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Heavy Rain
276 Plays3 years ago
In this episode, Fraser (Satsunami) and Adam discuss the divisive game Heavy Rain. How many prompts does it take to finish a David Cage game? And why does only one of the characters have a Wikipedia page? All this and more in today's episode!
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Theme
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to Chatsunami.
00:00:17
Speaker
Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of Chat Tsunami. I'm Sad Tsunami, and joining me today, quite frankly, is probably the closest we'll ever get to a true crime episode in this podcast, is my very good friend Adam. Adam, welcome back. Hello, hello, good to be back. I've brought my raincoat, I've brought my umbrella, Ella Ella, hey? So, is that for this?
00:00:42
Speaker
Heck, I honestly can't wait to talk about this. I have been so excited ever since we started, you know, talking about the potential of doing an episode based on this.
Let's Play Series and Heavy Rain Playthrough
00:00:53
Speaker
So for those of you who don't know, my good friend Adam here, and my other friend, or our other friend, sorry, I don't want to discourage you from making me out of this. He's my friend, Alan. I know of him. I know of the other. Yes, the Green Shield 95 that you may have seen around Twitch.
00:01:13
Speaker
Yes, we all do a Let's Play series together called Tea Posing over on YouTube at Satsanami42. She must plug. And yeah, we have been, really we've been going through like a lot of different games. So I've been doing like The Legend of Zelda, GTA, Warzone. But one particular series that you and I, Adam, have been doing is Heavy Rain.
00:01:37
Speaker
And we've been doing that for about 16 consecutive weeks, which, my goodness, I can't believe that. It's been 16 episodes since we started. And as of yesterday, as we're recording this just now, the finale has come out. I can't believe how fast time's going, can you?
00:01:57
Speaker
I know I brought a tear to my eye watching the finale. I was like, man, a chapter in my life is closed. Yeah, I should have edited in, like, violins or something.
Benefits of Replaying Games with Company
00:02:06
Speaker
Cos I was, I was like, oh my God, this is the end of an era almost. It's over. The curtain falls. Yeah, and the arms of the angel slowly play on the background.
00:02:18
Speaker
but honestly it has been a blast going through this series again and kind of especially experience it with somebody else because I think if you play these games on your own and you're kind of like oh what's this or what's that it's a bit different isn't it?
00:02:33
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. I think especially if you want to replay one of these games, I think it's good to do it with somebody else. We'll get into that more, but I think, yeah, especially to replay it, it's good to have some company. Before we actually jump into dissecting, you know, what we've learned over the past 16 weeks. Yeah, before the update begins. Exactly. Yeah, before, like, we...
00:02:57
Speaker
God, an autopsy, you know, that's the perfect analogy for this game. Put on your futuristic sunglasses and let's get this dead body dissected. Yeah, before we go into it though, how did you hear about this game initially?
First Impressions and Console Exclusivity
00:03:11
Speaker
Because this came out in 2010, which as of recording this in 2021, that was 11 years ago. Can you believe it? I know. I know. I think this was cut to the edge at one time.
00:03:22
Speaker
it's quite amazing yeah i mean it does that sort of it's still holed up in a weird way um but yeah some other bet she just think yeah it's not bad looking it's not yeah bad looking by any stretch but like it does like it does look like an old game now but to think back anyway sorry
00:03:41
Speaker
that tangent. But yeah, I first heard about this. I first heard about this when it was getting released. Because I remember the sort of build up for it. I can't remember. I think I had played Indigo Prophecy slash Fahrenheit, which is one of David Cage's early games in the mid 2000s. I think I played that a couple of years before this came out. I think I was aware of mature Cage
00:04:05
Speaker
And I've never been quite excited, it looked really cool and it looked really good, but like I was, as has been established on this, I'm an Xbox gamer and I had a 360 and this was a PS3 exclusive, so I looked forlornally through the window and thought, oh well, never to be, never to be. So how did you actually play this game then? Well, eventually about, so this was, so it came out in 2010, I think I got a PS3 in 2016.
00:04:30
Speaker
He serves and like I bought I bought off somebody and it came with a bunch of games No, actually my heavy rain wasn't one of them and but what I remembered and I still really wanted to play it so I think I went to a local a secondhand game shop and Procured myself a copy and played it and honestly I can say I did I went but I went and played like I went and kind of played most of the big hitting like ps3 titles so I went played this played last of us got a war 3 and some other ones that I'm completely blanking on and
00:05:00
Speaker
Honestly, this was the one I probably enjoyed the most.
PlayStation vs Xbox Experiences
00:05:03
Speaker
I had the most fun with this one. I came to it quite a few years later, but I still very much enjoyed it. It's quite interesting to hear that you didn't really experience it in the height of its... I'm not going to say the height of its popularity, because I'm imagining, you know how there was the Beatles hysteria, where people were screaming in crowds and things? I don't see the same image for heavy records. Is that not happening?
00:05:26
Speaker
Was that all happening with David Cage? Did David Cage not have to be escorted everywhere from the throngs of screaming streaming female fans? I don't know like I don't want to call David Cage a beetle but...
00:05:41
Speaker
Yeah, moving on. Yeah, cease the fifth, Peter. Take that insult any way you want, you know. Or compliment, you know. E? No, I don't see it. Like, I remember it being popular, cos I remember when I bought this game, or not bought, sorry, I procured it as well for my birthday. Ooh, I actually can't remember when it was. In fact, no, I think I must have got it in 2010, because I got it for... I love the brush. I know, because I think I got it for my birthday. Yeah.
00:06:08
Speaker
It was interesting because I remember getting two particular games that birthday. I got that, I got Heavy Rain, and I got Red Dead Redemption, the original one. And I don't know why I was so focused on story-driven games at the time, but I really enjoyed them. I remember playing them. In fact, no, sorry, I remember we were on holiday at the time, so I couldn't play them.
00:06:35
Speaker
Oh no, cruel irony. Yeah, so I had to wait until I... Yes, until that fateful day when I could return home to my, you know, PlayStation that was actually looking out the window forlorn, you know, with a napkin tied round its head. Oh, when will my player return from the war? When can I experience the work of David Cage?
00:06:59
Speaker
Never. Yeah, I
Thematic Controversies and Humor
00:07:01
Speaker
always remember like the reason I was the opposite in the opposite camp rather I ended up getting a PlayStation first because like this is a slight tangent apologies But I ended up getting a PlayStation first because I think it's because my brother had a PlayStation 2 and I heard all about the red ring of death and everything and yeah I was not all for that at the time. They obviously fixed it
00:07:23
Speaker
eventually but yeah because of that i opted for the playstation that and i wanted to get sonico 6 which we all know how that story ends not well not well if you want to hear my opinion on it go check out the episode is that is that a moment in time like do you know he's like if there's one moment in time you could go back to and like warp your past self is that the one that you'd pick nah honestly like it's a learning experience it's one of those moments that makes you like
00:07:53
Speaker
Exactly, you know, it makes you jaded to the world of gaming. Because I always remember playing that game, and again, slight tangent, but I remember playing the game and it was so bad, like the PlayStation version is so bad that the pre-rendered cutscenes started jittering and they would not play properly. And I thought it was a problem with the disc. So I was buying disc cleaners trying to say, look, it's not working and I could not get it fixed.
00:08:22
Speaker
And ironically enough, like years later when they streamed it, I bought the Xbox 360 version. So not only did I have two copies of it, but the Xbox version actually works better. So yeah, fantastic. There you go, see that PlayStation.
00:08:37
Speaker
Exactly. Pooh. Xbox for the win. Yeah but the Xbox did not have heavy rain for actually quite hilarious reasons. Do you know why it didn't come out for the Xbox 360? No, I don't know. Well the reason is that David Cage apparently pitched the idea to like you know all the game studios and because of the subject matter aka kidnapping and killing children yet Microsoft weren't on board with that surprisingly.
00:09:05
Speaker
and they said nah nah we don't want it so instead for some reason Sony took it on and signed a three uh not three year three game deal with them I suppose that's like what's that called is it Dante's Inferno there's like signing your soul away to the devil
00:09:23
Speaker
It's like, are you sure you wanna do this? It's like, oh yeah, sure, I mean, I've got a game planned with Elliot Page, I've got a game planned with the robots and segregation, you know, it's gonna be great! And they're like,
Complexity and Script of Heavy Rain
00:09:35
Speaker
wait, what? I think the red flags for this is, like, I'm looking at my notes here and I never realized that someone actually said that apparently the script for this was over 2,000 pages. Oh my goodness. Can you? Is that long for it? I'm saying that. Is that long for a film? Is that long for a script?
00:09:52
Speaker
Apparently so, I think comparatively. I don't know if there's any scriptwriters out there listening, like correct me if I'm wrong, I'm sure someone quoted it as like 90 to 100 pages maybe? Oh wow. It's like the average, like maybe I could be wrong in that, maybe it's longer, like even if it's, like let's say it's even 900, like it does not compare to a reading script.
00:10:16
Speaker
I think the reason being is because there's so many diverging parts and kind of variables.
Critique of David Cage's Storytelling
00:10:23
Speaker
I have to admit, if you compared this to Hideo Kojima's work, I think you would probably be able to build a museum out of the scripts that Kojima's written.
00:10:36
Speaker
I actually can't imagine how big his scripts are, either for Metal Gear or Death Stranding. I was going to say Bus Simulator, but that is Death Stranding. I'm sorry, I haven't played it and I have absolutely no interest in playing it. There's my Kojima Jam of the Night.
00:10:59
Speaker
Do you want to get in there, Adam? Do you want to... No! To be honest, Death Stranding is this game that I don't know if I'd like it or not. I kind of want to play it. Yeah. It's just very sick. I'm not... Again, I might absolutely hate it, but it's that game I'm just like, it just looks so fascinating just from an outside perspective. Oh, God, yeah. It's... Yeah, write better female characters. And speaking of female characters being written poorly, Heavy Rain, that was a great segue.
00:11:27
Speaker
Almost like I planned it. As I said before we jump in, what is this game about? How did you introduce this game? Just in a couple of sentences, what is heavy rain all about?
Overview of Heavy Rain's Plot
00:11:39
Speaker
A heartwarming tale of a father trying to reconnect with his son and a woman trying to cure her insomnia and another man trying to get off drugs and then there's another guy.
00:11:54
Speaker
That's a summary. That is actually, that is more than I actually want. Well done. Four sentences. There you go. Well done. Four sentences for four... I'm getting better at doing these now. Oh yeah, no, they are a brevity. Thy name is Adam. I mean, well done.
00:12:15
Speaker
So, as I said before, we have been playing this for, yeah, 16 episodes.
Promotions and Humorous Playthrough Moments
00:12:20
Speaker
It doesn't feel like 16 episodes right enough. Like, we did one a week, so, yeah, 16 weeks of heavy rain. And that is absolutely incredible. Long time to spend with David Cage. Long time to spend in his world.
00:12:35
Speaker
So what we're gonna do just now is we're gonna play a quick clip, or rather the trailer for the series. So if you want to check this out, then you can check it out at Satsunami42 over on YouTube. Yeah, I'm gonna play the trailer just now. If you want to see it, as I said, the trailer's over there. Will we show these fine people what they're missing? Let's do it. Let's show what we got up to.
00:13:06
Speaker
You get a saw in. Saw it. No. No, saw it. It'll be hysterical. What for the content? Yes. Yes, for the content, do it. Look at that rusty saw. You get a saw in. Oh, how he taunts me. Do you survive? I don't do. My god, Merlin died. You didn't have to see this. I'm engaged.
00:13:35
Speaker
Wow, I don't remember this at all. Oh, okay. You indeed can't use it at all. It's got a Shelby not, Nam and Jayden even much. Oh, that's an automatic. I can't drive this. Okay, guys, sorry. Sorry, Sean. Oh my God. My name is Madison and I'm here to say. Jesus, what should I do?
