Heavy Rain Impressions: Immersion and Animation

I recently had a chance to download and try out the new Playstation 3 game Heavy Rain, an adventure game created by ___, the studio behind ___. Though the demo is short, it illustrates a type of video game that seems to focus heavily on cinematic storytelling and player interactivity. Yet, as I play the demo, I'm not sold that this form of gameplay is actually as immersive as it presents itself to be.

E3: Heavy Rain 'Casting Call'

As for what the game does well, the animation in the game is a level of realism that is absolutely incredible. I don't quite know how to emphasize this properly, because there have been many games before it that have toted lifelike visuals, but this is the first game I've seen that actually uses motion capturing (which I find generally comes up looking awful and unnatural in video games) to an extent that presents realistic facial movements and body gestures. In this way the game does very well in suspending the disbelief of the viewer, and pulling the audience into its world. Every detail in the game has been absolutely slaved over, as nothing in the environments seems unnecessary or trivial. The developers clearly put a lot of time and effort into building their virtual mis-en-scene elements. For instance, in one scene of the game, you find yourself in a woman's apartment- every bit of the environment can and should be meticulously analyzed, as it all helps to build character and solve the mysteries within the storyline. Compare this to a game like Halo where more often than not we see the same rooms, textures, and objects repeated over and over again in order to bring variety to a game that's based upon repetitious, action based problem solving.

So the game is visually impressive, but what about the gameplay? Well, the honest truth is that the gameplay serves to run opposite to the visuals. Before I continue, I should note that there is room in the world for many times of games and gameplay mechanics, and I'm sure that the game I'm going to describe will seem appetizing to some players. But when I see the excellent character models, settings, sound, and animations, I am baffled that they would structure a game model around such stilted mechanics. In the game, you rarely have direct control over your character. When presented with an action, or a situation, you are given few options for interactivity. We have several types of actions available, first being ratations. Rotations of the thumbstick that are used in place of motion controls. An example would be pressing up on the right thumbstick (when indicated) in order to push open a door or even rotating the stick to simulate turning the doorknob. Another action is pressing the R2 button in order to walk forward. The movement is awkward and clumsy, as turning a character like a car is difficult in claustrophobic environments. Finally, we have quick timed events that use the shoulder and face buttons during choreographed sequences. Missing buttons in the sequence changes the outcome of the scene, but it's a fairly disconnected way to interact with the game.

What all of these mechanics have in common, however, is that they serve to disconnect the player from his character. More often than not, I feel like I'm simply directing the player character in a specific direction and watching the action take place. Though what's happening on screen is often interesting and exciting, it's not a terribly immersive experience. I have to ask, when playing this game, why this story was not just made into a film. I can't help but wonder how having more control over my character would have hurt my gameplay experience. In fact, I don't see why the right thumbstick controls were implemented at all over industry standard button presses.

Still, I only played the demo, and I hold onto hope that the final product will provide an experience that is more than an interactive film. Video Games have a lot of potential for interesting storytelling, and they probably still have a long time to mature, but games like this beg the question: Specifically what is a video game, and what is it that games do best? Is it interactive storytelling? Is it delivering an experience through immersion? The problem I see with this kind of storytelling is that subjectivity is lost when the player becomes detached from his avatar. You are mostly an observer at this point, and I believe a certain amount of empathy is lost when in this disconnection. It's a much different experience actually controlling and becoming your character rather than simply pointing your character in the right direction.