It also processes information about these things and files them away in a database that he can access and reference later.
We've written about the third character, Norman Jayden, and his ARI (Added Reality Interface) back around E3, but in short, he's an FBI agent with an experimental investigative device that allows him to see things that the human eye might miss (like blood, scents, fingerprints, etc.). Ignore them and you probably won't fill in all of the pieces, and perhaps the Origami Killer will walk away clean.
While the first 11 chapters aren't enough to show us the full breadth of these choices, choosing to help these characters looks like it'll result in them helping you more (or even at all) later in the story. Wrong place at the wrong time for Shelby once again, it seems. With the shop owner, a thief comes in and tries to rob him at gun point.
You can break in and help or leave her to deal with her own problem. With the prostitute, someone goes to her door and starts roughing her up right after you leave. In both of Detective Shelby's sequences, the person he goes to interview is attacked. Gruesome stuff indeed, but this is a story (and game) for an older audience, filled with enough cussing, violence and nudity to please a sailor. It seems that the Origami Killer has been hunting down young boys, abducting them in broad daylight, killing them and then "allowing" the police to find the body five days later. In the first, he goes to question a prostitute about her son's murder, and in the second chapter, he visits a shop owner for the same reason (though a different kid). After Ethan's opening chapters (all of what I'm explaining is intermingled, cutting between characters for most sections), you wind up playing a couple segments as private detective Scott Shelby.
Cutting to two years later, Ethan is a mess, has a disconnected relationship with his other son, Sean, and, most importantly, blacks out randomly, waking up with an origami creation in his hand. The+characters+in+Heavy+Rain+are+flawed,+in+a+good+way. After a rather claustrophobic run through the mall's crowd (which is packed like a concert rather than a sedate shopping center), Ethan and Jason are both hit by a car, with the accident killing Jason and sending Ethan into a coma for six months. When the family heads to the mall, his son Jason runs off and Ethan loses him. Still, it sets up the next event, and what happens to Ethan because of it, very well. Here, you have to go through all of that walking and looking around which slows the pacing down quite a bit. It would be trimmed to be tight and concise. In a film, you'd never show much of a guy walking down the stairs, exploring the kitchen and that sort of thing.
It's written like a movie opening, which I think is why the pacing is a little slow.
This opening chapter does two things really well it gives you a chance to figure out how to interact with stuff on your own time, and it sets up the family dynamic nicely with some good character development. After the rest of the family comes home, there's a bit of family interaction that takes place before they all wind up at the mall some time later. His wife and two sons are out shopping for his youngest son's birthday, giving you some time to wander around, figure out the mechanics and generally come to grips with how the game plays. For better or worse, Heavy Rain opens up slowly with a drawn-out sequence where Ethan Mars (an architect) wakes up, takes a shower, maybe has some orange juice and generally just tinkers around in his home for a bit. Do note that this preview will contain a number of slight spoilers from the opening segments, so if you wish to remain completely fresh when the game hits, you're probably best moving on.Ĭlick+the+image+to+see+the+game+in+action. All four main playable characters make an appearance here and there's a fairly wide variety of gameplay to be seen in the build. While we'll have to wait a couple more months to play from beginning to end, Sony recently sent us a preview build featuring the first 11 chapters of the game (out of 60+ from what we understand). In short, it's an experiment in interactive storytelling and we can't wait to play through it. Its story-heavy gameplay is based on contextual actions rather than a never-changing control scheme, your choices directly reflect how the game is played out, and it's even possible to have main, playable characters die off and still have the story come to some sort of conclusion. There's perhaps no more curious a game headed to the PlayStation 3 than Heavy Rain.