00:14:10
Speaker
You're too late for luck now, you're chopping your finger off! What fanfic are you writing with Steve McCleod? How did that happen? How did that work?! Wow, that one worked! I was waiting for that one. Yay!
00:14:45
Speaker
Oh, the laughs we had. The memories. That was honestly such a fun series to record though. It really was like, for like a single player game, it's surprising how much fun you can have with more than one person doing it. Yeah, it's kinda the perfect game to let's play though, isn't it? Oh, definitely.
00:15:07
Speaker
It's like one of those games that you can have just like a running commentary going on. Like you don't really have to concentrate unless it's, you know, the high-stress situations, which... There are many. There are many.
00:15:22
Speaker
It's a goal, the game is a gold mine as well as material. I guess what makes it so great, like most of David Cage's video games are just gold mines, but just stuff to just to comment on, to laugh at, laugh with, whatever you want. Even the goofs? That's true. I mean you remember one of my worst goofs in this game. Do you want to tell them or should I? And should I confess to the audience?
00:15:48
Speaker
wait oh you're good oh is this is this the one with madison uh no that too but i was thinking more of um lightning mcqueen getting him next up with steve mcqueen
00:16:01
Speaker
Oh my goodness. That is one of my, one of my prizes. One of my favorite memories, I think, now of all time. Is you admitting to your love of Steve McQueen? Yes, mice. The mice chest. It's like, I think you do, like, when you think you're about to die, and you're like, I've never told anyone to do this. All right, Steve McQueen, fan fiction. Wait, what?
00:16:22
Speaker
look it's true all of it is true then we get saved oh no oh well one of us is getting out of here alive yeah so to explain in case anyone's wondering where my Steve McQueen fanfiction is you can catch it at stevemcqueenlover42.co.uk and i'm joking don't
00:16:44
Speaker
up. Don't look that up in case it's a real thing. I don't want to be able to read. There's going to be a Steve McQueen fan out there like, oh, I've seen this surge in viewers. I wonder why? It's like, well. Your retelling of The Great Escape was quite beautiful, really. Yeah, it really was. Who knew that getting tied to Steve McQueen was, you know, that exciting.
00:17:08
Speaker
So yeah, to explain your honour, to explain. Yeah, there was a scene where basically you had to escape a sinking car and at one point one of the characters turns the engine on and the headlights come on and initially I was like, oh wow.
00:17:25
Speaker
I was making a joke saying, oh it's like a Lightning McQueen fanfiction, you know, like the character from Cars. Unfortunately because my brain was all over the place like trying to escape the car, I immediately went to Steve McQueen instead. Yeah which ended up with one of the funniest like, I don't want to say breakdowns but you know what I mean, one of the like moments where I was just like, yeah this is...
00:17:52
Speaker
It's just one of those purely unscripted moments of just joy, where it caught me by surprise. Just pure gold. That's not something you can ever replicate again. That was a classic lightning in a bottle.
00:18:07
Speaker
Yeah. Lightning McQueen in a bottle. Thank you very much. I like it. I like it. Thank you David Cage. You may be a horrible person in real life but you gave us one moment of unindulted joy. Yeah, thank you for making me come to terms with my Steve McQueen addiction. I can proudly say and confess on this podcast that I am indeed a fan of Steve McQueen. The ironic thing being that I've never really seen a Steve
00:18:38
Speaker
That's the new series starting soon. Yeah. Satsanami watches Steve McQueen films. Steve McQueen saga. And Citizen Kane to wrap it up. Yeah, I still need to watch Citizen Kane. I keep comparing films to it because people tell me it's a good film. Is it a good film? I don't know. I really hope you hate it. Things are compared as it is in Kane. I'm like, oh my God, this is terrible. I've got so much backtracking to do.
00:19:14
Speaker
Stay McQueen, don't worry, you'll have your own Chatsunami episode one day. Where can we even start with this game? As you said, it focuses on four main characters. You know, we've got Ethan Mars, who is the... basically a walking cliche. You know, he's an architect, a stay-at-home dad, you know? He's living the life with his absolutely ridiculous house until one day his child gets hit by a car. Oh, sorry! Spoilers. I was gonna say, are you gonna give us a spoiler warning?
00:19:36
Speaker
So yeah, back to heavy rain.
00:19:44
Speaker
as Steve McQueen was the killer all along. Oh my god. Sorry, spoilers going forward. This happened. This is the premise of the game, okay? In fairness, yeah, that's true. I'm sure it's on the back of the box. It's like, come play this game where Jason gets hit by a car. I mean, by now, it's been 11 years, everybody knows the memes of press X to Jason, you know, Sean, the origami killer, all of the good stuff. So, yeah, we've got Ethan, who ends up losing his son.
00:20:14
Speaker
because he is a stupid child that doesn't know to look left and right in the middle of the road. Which, apparently! So there's a scene in the game quite harrowing where Ethan sees his son running across the road and he's like, Dad! Hello! Or the voice acting for the most part is terrible in this game, especially with the children. I mean, some of them actually do really well. Like Pascal Langdale. I'm getting his name right this time because I messed it up.
00:20:42
Speaker
I messed it up before but I'm not messing up again. The guy who voices Ethan Mars, he actually does a good job for the most part. That is not bad. Yeah, he's okay. He's serviceable in terms of heavy rain. It's weird because I've seen behind the scenes footage of them actually, well, acting and they do some really great performances and you compare it to the game itself and it's like, they don't really translate and I don't know why, if it's just the, you know, the take they took for the game or...
00:21:10
Speaker
You know, so like, they were motion capped, am I right in saying? Yeah, yeah. So like, they would act out a scene and it would be motion capped and then it would get transported into the game. Okay, fair enough. I did wonder, I wondered if like, maybe like, if you're watching them like practice in the background, like when they're able to be a bit more animated, but I thought maybe if you're just reading it, like, you know, if you're in like a sound studio and you're just like reading the lines, perhaps something is lost there, but
00:21:36
Speaker
I genuinely don't know what the reason was, because as I said, some of the line readings are really good and then others are just like...
00:21:44
Speaker
It is, it's a bit weird, you know, that way. At the same time, so sorry, going back to the, you know, the harrowing scene where, sorry, I shouldn't be laughing, but the harrowing scene where his son gets hit by the car, what ends up happening is he, like, dives in front of the car to, like, protect his son. And a lot of people, like, even people that have shown our let's play of, like, they keep saying, why did the child die? Because, you know, Ethan took the brunt of the blow.
00:22:12
Speaker
Apparently there is a revised scene of that. There was an initial draft where David Cage actually wanted Jason to get hit by the car and thrown up in the air and Sony said, no. Yeah, apparently. Why would that be your first... Oh my god. You're joking with me right now. Well, I can confirm it.
00:22:39
Speaker
But I'm sure like someone did, yeah, like he seems very, very passionate about certain decisions. He's very much like, you know how we kind of riff on like George Lucas and things, you know, like having like a certain vision and nobody's saying no to.
00:22:58
Speaker
You know, he's like, we've got to do this. And everyone says, yes, yes, George. Yes, you directed a very good movie. Yes, yes. And you know, it comes out terrible when you're like, yeah, we should have said no at some point. There was a lot that apparently Sony said no to. And I think they had to make compromises along the way. And some things probably for the best. Oh, definitely. Thank God somebody was there to restrain him.
00:23:25
Speaker
yeah do worry what this guy would do if like he said there was like no there was no like restraint i really do worry oh my god it would have been it would have just been like unhinged yeah the david cage can't where it's like okay and there's
00:23:40
Speaker
I mean, it's bad enough you actually see a dead child in the game. Well, kind of. The shots are kind of obscured, but it's like a crime scene, so it's contextual. It's not just gratuitous, but we will get to the gratuity of this game. Believe me, I will be running.
00:23:59
Speaker
And I'm sure he'll be ranting as well with us.
Ethan Mars' Story and Game's Dark Themes
00:24:02
Speaker
So yeah, because of the accident, Ethan Morris, he goes into a coma and he ends up waking up and getting divorced from his wife as his life falls apart. He tries to repair his relationship with his son. It's just a mess, isn't it?
00:24:17
Speaker
Yes, honestly. I forgot what, when we started, well obviously when you started replaying and I was watching, I forgot how like depressing that, especially that second chapter is. Oh yeah. Oh sorry, no third chapter. Yeah, that was like after Jason is killed.
00:24:34
Speaker
and then it's like Ethan and his wife divorce and it's like you know Sean's obviously splitting times between his two parents and then he even picks him up from school that whole chapter takes him back to his house his new house that whole chapter is just horrible i remember when i first played it my flatmate at the time was watching and that's the scene that's there he was like no i'm not watching any more of this game this is too depressing he just bailed on it there
00:24:59
Speaker
god it is so like you're just like oh my god we can laugh at it now but yeah is that thing laugh or cry liz oh it really is like he goes from this giant mansion having the perfect family to this like really horrible apartment well not apartment a house but it's not well kept it's not an architect's dream
00:25:20
Speaker
Then the main plot hook of course comes into the game where his son eventually gets kidnapped and yeah, that really sets off the chain of events where you realise it's a infamous killer in this universe called the Origami Killer who murders his victims, aka kidnapped children, by shoving them down a well and letting it fill up. It's a bit grim, you know?
00:25:46
Speaker
You can see why Microsoft turned her back on this. We'll stick to Gears of War. People change over aliens. It's far more palatable. Yeah, exactly. You can see that. You can kind of... Yeah. Like, chopping up, you know, aliens. That's fine, you know. Shooting the covenant in the head, that's fine as well. But yeah, when it comes to that, when it comes to dead children, yeah, probably draw a line underneath it.
00:26:15
Speaker
Did David Cage lead that? So when he went to Microsoft, it was his first thing, he was like, right, we're going to have a scene and basically the child's going to get hit by a car, he's going to go flying up into the air, we're going to keep watching it and he's going to crash down to the ground again. So when can we start? It's like, you know the comedy shows where he's like, when can you start? And then it just cuts immediately to him on the pavement. Just like, did they say no? They said no.
00:26:42
Speaker
it's like yeah that fresh principle there cut him getting thrown out of quarters exactly so yeah to get his son back he essentially has to do like several like so light challenges pretty much yeah yeah where he has to like chop his finger off he has to drive at the wrong side of the road or the right side of the road if you're in the UK you know
00:27:10
Speaker
Sorry, I got that in there. What else does he have to do? Oh, he has to drink poison. I have some glass. Go through glass. Oh god, that one was the worst. We'll get to that. And yeah, just all these, oh yeah, and shoot a guy in his daughter's bedroom. In my defence, he was a drug dealer, okay? Don't pretend that was the reason. If you watch the video, you'll all know why the reason was.
00:27:33
Speaker
As I said, at Satsanami42 on YouTube, you can see my defence testimony on the heavy rain playlist.
00:27:42
Speaker
Anyway, that aside. Yeah, so he has to go through all these trials to get his son back. And that is, it's very harrowing. Some of these, like, some of them are really brutal. Like, especially the one where you have to chop off your finger. And you have to choose the instrument that you're gonna use. You have to, you know, you've got a time limit, so that adds to the stress. I feel as if that is the only trial that's really well done. Like, out of the five of them. Or, is it four or five? I think it's five. Well, there's five, yeah.
00:28:10
Speaker
At the five, yeah. Definitely at the five it's the best one because for the first one you don't actually get a choice to opt out of it. Yeah, like the one we have to drive in traffic. Like you don't actually get a choice whether or not like you want to say no to it. You have to do it apparently.
00:28:29
Speaker
It's this thing we were talking about last time when we were talking about narrative versus gameplay and we were basically talking about player agency and things. There are some moments in this game where it's like, your choice matters, except when it doesn't.
