when you're writing a story, you've got something to say. It is an answer to a moment in your life and what you want to express. [...] There are so many great stories to tell. Therefore, continuations of continuations of continuations make no sense. "

filming

New Line Cinema and Quantic Dream Pictures received the rights for a film adaptation right after the first tech demo from E3 2006. The rights were later acquired by Unique Features in an auction. Unique Features is a production company founded by two former New Line employees, Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne . Shaye and Lynne bought the rights to the film out of their own pocket despite the fact that Warner Bros. has what is known as the "first look" rights. Warner Bros. previously bought New Line. The film was quickly picked up by Warner Bros. and David Milch , scribe for NYPD Blue and Deadwood , is set to adapt the game story for the big screen. Shaye states that Milch's "amazing ability to turn large and complex stories into compelling films makes him a perfect partner" for the film. So far (as of 2019) the film has not been released.

reception

More reviews

publication	rating
4players	94%
Spieletipps.de	93%
Cynamite.de	9 of 10
PS3M magazine	9.0 out of 10.0
PS3-Talk.de	93%
GamersGlobal.de	9.0 out of 10.0

Heavy Rain received largely outstanding ratings from the trade press. So awarded IGN 9 of 10 and Famitsu 37 out of 40 and M! Games 85%. At Metacritic , the game has 87% positive reviews. But the game also had to take criticism; GamePro , for example, praised the emotional story and gave it the rating “Recommended”, but at the same time criticized the logic holes and outrageous twists and turns of the plot. By August 2010, around 1.5 million units of the game had been sold worldwide, 500,000 of them in the first week of sales alone.

Additional content

The first additional content Taxidermist also got positive reviews. 4Players gave it the grade Very Good and IGN 8 out of 10 points. At Metacritic, the chronicle is 75% positive reviews.

Awards

• Living Games Festival Award - Gold-LiGA
• Adventure game of the year 2010
• PlayStation 3 Game of the Year 2010
• BAFTA Video Games Award for the best story of 2010

Web links

• Product page on PlayStation.com
• Heavy Rain at MobyGames (English)
• Heavy Rain in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Sony's Michael Denny - Part One. Eurogamer Network Ltd., December 9, 2008, accessed September 16, 2009 . 
2. ↑ Quantic Dream - Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls are coming to PS4. In: PC Games. Retrieved July 4, 2015 . 
3. ↑ Marcel Kleffmann: Heavy Rain: PC version published; Start in the video; Overview of PC options. In: 4Players . June 25, 2019, accessed June 27, 2019 . 
4. ↑ Elena Schulz: Heavy Rain & Co. now on Steam: Why the games are fantastic despite their weaknesses. In: Gamestar . June 18, 2020, accessed August 5, 2020 . 
5. ^ Dong, Jefferson: Heavy Rain Pre-Order Bonus . PSBlog. 2009. Retrieved October 6, 2010.
6. ↑ Yin-Poole, Wesley: Heavy Rain DLC . EuroGamer. 2010. Retrieved October 6, 2010.
7. ^ Miller, Greg: Heavy Rain Chronicles: Episode One - The Taxidermist . IGN. 2010. Retrieved October 6, 2010.
8. ^ A Journey into Heavy Rain. Future Publishing Limited, September 3, 2008, archived from the original on November 2, 2013 ; accessed on September 14, 2012 (English). 
9. ↑ Heavy Rain Move update is available
10. ^ GC 2008: Sony Press Conference Live Blog. IGN Entertainment Inc., August 20, 2008, accessed September 16, 2009 . 
11. ↑ Heavy Rain Videos (PS3). (No longer available online.) IGN Entertainment, Inc., 2009, archived from the original on March 4, 2010 ; accessed on September 16, 2009 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
12. ^ Heavy Rain Interview. IGN Entertainment, Inc., June 7, 2006, accessed September 16, 2009 . 
13. ↑ Hands-On: Heavy Rain. EVO-X.DE, August 25, 2009, accessed on September 16, 2009 . 
14. ^ Greg Mueller: Heavy Rain Hands-On: Meeting Mad Jack. In: Shacknews. June 3, 2009, archived from the original on September 10, 2015 ; accessed on September 16, 2009 . 
15. ↑ http://www.videogamer.com/ps3/heavy_rain/news/heavy_rain_collectors_edition_revealed.html
16. ^ Eva-Maria Lill: Voice for virtual heroes. In: Offenbach-Post. September 12, 2014, accessed July 31, 2019 . 
17. ↑ Heavy Rain 2 and Fahrenheit 2 looking unlikely according to Quantic Dream . Video Games Blogger. Retrieved May 12, 2010.
18. ^ Griffin McElroy: New Line Cinema options rights for film adaptation of Heavy Rain . Joystiq. February 27, 2010. Archived from the original on January 27, 2015. Retrieved on May 12, 2010.
19. ^ Mark Langshaw: 'Heavy Rain' screen rights auctioned. In: Digital Spy . May 10, 2010, accessed January 27, 2011 . 
20. ↑ Dave McNary: David Milch adapting 'Heavy Rain' game. In: Variety . January 27, 2011, accessed January 27, 2011 . 
21. ↑ 4Players
22. ↑ Tips for games
23. ↑ Cynamite
24. ↑ PS3M magazine
25. ↑ PS3-Talk.de: Heavy Rain ( Memento from March 23, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
26. ↑ Gamersglobal
27. ↑ IGN.com: Heavy Rain UK Review (accessed March 17, 2010)
28. ↑ gameswelt.de: Famitsu gives 37 out of 40 (accessed on March 17, 2010)
29. ↑ maniac.de: Heavy Rain (Test) ( Memento of the original from March 24, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Accessed March 17, 2010)  
30. ↑ metacritic.com: Heavy Rain (accessed March 17, 2010)
31. ↑ gamepro.de: Heavy Rain - Test (accessed on March 17, 2010)
32. ↑ http://www.vgchartz.com/game.php?id=7703
33. ↑ Christopher Dring: Heavy Rain sales hit 1.5m worldwide. (No longer available online.) MCV August 16, 2010, archived from the original on August 18, 2010 ; accessed on August 17, 2010 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
34. ↑ http://www.4players.de/4players.php/spielinfonews/PlayStation3/8231/2006923/Heavy_Rain.html
35. ↑ http://uk.ps3.ign.com/articles/107/1078266p1.html
36. ↑ http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-3/heavy-rain-chronicles-episode-1-the-taxidermist
37. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from June 26, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
38. ↑ Game of the Year 2010 - Adventure Game of the Year . GameSpy. Retrieved December 24, 2010.
39. ↑ Game of the Year 2010 - PlayStation 3 Game of the Year . GameSpy. Retrieved December 15, 2010.
40. ↑ BAFTA Award . Gamona. Retrieved March 17, 2011.