00:28:44
Speaker
except right now yeah like some bits you kind of like really david really sorry i shouldn't call him like david because i don't know him it's like you know with david cage it's like he tries to make this interactive world and everything which don't get me wrong sometimes he does a great job at it but then other times you're just like why why why would you do this to me
00:29:08
Speaker
You know it that way. I'm just trying to think of the other challenges. Like the cut in gloss, or when you have to crawl through the thing in gloss, that is one of the most frustrating ones. Where it's like you have to strike a match and hold it up to the wind. And you're supposed to look at the direction of the flame.
00:29:25
Speaker
I remember that one because I was just trying to wrap my brain there. I was trying to think because to both of us it made no sense. I thought it would be like so the way the flame was pointing is direction like the wind is blowing from. Yeah. So it'd be the other way, but apparently it's not. I was just trying to think that I was like, maybe I'm just really dumb here. I really don't understand. Well, I'm really dumb. I don't understand how wind works. I don't know. That makes sense. I thought.
00:29:54
Speaker
I thought exactly the same I was like no this makes no sense surely the wind must be blowing and therefore like that's where the wind's coming from you know I thought exactly the same thing and there have been a couple of other people saying the same and I mean I know like I'm glad that it's not just us thinking that
00:30:12
Speaker
I think the real problem with that trial is like the controls get very clunky and then it's that thing where the camera becomes fixed and then you know so like you'll be crawling one direction the camera will change and it will like invert your controls and so like you'll be holding one direction and that will turn your character around then you get like that. Like we used to happen with the old Resident Evil games where like you know you kept like going back and forth between like two camera items being like damn it I can't change in time.
00:30:37
Speaker
Oh no. It's very clunky. The controls are very clunky in this game. We played it on the PC actually. Yeah. And like because of that you can kind of move around freely but if you play this on the PlayStation 3 then you have to hold in the R2 button. So it's like to move anywhere. I remember having to hold in R2 to walk anywhere and I was worried that my R2 button was going to like snap off.
00:31:03
Speaker
Because I was told to the publisher. Why is that a thing? Has they ever not played any other games? No. I don't get it. I genuinely don't get why. It's just, as you said, it's tank controls, isn't it? It's just absolute tanky controls.
00:31:20
Speaker
It's just being awkward for the sake of it, it feels like, cos it's not like holding R2 makes you more immersed. Like, I don't get any logical reason why it's there apart from like, as you say, to like, break your controller and also like, cramp your finger up. I don't get it. It's just as weird. As weird, as smelly, and I don't like it.
00:31:40
Speaker
next question please but speaking of um weird that moves us on to like our next character like in fact no i'm gonna put it to you who do you want to talk about next because there are three more characters i'm gonna go with let's go with norman jayden next okay the one character i would like to discuss at the end so you get to choose the next one so it'll be fun to see if you if we're on the same wavelength here but let's go norman jayden okay no i'll let you i'll i'll put it to you this time
00:32:07
Speaker
Norman Jane is probably my favourite out of the four. I think his chapters are maybe some of the best as well, because a lot of it is to do with investigating, especially the crime scene investigating. I think it works quite well. So basically, Norman Jane's an FBI agent who comes in to investigate the origami killer.
00:32:27
Speaker
and he has this fancy pair of glasses called ARRI, A-R-I, I think we tried to call it ARRI, didn't we? It's almost like something out of Iron Man or something, something Tony Stark has, where you can draw databases, it goes into a virtual world, you can reconstruct events, and evidence gets highlighted, you can pinpoint things on maps and everything. It's like a augmented reality type thing.
00:32:52
Speaker
And that's really quite cool, and I really like those scenes. I think they're probably the best in the game, where you can explore a crime scene and find evidence, and if you're like us, forget to investigate the dead body. Yeah, I forgot a crime scene. Oh yeah, they are some of that. I think they're the most fun.
00:33:09
Speaker
I like his character because I think in some ways his character is one of the ones that makes the most sense of why they're in the story. It makes sense that FBI agents there. I think it's fun to do that, to investigate. And I especially enjoy that kind of investigative aspect and being on that end of trying to track down this killer in a race against time. I really like that. I wish they'd given him a different voice actor.
00:33:33
Speaker
It's the one thing I'd say because it kind of undercuts him a little bit but what do you think of Norman? Yeah that's how he speaks with like a Brooklyn accent. Yeah it's like it's like a mix of like a Brooklyn like a Boston. Yeah it's very much like a hey I'm walking here.
00:33:51
Speaker
Give me a coffee! Exactly! Yeah, I don't know anyone from Boston, so I apologise on behalf of our Boston fanbase. You know Naaman Jaden. Naaman Jaden, of course. Naaman. Yeah, his voice is about unique in the game.
00:34:08
Speaker
Do you want to know a fun fact about Norman in this game? So apparently, so I was watching a video on the, I can't remember the name of it, but there's like a channel that goes like beyond the boundaries of the game. I think it has its name, something to do with like going beyond the boundaries, you know, like the invisible walls and things to see the game.
00:34:29
Speaker
And apparently, this game is really impressive, the way they do everything. There's a lot of like, if you're looking at it from a distance, it looks terrible for obvious reasons, but more because, you know, it's like the Norman Jayden chasing, for example. See when you're chasing someone through the supermarket.
00:34:47
Speaker
It's like, if you're watching that from a distance, all of the cutscenes, you know, like, when you're pressing, like, a button to, like, move side to side, it, like, teleports them all over the map to, like, carry out that scene. So it's like, he's on the pavement on one side, and then, you know, he's, like, he's sliding over a car in the next shot. And obviously it's seamless because the game's, like, filming it that way. So it's, like, really cool. But when you're actually watching it from that distance, you're like, yeah. Oh, God. Oh, no. They just teleported all over the shop. Yeah.
00:35:15
Speaker
Although fun fact for some reason like when you're chasing that guy there's like a lot of people you know how you end up in the meat locker at the end of that chapter apparently there's a lot of people stashed in that meat locker and I don't know whether it's supposed to be this like that's where they spawn out like it's a lot of NPCs just there I don't know the guy was just like yeah there's just a lot of people in this meat locker and you're like huh neat
00:35:39
Speaker
You're just like ah, okay. Although one thing I did find really interesting was see, although we didn't get it, there's a scene like with Norman Jaden when you climb up the hill and has like introductory chapter. Oh yeah? And you go in the highway and apparently to make it look busy, you know how there's all the cars like going back and forth on the highway.
00:35:58
Speaker
Apparently only half of those cars are animated, or not animated but like textured. See if you look at them from the other side they've got no textures or anything so they're not fully rendered on the other side but I thought that's actually quite clever. I need a clever way to do it, a corner. Yeah it's like to save on resources I think. Although one of the things I found funny was when they went through one of the skyboxes and it's got like the big watermark on it. It's like from where they got
00:36:26
Speaker
The checks are strong and things. That is actually quite funny. I do like that. But the reason I brought this up is because you're the scene where Norman is giving money to the police officer, like for Larry's retirement. That old scene, you know, the one everyone quotes in heavy rain. They're like, ah, Larry, will you remember you will? In all the marketing material. Yeah. Well, apparently see when he takes his wallet out and he gives the money over, apparently that's Scott Shelby's wallet. If he zoom in on it. Oh, really?
00:36:55
Speaker
Yeah, they do use assets. That's not enough. Yeah, they didn't reprogram it, so they just gave him Scott Shelby's wallet. There you go. It's me through. I just thought that was quite an interesting tidbit. I see the development. I do think this is a marvel, what they did. Whether or not the story holds up, spoilers, it probably doesn't. But we will get to it. But going back to Norman.
00:37:22
Speaker
Yeah, I do think he definitely has the most action-packed scenes, I would say. It's definitely the most intensive. Well, sorry, no. Second most intensive. We'll get to the most intensive later, but yeah, I like him. As you said, his voice is a bit grating, but the idea of the RA and being able to see the clues and things, I think that's really cool. But what I like as well is they kind of developed that further and Detroit become human.
00:37:49
Speaker
with the androids there's a very similar aspect that they did there and I like that I do think they like the detective work and everything it is cool because you actually get to feel as if you know you're making progress and you're you know geo analyzing everything and we found out there's origami shops because of this
00:38:08
Speaker
That's a fact I never knew. Yeah, I think like, you know, once lockdown kind of submerged down a bit, yeah, you know. I'm getting those up. Yeah, we're gonna have to make like a trip to the old origami emporium. I'm sure it's... I think... Oh, no, no, go on, no. No, no, you finish your thought before I go on. No, no, no, I was gonna say, like, I'm being too generous that I'm caught with it, an emporium. It's probably just like a shack made out of paper. Origami shack.
00:38:37
Speaker
I'm glad you're on the same wavelength. I live and die by the origami. I put this much faith in my craft and I built my job out of it. Yeah, probably a bad idea in Scotland. There's your next idea for your game, David Cage. The man who lives in an origami house. What, the origami builder? The origami builder, I love it. I wasn't the origami killer. So sorry you were saying. That's what I rudely interrupted.
00:39:00
Speaker
I think what I like so much about, because I agree with you, I really do love the investigation stuff, both in this and in Detroit, I think what is so good about it as well is it feels like some of the more kind of game-y, and I don't mean this in a bad sense, but it feels like more of a game at times where I think a criticism you can level against a lot of David Cage's games, and sometimes you're like,
00:39:22
Speaker
it feels more like it is like a kind of movie in a lot of ways rather than a game but with the investigation stuff you know you are having to kind of like walk around explore a location like find things you know interact with it so it does feel more like a traditional game in that sense and that's kind of think what I quite like about them as well it feels rewarding with a lot of it like once you find the right clues and everything and you survive like the horrific nature and everything
00:39:49
Speaker
Whether it be with Mad Jack and Paco who apparently shared the same voice actor, which I didn't know. What, Mad Jack and Paco? Apparently so, yeah. Talented guy. That guy's covering the scum bag.
00:40:06
Speaker
I'm just trying to think of the other, like, levels he's in. Like, there's a lot of chase scenes. It's very much like an X-Files episode. In all seriousness, but nah, he's a fun character. The only thing I don't like about his storyline is he has to deal with a guy called Blake.
00:40:22
Speaker
Now Blake is like the... it's something that David Cage carries a lot in these games. I don't know if he does it for Fahrenheit but he definitely does it for Detroit Become Human as well where he's got the stereotypical asshole detective and it gets very grating very fast when the guy just like shits on every single idea which initially I thought is this just like a police versus FBI thing or
00:40:48
Speaker
But then later on he is, he's like, see this is the thing I don't get, and this is something I was thinking about as I was watching it back. So you know the scene where Blake corners Ethan Mars and he's got like a gun to him, you know, and he's like, ah, you're getting nowhere to go, and then he jumps off the roof and he's like, oh no, you've got somewhere to go.
00:41:07
Speaker
You know, the thing that really annoyed me about that was the fact that when you're in Nathaniel, so Nathaniel is like a mentally unstable religious zealot who you have to investigate as you're a kami killer and yeah he is definitely not the killer, like it's established very clearly that he's just very paranoid and everything and he just keeps egging him on.
00:41:31
Speaker
You know that way? Blake just keeps egging this poor guy on until he brings out a gun and he starts calling him the Antichrist and you have to talk him down and then he kind of berates you later on if you don't shoot him and he's like, why didn't you shoot him? And he's like, well, I was kind of hoping he would finish the job and shoot you, but you know.
00:41:52
Speaker
He's just like a abrasive arsehole at every turn. He should have genuinely been like dismissed long ago. And this is the thing though, if you confront him later, there's a scene later where you basically find out who the origami killer is, or you kind of narrow it down.
00:42:07
Speaker
but at one point you can accuse him of being the Origami Killer and if you accuse him then unfortunately it means like Game Over for that storyline and I don't get it. I genuinely don't get it because they all berate in Norman like oh I can't believe you know you're berating you know Blake and it's like but he's an asshole.
00:42:28
Speaker
He's just an asshole, he's not constructive, he's not, you know, he just seems like a stereotype. He's very much a cliche and you have to put up with him throughout the entire game as Norman. But not the entire game, like there's some levels where you just... A good chunk of it though. Yeah, about 70 to 80% I would say. You've hit the nail on the head, he is a stereotype, he is a walking stereotype.
00:42:50
Speaker
And I actually, I like the idea. I like the fact that, like, one other thing I like about Norman's chapters are that you do get these kind of, like, moral decisions when, like, you're investigating with Blake and, you know, as you've said, like, you know, he's, like, pushing things beyond, like, proper, you know, proper procedure and everything. There's that same with Nathaniel. There's also one where you go to interview Ethan Mars, a psychiatrist, and Blake, like, starts, like, beating him up and everything like that. And it's, like, it is very ham-fisted and, like, as it...
00:43:19
Speaker
It's literally, indeed. It's undermined because Carter Blake is such a stock character with literally no depth to him apart from asshole cop. I like the idea behind it of having to make these moral decisions about what to do. Do you step over the line in pursuit of the killer and everything like that? I think it deserves to be done in the better hands.
00:43:42
Speaker
You've occasioned sometimes you can't quite write these kind of complex ideas. See that's the thing for a game that heavily stresses on your decision matters. There are some moments where it's like it really doesn't. Like whether or not you decide to shoot Nathaniel then it's just like another dialogue option or another like route of dialogue that comes up and that's it. Like it's a throwaway line of why didn't you show them and that's it. Just nothing comes of it.
00:44:10
Speaker
And you're just like, why bother at that point of having it in? Even with Blake, there's no character development. There's no moment where it's like, he thinks, oh, maybe I'm wrong. Or we get to learn more about him or something. This is a very heavy character-driven game. I'm using character in air quotes here.
00:44:32
Speaker
You know, it's like very intensive in that sense. And it's just a shame because there's a lot of moments where a lot of these characters do shine. I mean, look at Ethan. He is very much a person who clearly, you know, he loves his children. He loved his wife. His wife just becomes like a one-note character as well. Yeah, it's a real shame that happens.
00:45:07
Speaker
Toyota and Odagami. Nice to meet you. But after the accident, he is just living this miserable life and he's trying to make the best of it and I think there's something really compelling there. But yeah, I'll get to why I get irked by it, but there is like a lot of cut content. Again, I think this is one of the cases, a bit like Deadly Premonition, where the development of the game is almost more interesting than the actual game itself.
00:45:21
Speaker
Yeah, because at the beginning, you know, she's set up as a stereotypical, oh hello, I am wife. It's like, oh hello, wife. I am husband. This is our two children.
00:45:36
Speaker
like there was a lot of cut content for especially like Ethan's chapters where there was supposed to be a paranormal element to it where like throughout the game this is something I forgot to bring up but throughout the game Ethan has these blackouts and when he wakes up he has like an origami figure in his hand that is never explained in the final game
00:45:55
Speaker
but according to behind the scenes interviews and things the reason behind it is because in the original draft of the game you were supposed to do these levels where the house filled with water and you had to swim around and it turned out it was a psychic link between him and the origami killer and he was accessing his mind or something and that's why you get the origami figures in his hand
00:46:22
Speaker
not a lot of people took to that a lot of people were like yeah no get that shit out of here i can see i can see why then i know i keep going back to this guy but one thing that was quite interesting was when that guy who you know goes out of the borders to see the level apparently see the water you know that was supposed to fill up the house apparently that's still underneath the house like oh really
00:46:43
Speaker
Yeah, so what they did was they saved essential items to bring up, so I'm assuming the oranges and things like that to pop up to the frozen pizza. There's a whole cube of water just under the house, and that's what the guy was speculating. He was saying I think that's maybe because of that level.
00:47:04
Speaker
that it's like it's still there but they obviously didn't incorporate it into the final game so it just remains there so yeah no sorry i just wanted to point that out because i thought it was quite interesting one thing i like about ethan's story but like it's not developed which kind of really it's maybe one of my big like annoyances with this game is there is for a while a sense of you you actually think ethan might be the origami killer and because he has his blackouts
00:47:28
Speaker
and he himself begins to think it because he can't track his movements and he's like, God, what if, like, he's like, what if I did this, like, as a way to like, because of the guilt I feel about the death of Jason, I've done this to like test myself. That is a really, and I actually noticed it more in the second playthrough and we did our like playthrough of it. And I was like, that's a really interesting idea. And I wish it lent more into that, because it's kind of one of these things where Ethan's like, oh, and you think for a little bit, but then it's kind of quickly, like, obviously it's not him, you know, and it's not
00:47:58
Speaker
ever explored and like I'm glad they cut out all that psychic crap because that sounds terrible I'm glad I didn't make the fun of that but I wish like they'd done more with the black eyes because I remember I had questioned you a couple times being like so why is he blacking out? Why is he getting these origami figures like is this ever explained and like it's just annoying that they left that in
00:48:17
Speaker
left that morsel of something very interesting. But then we're like, anyway, like, you know, rushing it aside, and just went on to focus on other things. I thought that could have been a really interesting hook, you know, but clearly just decided not to go with it. But it's a real annoying thing. I'd like to see I'd like to see that developed.
00:48:34
Speaker
You're right, it's a shame that they didn't flesh it out a lot more, because they still keep it in the game. That's the thing that baffles me. It's one thing to cut it out of the game, I understand, but you've still got these dregs floating about, and you're like, why keep it if
Criticism of Narrative Inconsistencies
00:48:49
Speaker
you're gonna... They never explain why he's got Odigami in his hand. Did he block out and find a piece of paper and was just like, oh doo doo doo doo doo, oh here we go. Here's an Odigami thing. I wish I could fold Odigami like that.
00:49:04
Speaker
A very particular talent. It's like some people can solve Rubik's cubes, you know, blindfolded. No, no, no, this guy. This guy does origami. Well, he's blacked out apparently in the middle of the street in the pouring rain. It's like, it's a niche set of talents. But I would say like 50%.
Introduction to Scott Shelby
00:49:21
Speaker
So that's 50% of the game, you know, you've got Ethan and Jaden who are both, you know, essential cogs in the wheel of this story.
00:49:30
Speaker
We do have two more. I think I know the character you want to save to last. Do you mind if I speculate? Yeah, go for it, go for it. Is it Madison by any chance? I would like to say Madison to the end. Yes, same. Okay, we'll move on to the third character, that of course being Scott Shelby, who is a portly gentleman. And I'm not body shaming, like genuinely, keep that in mind.
00:49:54
Speaker
when I say that because it is very important. I'll be testing you guys at the end. So basically, Scott Shelby is a private investigator who has been hired by the families of the origami, well, the origami killers victims, like the parents of the kids who have died. He goes like to their houses, places of residence, their work, and basically gathers clues. And as he's on the hunt, he ends up coming across a woman called
00:50:23
Speaker
Laura Winters? I want to see. Yeah, Lauren? Laura or Lauren? I can't remember. Is it Laura? It is Lauren, sorry. Lauren Winters. Yeah, yeah, that's it. It's like, yeah, I played this game for 16 weeks. I know. I know what I'm talking about. Yeah, I mean, so we get her who has a very, as you described aptly, a very Tommy Wiseau accent.
00:50:43
Speaker
Or was it? They act it as I said, the voice acting dips and curves up and it's all over the place. Yeah, his story basically focuses on trying to find the origami colour from an outside perspective. So it's very much not essentially a film noir, but you know what I mean. Like a bit earlier than noir almost was like, of all the
00:51:04
Speaker
of all the offices she could have gone into she had to come into my office you know and he is very much going to that one yeah so he teams up with Lauren who is the yeah she is a mother of one of the children who got killed by the origami killer and their research or not their research but their investigation leads them to Gordy Kramer who is like basically stereotypical rich bugger who is we only actually see this guy once
00:51:34
Speaker
Fun fact, did you ever notice that? Yeah, I didn't actually think that. Yeah, because I never really thought about it until I rewatched it and I was like, oh yeah. So they set up Gordy as being the origami killer and he's just, again, stereotypical rich
00:51:52
Speaker
young man who is very childish and is like watching French cartoons on TV. I swear to god it is French cartoons. Type in Heavy Rain Carton and you will find it on YouTube. Yeah, he's just watching cartoons, he's like very dismissive, he gets his bodyguards to do all his work. So that kind of undermines like him being, you know, a suspect.
00:52:12
Speaker
of him being the origami killer. So we spend the whole game trying to figure out who it is and then it ends up his role as the antagonist gets replaced by his dad. It kind of falls into ludicrously. It's interesting because I do like it. The Scott Shelby stuff deals with a lot of really serious topics.
00:52:34
Speaker
Like I feel as if it's like the most hard-hitting because I mean you've got a scene where obviously when we go to see Lauren she thinks that he's another client and then like accuses him of like wanting to get as she quotes a freebie and everything and you see like this kind of horrible world that this woman's fallen into she's in this horrible apartment you know she's selling herself and then like an abusive client comes in and you get to decide whether or not you want to intervene
00:53:03
Speaker
It's just a horrible situation all around. You've got other situations where you've got one of the other mothers who basically slit her wrists and has put herself in a bath while leaving her baby unattended. You've got the shopkeeper who nearly gets shot and you have to talk down and or punch the lights out of this robber called Andrew, which was quite funny.
00:53:27
Speaker
It was once I said I would choose. Yes, it was a vague, well technically I didn't choose it because I thought I got the right prompts and I didn't so I just had to file.
00:53:39
Speaker
and just be like, you know, you're going down, punk. You know what I mean? Yeah, take that. And you've got... Who's the other one you go to? Wait, I think that's it, isn't it? No, I think that's the three of them. I don't think there's it. Yeah, no, I think you're right, yeah. But they're all like, as I said, they're all very hard-cutting things. And then you basically find out later on that there has been a murder in the Kramer family. Not to be confused with Kramer from Seinfeld, but...
00:54:09
Speaker
I played, I played a, this, this, I felt a sad effect here about it. What's the deal with origami? I'm glad something ended before that, they had to return to that storyline. Oh god, yeah. Urgering a child back to me.
00:54:22
Speaker
Hey look, it's Kreiber! I didn't mean it! Your laughter track here. It's like, oh no, oh no Kreiber. So yeah, eventually, I wouldn't say it's a stereotype. I think this is basically where Scott Shelby's character kind of goes out the window is when you get tied up to like a steering wheel.
Clichés and Stereotypes in Heavy Rain
00:54:43
Speaker
Sorry, you get knocked out with Lauren, you get tied to a steering wheel and they throw the car at the bottom of the ocean
00:54:50
Speaker
You might have thought they'd just shoot them while they were unconscious there and then, but I don't know. Where's the drama in that? No. Where's the drama? Yeah. Next you'll be telling me why don't the eagles take the ring to Mordor? You know, you know. Why didn't the eagles stop the origami killer? Yeah, well, if any token fans in the chat, or, you know, those listening at home when they tell us, please feel free. Why didn't the eagles stop the origami killer? I don't say it's because they could talk and think.
00:55:21
Speaker
like the matters of men are not are concerned it's like there are children dying you insensitive buggers. So yeah basically after you free yourself and can I just say like the reason that we were laughing at that scene so much after I said I got the mix up with the Steve McQueen and the Lightning McQueen thing is we noticed that there's like two separate scenes of that where
00:55:47
Speaker
Oh god, yeah, there's two separate scenes where someone's tied to a steering wheel. It's like a really weird niche. I don't know whether it's a coincidence or it's just like David Cage being David Cage. I don't get it. Yeah, that aside, so back to Scott Shelby's story.
00:56:02
Speaker
Yeah, he ends up going John Wick on the house, like he drives through the gate and he ends up like, shooting everyone with, not only pinpoint accuracy, but he never has to reload. And then he confronts Kramer and everything who, of course, is like, he's begging for his life because he's like, my pills! And you can decide whether or not to give him the pills. And you think, oh maybe I will give him the pills. And then he says something, like he comes away with something where he's like, oh it's okay!
00:56:30
Speaker
What's he says again? He's like, it was just a street urchin. Yeah, it was just a street urchin. Sorry for that effect. Yeah, no one's gonna miss this day, child. And it's like, why would you say that if you were begging for your life? You know, it's just so dumb. I don't get it. I genuinely don't get it.
00:56:48
Speaker
It's also a complete like 180 character like reverse of that character because earlier on we see him putting flowers on a grave of a child who died in one of his construction sites and he does that every year. So the guy will do that every year for some random child. He was also like a quote unquote street urchin but this is all of a sudden like whoa it's just food urchins you know. One of them won't be missed. Another one to the pyre geez.
00:57:16
Speaker
down please it's just such it's just such a like i don't know just like one of these things have been like excuse i am a bad guy did you get that i am a bad guy yeah it's a trope that cage like never shakes off it's always yeah
00:57:33
Speaker
I'm just reading a message that someone sent me there, just regarding the French cartoons we were talking about. And they were basically saying that there are two cartoons, that's right, where you know how David Cage, or not David Cage, when you're in Ethan Mars' house and Sean's like watching one with pirates.
00:57:54
Speaker
and that is a depressing one by the way. I have seen that. I watch both of them at full length and it is weird. They're very well animated, don't get me wrong, really well animated but just weird weird stories and one's called Voodoo, the person said and the other's Pirat, I think, or pirate? I think it might be pirate because obviously pirate pirate but they're both drawing by Liz Goblins, I think.
00:58:19
Speaker
Goblins. I don't know the pronunciation, I apologise. And apparently they usually work for Disney and Pixar. Huh. So there you go. I wonder how they got the rights to them then. Unless it was just like shorts, the commission maybe? Maybe, some freelance a few things.
00:58:34
Speaker
Like, as I say, it's like, go look it up on YouTube. They're just very weird choices. Because they don't really fit in with the aesthetic of the game. You've only got really three channels in this world. Sorry, two. One shows French cartoons, the other shows the news. They even know it in between. No wonder there's so many serial killers. I mean, you're not... Can't take any more French cartoons, dammit.
00:59:03
Speaker
Well, yes. As we know, French cartoons are known for their brevity and their, you know, lightheartedness.
00:59:11
Speaker
you know, whether it be a chicken getting his head chopped off or a pirate getting hung, you know, or hanged. You know, very light topics. And speaking of light topics, yeah, we get a flashback scene where, going back to Scott's story, like, after that, like, nonsense, we get, like, a flashback where we see two children playing in a construction yard and one of them, of course, falls into a massive hole.
00:59:34
Speaker
I don't know how, but he just falls into a massive hole filled with water and he's like, Scott, please get help. I just spoiled it, but you know what's coming. You know there was spoilers. He's like, go get help. And of course he's running.
00:59:51
Speaker
you know, he's trying to get his deadbeat dad to his another caricature. So we've got like a couple of like, if you want to play at home the bingo caricature card, you know, we've got the asshole cop, the asshole rich guy, the asshole deadbeat dad. I mean, who's the fourth guy? The asshole, the asshole like ex-boyfriends, you know, from Lord of the Rings. Oh, of course, yeah. The one that you have to... It completes the... Yeah, uh-huh.
01:00:17
Speaker
Exactly the square of Henry! Honestly this game should be called Heavy Drain. Put that on the box! Heavy Drain! It's a drain! Oh no it wouldn't be Heavy Drain because then what's his face with the lift?
01:00:35
Speaker
Anyway, enough about Sean. So yeah, eventually it's revealed that, and again, this is when we're getting deep into spoilers, it is revealed that Scott Shelby, the man who you've been playing as this entire time, is indeed the origami killer. And he has actually not been hired by the families, but he's been collecting all the evidence. Which, when I first played this game, did you see it coming initially?
01:01:02
Speaker
Unfortunately, I had the spoils for me before. Oh, of course, yeah. Because I played this like six years later and I held, I managed to avoid the spoils for a good few years, but they got me, they caught up with me in a dark alley and shanked you with the truth. Yeah.
01:01:20
Speaker
Well, can I tell you a spoiler you're never gonna forget? No, Norman, no. I don't think I would have seen it coming, though. Yeah. I actually can't remember. I think I did get it spoiled for me as well, but I can't remember if I did or not. But I do remember thinking, well, that's a cool twist.
01:01:35
Speaker
Now, I do have a problem with this, and don't worry, I'll get to the finale, we'll kind of tie a bow on it and talk about the finale on its own. When you really dissect it, it does not make sense for a lot of it. You can understand why he'd be so jaded and everything, but considering he is an ex-policeman, you know, and he served his time, he served his life protecting people, and then all of a sudden one day he saw a random guy get hit by a car, and he was just like,
01:02:05
Speaker
Oh yeah, I'm gonna start murdering kids now. And I'm gonna put origami on their graves so it's like, wait, what? What? I beg your pardon, kind sir. Get back here and tell us what the hell you're thinking. Oh yeah, and I'm gonna grow orchids. This seems like a very complicated modus operandi.
Plot Twist Critique: Scott Shelby as Origami Killer
01:02:25
Speaker
I'm just saying, you know, simplify it a little bit. Oh, and I'm gonna drown them with rainwater. Why? Because my brother dies like that.
01:02:35
Speaker
See, this is actually something I was thinking of before. I think David Cage should have been a builder, because his foundations in any of his games are always solid. Anything beyond that. Would you trust him to put up the walls and the roof and everything in the floor? The foundations, yes.
01:02:57
Speaker
Yeah, the foundations. Like, he does. I won't admit, David Cage does have great ideas. Like, whether it's Detroit, whether it's this, I will not extend the same to Beyond Two Souls. I will never extend it because that game is just a waste of time. That's for another chat tsunami, but long story short, it's a game I loathe with a passion. I don't agree with any of it, but Heavy Rain is the only one where I'm like, you know what?
01:03:21
Speaker
I like the idea that he's bringing in the fact that it's like a guy who was betrayed by his father and everything but he's a bit late in the game trying to get into the killer business after being a policeman. He's not like a retiree in Spain or something but he's like, oh well, you know.
01:03:44
Speaker
You know, it's like, oh well, I've tried all the sights here, better go jump off a balcony. It's like, what? What? That is a, well, literally and figuratively, a huge jump. But it's like, how? Why would you do that? You know, why would you go from, huh, you know what? Maybe life isn't too bad. And then they see Ethan get hit by a car and he's like, huh, I should kill children.
01:04:06
Speaker
It's horrible, they almost die. Yeah, I don't get that. This is the thing, if you switch off your brain, and again, I don't recommend that, but if you switch off your brain, it's fine. If you don't, switch off your brain.
01:04:21
Speaker
Yeah, then just that makes no sense. And they ask my thing as well. Like, they ask my thing does not come into it at all, does it? No, it's just one of these things that a couple of times appears up. But at points where you're like, well, this could be a cool city, because there's one thing about, let's go jump back to Norman Jayden.
01:04:39
Speaker
of his, like, RA thing. For some reason, he, like, suffers from some hallucinations, and he needs to take this, like, drug to, like, um, to combat them, and there's, like, a choice, you know, if you wanna, if you wanna keep taking the drug, or you wanna try and fight, like, you know, the fight through the, like, the pain, like, without it. And, like, at key, at key, some key points, like, his, the addiction hits him and stuff, and he can't function, and it kinda adds something. He felt, like, like, curved on something with the asthma thing, but, like, Scott, as we say, Scott Shelby's able to John Wick his way through a whole bloody mansion of, like,
01:05:09
Speaker
of goons and doesn't break a sweat and never wants to use his inhaler and you're right it's just such a like a I don't know it's it adds nothing to the character things you just have to use like an interact it's like oh interact a prop to use my inhaler yeah they do that at the very beginning like his first chapter with the establishment and he takes an asthma attack and don't get me wrong like
01:05:32
Speaker
Obviously neither of us have asthma, so I'm not speaking on behalf of any asthma communities here. But I don't think somebody with asthma who gets knocked out, putting the bottom of a lake in a sinking car, he manages to break free, swim up to the top without his inhaler in the heavy rain as well. And he's sitting there and then as you said, he goes immediately to driving through. Unless he took his inhaler off screen, I don't know.
01:06:02
Speaker
But, you know, it's like he smashes through the door, he shoots everybody, you know, like, as we said, John Wick style. Yeah, and it never gets brought back. There's a slight hint when there's the flashback, you know? Like when he's doing the, like, he's running for his dad trying to help, but that's it.
01:06:19
Speaker
There's nothing. There's nothing else. No real follow-up, no anything really. And that's disappointing. It feels as if at that point on it becomes more of an action game. And there is a lot of action in this game, don't get me wrong, but something like that. I remember watching a review of the game, a really in-depth review. The guy who did it was fantastic in his dissection.
01:06:39
Speaker
But one of the things he brought up is he was saying, like, it would have made more sense to have Norman Jayden in this kind of situation, you know, like fighting his way through different, you know, like a whole room of people, because he's an FBI agent, like he's trained, he's literally trained for this. Scott Shelby's just a portly, well, he's a killer, but I'm not being funny, but you don't have to be John Wick to kidnap kids, surely. And that's a sentence I'll never say again, but you know what I mean? It's just a weird
01:07:08
Speaker
disconnect. It's like, you go from kind of relating to this earnest, well, you think earnest guy who's trying to solve these murders to, yeah, all of a sudden. And I just, I don't get, like there's a lot I don't get about his story. Why does he go after Kramer? Even though he knows that he's the killer. And that's the question I wanted to ask you actually, because I was like, I was thinking about it and I was like, I get the first bit where he's going around collecting the evidence.
01:07:37
Speaker
That makes sense to me, and I'm like, right, that's fine. But then I'm like, but yeah, why does he fix it on Kramer? Like, is it, and I can't, I, maybe it's something I missed when we were playing through it a second time, but is it like Lauren, who like, kind of gets like almost forced into like, you know, going after Kramer by Lauren? Is that what happens? Or is it just like, it's like, oh, well, we need more chapters for Scott. So, um, go get that guy.
01:07:57
Speaker
Yeah I actually can't even remember how he gets introduced into it. And so a lot of like he's there and he ends up teaming up with like that Lauren Winters. If she was like driving him forward being like oh look you know she like she just won't go away like she won't leave him alone and he's put and he's pushing in like maybe like he starts to develop a kind of relationship I mean as well like can we go into like their relationship?
01:08:18
Speaker
Yeah, go for it. They'd end up developing a relationship with like, if you rescue her from the car, they end up like having this kiss. I'm like, where? This thing came out of nowhere. Like, never at one point did I, did I like think there was like chemistry or anti chemistry between the two of them. Like, I thought it was more like a working kind of partnership. And like, to be honest, I'm just like, it's so stupid. It makes sense if she's like driving the investigation and he's being
01:08:40
Speaker
forced him to push in that way, but I don't recall that being a sci-fi, I just recall him turning up at the party at the mansion. I don't get why there was that. If anybody listening to this wants to correct us, please feel free to let us know, genuinely. We would love to hear if there's any reason behind that.
Tense Scenes and Realism in Heavy Rain
01:08:59
Speaker
As it stands, I genuinely don't remember any of it, or any reason for it. And even the stuff with Manfred, I will admit that's a good chapter. There's a chapter where you find a handwritten letter, or not sorry, a typed letter that's been typed up in a really old typewriter and you have to go to one of Scott Shelby's old friends and everything and he's the only one who can kind of tell them
01:09:25
Speaker
this typewriter belongs to or what type of typewriter it is. Try saying that three times drunk and you know there's a scene where the origami quilt killer, wink wink, well it reveals at the end of a Scott but he ends up like killing mantras and you know you have to rub the place down before like
01:09:43
Speaker
yo the police come and that's a tense scene that's a really good scene i don't like that that's a really well done scene but as i said like nuggets of good bits and then just yeah i honestly wish like the origami killer hadn't been any of the playable characters like it feels like a twist for the sake of a twist and i feel that's like something that david cage has like written
01:10:05
Speaker
himself into a corner now I feel like any kind of his work he has to have some sort of twist in it and I just feel like it's one that it's one that you're like oh that's cool the first time you play oh no way you can see that coming yeah but then kind of what I was talking about like be playing these games you're like hang on a second yeah what
01:10:21
Speaker
wait a minute here, what's all this daylight I can see through, it just cracks here. That's the thing though, when you replay the game, so it's like you know when you play or watch a film that has like a twist at the end and the kind of, personally for me the sign of a good version of like whether it's a movie or a game is seeing the signs when you replay it again.
01:10:43
Speaker
So for the first time, you know, it shouldn't be clear. There should be hints, but it shouldn't be clear that X or Y is the villain. But then it'll build up, it'll build up, and it'll be like, oh my god, Scott Shelby is the only Gammy Killer. And I feel sorry for anyone just dropping into this particular moment. Apologies. What? What? I was halfway through. Unsubscribe. But yeah, like, when you replay it,
01:11:08
Speaker
There's not really any clues, if you know what I mean. Yeah. I mean, there's some bits and pieces, but... I mean, there's even one scene that I pointed out to you, I think. I thought it was really interesting, but it went nowhere. It was, if you don't rub all the prints, like, off the walls and everything, then you get pulled into the police station. And I find that annoying because nothing comes of that scene.
01:11:34
Speaker
you know you just get a kind of oh don't do that again and Blake ends up bailing Scott Shelby out because they're old you know work colleagues and that's it like there's a kind of he's like oh don't worry I've got your back and everything you can be my wig man anytime you know Top Gun 3 heavy rain but you know it's another film I haven't seen
01:11:57
Speaker
Yeah. That's a bit about the films I haven't seen. That's the time of the reign. That didn't go anywhere. And that feels as if that's a missed opportunity as well. Because that could have been a turning point of Blake realising, you know, that someone who he was close to, you know, was the origami killer. But he never finds out that the script shell was the origami killer until, presumably, the end. Where if you get the right ending, then he's seen it on the news and he's spitting his cheerios out, you know? And then he gets so shocked that he has to change it to the French cartoons on the other side.
01:12:27
Speaker
I get some normal feedback. But that's the problem with Scott Shelby's chapters as well. With the other three characters, there are chances where their story can end, like death or imprisonment or something like that. That can never happen with Scott Shelby. Scott Shelby has to be there at the end. So literally, there's no way to fail any of his chapters.
01:12:47
Speaker
Even like jit out getting like trapped in the car under water, you know Like confronting the guy confronting the like the robber in the store You can never like there's no danger of like, you know with any of Scott Shelby's chapters And so that that is a problem as well. I think in it and not like I'm playing it once You don't obviously know that but like replaying it like, you know, what why am I bothering pressing these buttons? Why don't I just set the controller down when Scott Shelby's chapter comes on because it's going to continue, you know the story regardless of
01:13:17
Speaker
Again, it goes back to what I was saying about this myth of player agency. You know that way where it's saying that this is a game where your choices matter. Unless you're Scott Shelby or Ethan Morris. Because Ethan Morris can't die in this game. Well, that's true. He can go to prison though. He can at least get arrested, which kind of like curtails. Yeah. He can't do the final challenge.
01:13:39
Speaker
Yeah, the only two people who can, like, die completely is, in fact, I think Ethan can do up to the final chapter, or the final challenge. Or trial, even. Because I think that's when he gets arrested at the hotel. That's like the one before he has to drink the poison in the final trial.
01:13:59
Speaker
Which, that makes no sense as well, so sorry. Before we move on to the final character, we've got Scott Shelby, who set up all these elaborate traps. First of all, I mean, obviously, I'm not American. Like, neither of us are. Unless you've been keeping a secret from me. Oh my god, I've been found out! Get a coffee! They found us out! Are you a coop? Are you a coop? Erm, anyway, that aside... Are my terrible acts in there? Oh no, no. You're amongst friends.
01:14:30
Speaker
but we're working on a book club slash bad American accents club you know it's a niche but I think it would really take off but that's the thing though it's like the amount of effort it took to actually set this up you know you've got the trial with the car which someone pointed that out that the cars been sitting there for about over two years and although it's been serviced no other father took the car
01:14:55
Speaker
Unless, like, they did the trials out of order, maybe? I don't know. You've got the one at the power plant, where it's meant to be abandoned, but all of the, like, pylons are on and everything, and there's, like, there's a massive pipe which is only barely big enough for Ethan to fit in, and it's filled with glass. And I'm sorry, but Scott Shelby is a very portly figure.
01:15:17
Speaker
Like, if you google Scott Shell by Heavy Rain, he is a chonky boy. There is no way he fitted in there and sprinkled all that glass. How we got the glass in there and the pile ones on? I don't know. The third one kinda makes sense, cos the one where you have to chop off your finger cos it's like an abandoned apartment.
Surreal Elements and Unrealistic Trials
01:15:34
Speaker
That makes sense. The white room, I don't get. Yeah, that's weird.
01:15:38
Speaker
I think we had a deadly premonition of Twin Peaks at that point. We stumbled into the wrong game here. Because all of them are... I mean, minus the crawling through glass one, all of them are relatively realistic. Oh, don't forget the one where you have to listen to that guy's apartment. Oh yeah, just shoot him dead.
01:15:55
Speaker
But that's the thing though, they're all realistic. It's like driving the wrong side of the road, climb through a dangerous power plant like those old PSA videos or PSA videos we used to watch in school. It's like I'll get the ball and Ethan Mars never came back.
01:16:11
Speaker
You know, don't climb through pylons, kids. But here, you've got that. You've got the cutting off your finger in a derelict apartment. You've got shooting a guy, really. That's all he had to do. All of them are realistic. But then you get to the final one, where he has to drink poison. And that is relatively, like, down to earth. But you walk through this room, where it's like a red corridor, and then you get to the end and it's this white room filled with cameras. What? Where? Why? How? You know, they never really establish where it is, do they?
01:16:40
Speaker
no random place yeah it's just a random room and i don't know is it a trap room is it an escape room i don't know it's like i'm sorry i don't know much about like american police's salary but i don't think the painting stretch is that far
01:16:55
Speaker
that he can hire the club out, or not the club, but the room out just for a try. It's like, oh, we're going to prank my friend. It's going to be so funny. That's why I've got all the cameras set up. It's like, no, this doesn't happen. Oh, Scott. Oh, you scallywag. That's like Shelby Crank here. Oh, who else but Shelby? But speaking of scallywags, while we move on to the crown shoot.
01:17:19
Speaker
And I'm not calling the character that, I just mean the, ugh, yes, Madison Peach. Where do we begin? I'm gonna let you lead with this one, because this is definitely a part of the game that, I said this before kind of half-jokingly, but it vexes me ever so. So I'm gonna let you lead with this one.
01:17:38
Speaker
So Madison Page is a journalist who suffers from insomnia and basically ends up going to the same motel that Ethan Mars is staying at.
Madison Page's Role and Critique
01:17:49
Speaker
They end up connecting there and that's kind of how she falls into the story. And if that sounds tenuous, it's because it really is tenuous.
01:17:55
Speaker
She's a character that doesn't belong in this game, in the sense of, like, it doesn't make sense why she's in it. It always feels forced. A lot of her chapters feel so divorced from anything that's happening in the game. And, like, I feel bad that it's the female character who's lumbered with this. It is good to have a female character, but I just wish it was, like, it was an impactful, like, those reasons for her being the game. You know, it's like he wanted four characters.
01:18:21
Speaker
And honestly, this game would work better with three characters. I think we talked about this. I can't remember if we talked about it during our playthrough or whether it was off mic. But this game would work so much better with three characters. And I think we said if you want to make Norman Jayden switch his gender, make that a female character, and that would work fine. And that would be good. You could have a bit of a Silence of the Lambs type thing, which isn't a bad thing at all if you want to go down that route.
01:18:45
Speaker
but like her character just there's no reason for like that's the problem with that's the problem I have with a character that just there's no reason for her to be in this story I mean I was reading that a lot of her content ended up getting cut especially explaining like her background her backstory and things and it really suffers like you can tell and the character just suffers from it and it's just like it's just it's just a paper thin pardon the pun it's a paper thin character and like just there's no reason for her to be there
01:19:11
Speaker
the thing is like i don't want to get at the character or say you know oh this is the worst character ever because i don't think it's like the actress is full or you know because this is the thing i do worry about like see when i do like rant on characters unless they're horrible people in private i don't know but you know like and i don't want to rant and be like oh this person's terrible you know like they're not it's to do with david cader's writing heavily yeah
01:19:36
Speaker
heavy writing, let's say, but I do think that his writing of female characters is one of the worst I've ever seen. You know you get those, you get like the jokey people who write female characters when they clearly don't understand how to write a female character. He is one of them and his like creepy writing definitely shows and it made me feel uncomfortable at times and I think you felt probably the same.
01:20:02
Speaker
at some moment and it's as she said there's a lot that was cut from her story like for example she was supposed to like i don't know if you read this but apparently there was supposed to be more of her like going to like a newspaper office or something like that yeah which would have been
01:20:18
Speaker
cool because that's what I saw as well. It was meant to be her writing up stories. And that sounds like more kind of investigation stuff, which actually sounds really interesting. I actually would love to have seen that develop more. I saw as well she was supposed to be a war correspondent, which is why she's suffering from insomnia because she's suffering from a PTSD type thing. And that makes more sense as well. But we don't get any of that. We just get this woman who suffers from insomnia and who basically stumbles into the plot.
01:21:02
Speaker
And fun fact, this is my favourite fact about this character. She is the only one. I don't know if that's the case now, but I did hear that apparently she's the only character with a wiki page.
01:21:15
Speaker
Like a proper Wiki page, not like a fan one or anything. And I thought... I just thought that is so... That is just so weird. I mean, this is the thing as well. She seems like a cross between like an adult Nancy Drew and a damsel in distress, you know? She kind of flip-flops between the two. And I'm not saying that again. I'm not trying to be derogatory, but she almost feels like she's very sexualised in this game.
01:21:44
Speaker
and it's something that made me feel quite uncomfortable because we were playing it and I can't remember if it's like it's one of the earlier episodes that we did but there's basically a scene where you're you wake up basically in like a vest top and you're underwear and you're running around the apartment trying to like fall asleep you have like yo you try to take pills you try to have warm milk you know nothing's working so you go into the shower which looks like a gulag shower as you pointed out before there's like three shower heads
01:22:13
Speaker
and this massive apartment that just looks weird, and she turns on the shower and she strips off completely naked. I mean, don't get me wrong, Ethan Mars does something similar at the beginning, but we all know the obvious difference there. And they just show our full body of... well, obviously it's down under, but they show her breasts completely exposed and everything. I had to blur the whole thing out. I was like, oh my god, this is terrible.
01:22:38
Speaker
It's just that it's unnecessary because right after that, right after you have a shower and you come out, these guys start trying to attack you and start trying to stab you. It's just these random men in barlical office. It's like a terrifying scene.
01:22:53
Speaker
defenseless person running around in her underwear, might add. Trying to fight these people off and at the end, even if you succeed, she still gets her throat slit. And the twist is, that is all a dream. I think, obviously other than the gratuity, that annoys me is the fact that this scene is where we get introduced to Madison.
01:23:14
Speaker
Everybody else, Ethan gets his happy family intro and then he loses his son. We see this slow descent into depression. We see Norman Jaden getting thrown into the thick of it by seeing a dead child at the crown scene. We see Scott Shelby again. He's got a very gritty introduction, meeting Lauren in her place of work, quote unquote.
01:23:38
Speaker
and then we get Madison who is just this woman in skimpy underwear that we don't know anything about her until the next couple of chapters which isn't for a while but yeah that's all we get unless you like go around and you read about it and it's weird.
01:23:56
Speaker
it's just it's a weird choice to decide this is how we're gonna, you know, introduce a character. And something that annoys me as well is I don't know if this is only for the American box art, but there's one of the box arts that she is like 70% of the cover and she's in her underwear on the cover and that really irks me because she does have an outfit throughout the game.
Female Character Portrayal Issues
01:24:18
Speaker
She's got like the biker jacket, she's got the jeans, but she wears that in the front cover and that's a clear choice. That's a clear
01:24:25
Speaker
Oh look, we've got these three grizzled men who have gone through hardship. But look, we've got a dainty female. This seems like a weird decision in the department, or the creative department, to be like, yeah, this is how we're going to advertise it.
01:24:41
Speaker
And I wouldn't be as harsh on it if this was like... Well, no, I still would be harsh on it. But if it was a one-off, you would think, okay, David, he's learned his lesson. He doesn't learn his lesson. There's several cases of this, isn't there? Yeah. She gets shot in such a leery camera for so much of the game. But I think nearly all her chapters have some form of leering. The camera holds on a particular part of her body.
01:25:08
Speaker
You're right, it's just uncomfortable. It really was just good playing for it. I was like, this is just uncomfortable. You both had that same reaction. And you just add that to the fact that there's no discernible reason of why she's in this story, then why she gets caught up in it. And her and Ethan can develop a relationship, or does it always happen?
01:25:28
Speaker
Yeah, you can decide not to kiss her. You can decide not to. Yeah, sorry. But they always get, they get, either they get in a relationship or they get close to in a relationship. I don't really get why. It's just, I think it's just one of these things. It's like, well, it's a man and a woman. What else is going to happen, you know?
01:25:46
Speaker
David Kay's looking at me like I'm the weird one for questioning this but like it's just such a shame because it's just it is just the worst of that what feels like a token female character. We have a woman in here and wow does she look good in this, does she look good? Well to be fair though this game was set in the 1950s. I mean they said you're oh sorry one sec.
01:26:09
Speaker
Oh, right, okay. Sorry, I changed my notes. It's 2010. David Cage, what the fuck? Oh, well, it was a different time. 2010 was a different time. Yeah, 2010. Yeah, apparently that was a time when it was acceptable. We didn't know better. We didn't, yeah.
01:26:23
Speaker
10 years on, you know, or 11 years on, we know the errors of our ways. No, it wasn't better then and it's certainly not, it hasn't aged well at all. The thing is, as I said before, every, and I didn't really notice this until I thought about it there, but every interaction Madison has with any other character, 9 times out of 10 is usually a negative one. Have you noticed that?
01:26:51
Speaker
Like, she interacts with the motel receptionist. He is just another leery, like he's got the stereotypical voice of... And you're like, what is this weird, jellybean-looking beast right in front of me? Get back to the shadows, you grim one!
01:27:15
Speaker
The rest of them are either serial killers or leeches. Like, this is somebody trying funny playing back. There's a scene where you follow up in a lead for the origami killer and you find this doctor, quote-unquote doctor, someone who's been, like, you know, discharged and they, like, worked out of his home. If you take, like, the drink that he offers you, which I did by accident, like, not as in, oh, I didn't know what was going to happen, it's like the problem... I was thinking if I thought you were talking... Yeah, yeah, as you were saying earlier, yeah, there's...
01:27:44
Speaker
This game has a weird thing for... it'll give you prompts to select and I think in Detroit Become Human they did it a lot better because it's solid and it doesn't move around but in this they float around your head and I thought it was pressing one button and it happened in the other and it's terrible for that but that's the thing though, if you get knocked out by him in some form or another he ends up taking you to the basement
01:28:14
Speaker
Tying you down, can I just say it's a weird coincidence that there's two serial killers in this game, you know, and they both know one another. It's a small world. I wonder if they go to a book club together, you know, or an origami club, because there is no way Tuesday's with Maury featuring creepy Doctor and or the origami killer. It is weird, I don't get it. But yeah, she gets tied down and he basically puts a drill towards our
01:28:43
Speaker
you know like he doesn't obviously touch or anything but like basically points at our lady bits and it's it's an unnecessary uncomfortable scene and on the one hand I get like for some reason I hear David Cage in my head saying something like
01:28:58
Speaker
Ah, but you see, you're supposed to feel uncomfortable because he's a villain. And it's like, but if every single villain in this game is like stereotypical and comical, that's not good writing! That's not... And obviously I'm not, you know...
01:29:14
Speaker
I've not written a game that's sold like millions of copies or whatever, you know, like I can't sit here and be like, oh I would have written the letter but I wouldn't have written that and certainly I wouldn't have written in like a creepy doctor who clearly tries to touch her up and everything, tries to be about leery as you said and then you go to a club and the only way that you can actually like get the attention of the guy that you need information from is by like making yourself quote-unquote
01:29:43
Speaker
sexy and doing like a very you know like doing the dance and everything and then when you actually go up to his office to do a private dance let's say you know you're forced to like strip tease where they actually like if you do it wrong and you don't like immediately know the lance behind you like to knock the guy out then you can basically dress her down to her pants and that's all she'll be wearing
01:30:08
Speaker
And it's another thing where apparently that is a thing that Sony and David Cage fought over because he was like, oh, Madison has a nice body and everything. And it's like, Mr. Cage, why? Why? Why? They let him keep that. Yeah, they let him keep that for some reason. I think at that point, Sony were just like, yeah, whatever.
01:30:25
Speaker
Just publish the game. Get out of my office. It seems like a weird thing to be insistent on. And that's the thing though. I don't know. I've heard some people describe it as quite a strong female character and everything, but I'm sorry. If a game involves you crushing somebody's balls using four button prompts...
01:30:47
Speaker
I don't know if you can, and I'm not even being silly here and being like, haha, imagine if that was a thing. That is a genuine scene where you end up knocking the guy who's holding you at gunpoint, you know, you knock him out and then, yeah, you have to squeeze his balls for information and then make like, you know, like moans and things. And you have to make moans to dissuade the guard from coming in and everything.
01:31:12
Speaker
It's just as dumb. As dumb and stupid. And nine times out of ten, like as I said, she's always the damsel in distress. Or if she's not the damsel, she's a love interest. And it seems very reductive. Like even at the end when she confronts Scott Shelby and is like, oh I see ya.
01:31:29
Speaker
You know, like, pointing the gun and everything. Oh no, sorry, she doesn't have a gun. He has a gun. You know, and she gets, like, locked in his room and she has to escape and everything. You know, all this game is missing is, like, a train track and her tied to it. Because we might as well-
01:31:46
Speaker
Yeah, let's see if Ethan can rescue you this time. And who runs off in like comical fashion. But you know it's like why is that necessary? I do agree. I think if Norman was maybe gender-bent or you know like if they focused on the three characters that might have worked better and maybe they could have absorbed like some other aspects into their stories. Yeah. Like into their past. You've been done, would you say?
01:32:14
Speaker
Yeah, is there anything else, sorry? Because I just spent like the last 10 minutes ranting there about that character, sorry. No, like, I can't think, I really, my major problem with the Madison character in this, it's just, it's just a real shame. It's just such a shame to be like, ragging on like the one female character.
01:32:30
Speaker
oh she's pointless and like you know just there for her body's like oh my god she's like all these things but but that's the way that's the way she's created in this game you know it's like i don't know it almost felt like they were like oh here we go we've built kind of complex backstories you know and and complex characters for for these four characters and it was like right we need to cut one so
01:32:49
Speaker
Well, we're going to cut the woman one, obviously. Any problems with that? No, let's do it. It's just a real shame. Reading that stuff about the newspaper a section, I was like, that would have been so fun. That would have been so good to have more investigation type things.
01:33:04
Speaker
and you know she could have been doing different leads to like Norman and everything and yeah it's just it's just really I just feel kind of like just sad that we got the Madison character that we did in this game. It's a shame it really is. Yeah it really is. And the thing that I really this is like the final point I'm gonna make on Madison but the fact that when this game came out they planned like a whole series of DLC called like I think it's Heavy Rain Chronicles they were gonna call it
01:33:30
Speaker
And basically it was going to be chapters that fleshed out the different characters, so they were going to focus on why Norman's addicted to tryptocaine, the quote-unquote fake drug that he takes to support his Ari addiction. It was going to dive into Scott Shelby. I think maybe Ethan might have got one. I don't know, but it would have been interesting to see those kinds of things.
Cut Content and Character Depth
01:33:52
Speaker
But the only one we got was one for Madison, and it's basically torture porn.
01:33:57
Speaker
it's all I can describe it as. It's Rachuritus again. It's basically called the... the chapter's called the Taxidermis and Madison is like on the hunt for the origami killer when, surprise surprise, she comes across another murderer! So we've got three murderers, or three serial killers rather, in this game. Like, is this place... is this city just filled with serial killers? I don't... I don't...
01:34:22
Speaker
like three killers like in the one circle i mean that that that's a book club that's not that's not that's not a flesh out story but yeah she ends up going upstairs and she sees all these women who have either been gutted or you know like stuffed
01:34:38
Speaker
with you know basically taxidermied yeah thus the taxidermies and you basically have to sneak out and hide and run away and even when I've never played it but even when I was watching other people playing it I was on the edge of my seat I couldn't watch it it was just it was so intense and horrible and that's the only DLC we got for this game and you think great so not even you know not even the fact that they could have focused on like her as a war correspondent or you know like
01:35:06
Speaker
her time at the newspaper or anything, they just had to get one more of her being a damsel and distress. And although she fights her way out these situations, look at me wrong, I'm not saying she's useless but it is definitely the most superfluous character I would say.
01:35:22
Speaker
Yeah. Like the most unnecessary and I hate saying that because as you said like I don't want to rant either and be like oh it's a female character but it's the way she's been written into the story and I just think it's a damn shame. Yeah. But that's the case. But speaking of damn shames we'll be kind of briefly talking the finale. Yeah that was good for it yeah. Yeah.
01:35:42
Speaker
I'll let you, sorry, I'll let you just scream. Presuming that you've managed to like, that like Leland and, sorry, not Leland, sorry, Madison and Norman, you think they went to a peak there for some reason. But if you, presuming that Norman and Madison are like still alive and Ethan, you know, Ethan's not in prison or whatever, everybody arrives. Ethan solves all the trial, gets the, so for each trial that he solves, he gets a clue to like,
01:36:08
Speaker
Shawn's location son's location so he arrives there we find out that we found out that Scott Shelby's the killer. Scott Shelby will confront Ethan about him being the killer and will say like you know he's always testing to find the perfect father you know that he never had and then he will try to you know Ethan will go to try and save Shawn and Scott will draw a gun
01:36:27
Speaker
At that moment, Nora and Jane will show up and attack Scott, and they'll both run off to have a fistfight up on the roof of this abandoned warehouse, while Ethan concentrates on rescuing Sean from the Great, which is rapidly filling with water. Madison arrives outside, and the police have also got to the warehouse, and they think Ethan is the origami killer.
01:36:46
Speaker
And Madison arrives to try and tell them that he's not, but Carter Blake won't listen to her. So she ends up doing sick motorcycle tricks to get around the police and then gets inside to warn Ethan. And basically ends up with Ethan manages to rescue Sean and get out with Madison. If everything goes according to plan.
01:37:06
Speaker
and Norman will get the upper hand on Scott and Scott will end up, we're going to be hanging off this conveyor belt with a set of grinding gears below and you have the choice of having to save him or rather to just let him fall into it. And then yeah, you get your ending from there, is that what I meant? Oh no, you got it perfectly, it's just... I just watched our playthrough again yesterday so... No, you got it perfectly, it's just...
01:37:32
Speaker
it feels just like a completely... the thing that annoys me is as she said like Scott draws a gun to kill Ethan and you're like why
Finale Critique and Scott Shelby's Motivations
01:37:42
Speaker
would someone who put him through all of this you know draw a gun and try to kill the guy who's clearly completed all the trials has done everything you've asked and then he'll still try to kill him and the only time he doesn't try to kill you is if Madison and Norman die so I don't get what
01:37:59
Speaker
was going on in the head there when they were like, oh yeah, let's... Well, he's only allowed to come alone, but everyone else is like, nah, you're not getting out of here alive. I don't get it. I don't get why they decided to go that route, but I don't know. Now, it seems like it's trying to be over the top and
01:38:19
Speaker
I wouldn't say bombastic because there's not a lot of explosions or anything, it's just more fist fights really, and kinda more realistic, well realistic in quotes, but yeah, like, you can obviously get so many endings in this game. There is one thing I do wanna point out just very briefly, if you ever notice that Madison, see at the very end of the game, when you escape
01:38:42
Speaker
Well, if you escape the origami killer's apartment after it blowing up. After you hide in the fridge, just want to say that, after you hide in the fridge and survive an explosion, you come out and you have the choice of phoning Norman or Ethan.
01:38:59
Speaker
It makes absolutely zero sense because Ethan has gone through all these horrific events and everything and he's failed and I kind of undermines it, the fact that she's like, I think I heard someone describe this as a get out of jail free card and the more I think about it, the more I think that is just so true.
01:39:16
Speaker
It's the fact it's like, even if you mess up as Ethan, or you mess up as Norman Jayden, it's like, oh you only have time to phone one of them. Why, I don't know. But it's like, yeah, you can phone them. But Madison's never met Norman. And she never met Scott Shelby either. Somehow when she gets told the name, she's like, Scott Shelby? These Scott Shelby? And you're like, no.
01:39:41
Speaker
Don't pretend. As you said in the playthrough we did, you're like, she just doesn't want to lose face and be like, I have no idea who that is. Oh, Scott Shelby, you're good. Although there is the happy ending, like, you know, for some reason, Ethan and Madison get together, Scott Shelby's dead. Norman's, like, he's on talk shows and everything, but he's still got his addiction to, you know, the Ari and everything.
01:40:07
Speaker
There's other endings that really do not sit right with me and I think I sent them to you like after we did the playthrough where it's like if you feel like if you get arrested as Ethan and you don't complete the trials there's like a scene where he basically hangs himself and he's still surrounded by origami which yeah
01:40:24
Speaker
very cheerful stuff, but the worst one by far, and I think I've ranted about this before so I'll make it brief, but it's basically where if you survive with Madison, but Sean dies, then you basically go to his grave and Ethan is absolutely distraught, he's like, you know, oh, I let two of my sons die and everything, and Madison basically comes behind him and goes, I want a burby, good burby, and you're like, what the, what the hell is going on here?
01:40:53
Speaker
Like, see if you watch it out of context, it is both hilarious and disturbing, because it is, it's literally, she comes behind and was like, I want a baby with your eyes, and it's like, you're literally seeing this as he's standing above his son's grave, and then he shoots himself. He's like, yeah, I need time to think about this, and as soon as I run back, his turn, he just brings it again and shoots himself. And I'm like, this is, this is like... Now that's an ending.
01:41:21
Speaker
Yeah, that's all folks. I just had a thought. Just a briefly cycle back to Madison's character. I think it would have made more sense having a female character. What if it had been Ethan's wife, Sean's mother? I think that would have made more sense.
01:41:38
Speaker
Because if you could have had it from that could have been then you could have had an interesting story about whether like you decide to get the two of them to reconnect or whether like, you know, they just go their separate ways or something like that. And then she could have been she could have been a journalist, you know, we don't think we find out where our job is, but you could easily have folded that in, you know, and kept a lot of that stuff.
01:41:54
Speaker
Sorry, that was just something that came to my mind, because, again, I just have such a problem with the Madison-Ethan-like relationship, because it's like, oh, shit, Ethan had a wife. Don't worry about her. She's a bit of a bitch. She tries to turn him into the police and everything, you know? That's the last time we see her, and we don't care, and Sean couldn't care less about her. At the end, he's like, yay, new family! I have a new mum. My new mum has three sugarheads.
01:42:25
Speaker
my god yeah there's a lot of disconnect like don't get me wrong like on the one hand um on the one hand it's like that is true you know it's very disconnected in that regard but on the other hand i'd suppose it must be quite hard to try and make a game of this scale you know to try and like link every path up and everything don't get me wrong like a lot of the plot points don't hit or make sense even if you do certain actions but some of the other ones like
01:42:49
Speaker
And insomnia.
01:42:54
Speaker
There's a reason why, like, if it's gonna work or if it's not like, for example, the blackout plot points, you know, things like that, the Madison, the cut content for horror, and all the other stuff that could have been in the game but just, yeah, just wasn't for unfortunate reasons. Which is a shame. It is a huge shame, but as they say, it is what it is.
01:43:17
Speaker
But kind of just, like, loosing off in that point, you were saying earlier, like, we were talking, like, off stream about basically, like, our favourite moments of the game, or our playthrough in particular.
Humorous Recollections from Playthrough
01:43:28
Speaker
Is there any, like, favourite moment that you'd like to bring up now? Oh, there's so many. There's so many. I mean, the Steve McQueen fanfiction will stay with me, I think, for the rest of my life. Oh, same.
01:43:39
Speaker
The pure joy, the pure joy that brought. I think, oh god, I think one thing, yeah, I think what happened earlier, it was forgetting to like inspect the dead body of the crime scene. The more I think about it, the more I find it is.
01:43:55
Speaker
hysterical. Then we split ladies by day, just combing this ground, finding all these different bits of all these clothes, speaking to everybody, getting off me, and we're like, right to where I'm done. Take the glasses off, we leave, we've had it. Why can't we get in the car? Why can't we go? And we're like, oh, we haven't went to the body yet. You have to like scuttle back quickly into the ground and you blow up. Sorry. Hiding ahead and shame.
01:44:19
Speaker
That for me, I just, the more I forgot, the more... Oh, again, like a Steve McQueen moment is, I think by far my favourite, personally. Like the prompts as well, there's a particular prompt you're supposed to, it's like a half-circle you're supposed to do, but for some reason that wasn't really working in my copy of the game, I don't know why, if it's like a common problem with this prompt, but like, I'm sure I had problems with that. Not to the same extent, I'm sure I had problems like in the PlayStation version.
01:44:49
Speaker
could be wrong but like I need to double yeah I need to play it again to like confirm 100% but oh that was so grim it was like just sitting there thinking why isn't this working and it led to some funny moments like when as we're saying about like Madison's chapter when you have to make yourself you know well you have to like pull down your blues and everything and make yourself you know oh look at me in the club and for some reason they gave you that prompt and it worked first time
01:45:19
Speaker
And I lost my shit at that, cos I thought, no way. Like, throughout the game, it's like, you know, we had scenes where our children were in danger and the prompt didn't work. We had other bits where it's like, OK, that doesn't work. But yeah, for some reason, yeah, pulling down a blouse, fine, apparently. And I thought... Have you killed a man rather than having to do that prompt?
01:45:38
Speaker
That is true, yeah. And Ethan's fourth trial. I saw the prompt and I saw the other prompt which was easier and I chose the easier prompt. I have no shame. It was David Cage's fault for that and that's dead. Not mine. It's like you know how you get those moments or you're in films where it's like if they're locked up and you know you see like the sale and it's got like all the writing on the walls.
01:46:00
Speaker
Like, if I ever lose the plot and, you know, you see me in a cell, it'll be all those prompts just drawing on the walls. David, why do you want me to go in this circle?
01:46:11
Speaker
What I do is, why won't it work? I mean, let me put it this way. It got so bad that it's probably, we've probably got a compilation's worth of footage for it, which is disturbing in itself, but you know what? The memories, the memories of it all. Memories will live on. I'm just trying to think what other moments that, as you said, there's genuinely just so many moments. As I said- Your Madison rap was brilliant. Oh yeah.
01:46:37
Speaker
That is when we had to ask Jesus what to do about him.
01:46:42
Speaker
about Blake beating the psychiatrist and there's a picture of Jesus on the wall. Oh, Jesus, what should we do? Help us. Oh, God, there it is. Oh, yeah, Mr. Anderson, the running joke there. Mr. Anderson and Merlin. Yeah. So we had a running joke just to explain quickly. We had a running joke where Ethan at the beginning is showing this like a happy architect and, you know, he's like drawing the plans and he says, oh, the plans are coming along nicely. And we basically built up our own lore.
01:47:12
Speaker
didn't we? When it was like we were actually making these plans for a Mr. Anderson and like ever since Ethan went in the coma you know he couldn't get the plans so Mr. Anderson never got his home. Also as well when we adopted fake Jason we basically followed a random NPC and just called them Jason to like you know lift the burden of having to find her actual child but yeah there were so many moments it's just it's honestly a great series like
01:47:40
Speaker
I enjoyed it. I'm sure I can say the same for you as well. Oh, I loved it. Yeah. So if you guys haven't checked out, please go over to YouTube and check out the heavy rain playthrough. It was a blast to do.
01:47:53
Speaker
Even looking back on it, it was hilarious. Such fun we had. Oh yes, the laughs, the joys, the boomerangs, and the edits. I will admit, the editing was fun in that one. The editing was a lot of fun to do. Oh, sorry. I'll give one more shout out. When as Norman Jayden, you were stuck in that car, and then you were trying to find a way out, but it kept getting worse.
01:48:19
Speaker
That was true. I got tied to the steering wheel of a car and the controls weren't being responsive. So instead of me like being able to turn like right, I just kept beeping the horn and I kept zooming out and going beep, beep.
01:48:40
Speaker
How about this time? Sorry that one just came to me there. I couldn't let the episode end without bringing that back.
01:48:53
Speaker
Yeah, in fact, no, I'll say one more as well. The one when we went into the third trial where you have to chop off your finger and then after we chopped off the finger, after you actually telling me to saw it off. You didn't do anything you didn't want to do. No, Adam said, let's saw off the finger, what's the worst that could happen? And I was like, oh god. And you're like, yeah, but I didn't say anything.
01:49:18
Speaker
Oh damn it Adam, why? Such a troll. Oh you really were. But I think the kind of cherry on the cake there was when we were supposed to pick up the SD card to get the information about where Sean was and it was that half circle prompt again and it just stopped working and I
01:49:38
Speaker
I just lost it. I just started screaming into the mic. I did that a couple of times. I did it for that. And I did it when we were trying to unlock the door to get in the Origami College apartment. And then, like, you pressed all these button prompts and then at the very end you had to, like, do that prompt and the prompt didn't work so it put you back to the beginning. There was a lot of anger. But as I said, like, we aren't doing it just this describing it. Go check it out. Go watch the playthrough.
01:50:03
Speaker
Genuinely. Like, maybe a couple others, but it's a couple others we'll spend at a well event. Just get some snacks, you know, binge a couple episodes a day. You'll really enjoy it. I really think you'll enjoy it. Is there anything else you want to say, or...? No, like, I mean, I think trying to sum up Heavy Rain overall, like, I do think it is, like, a good game.
Overall Sentiment on Heavy Rain
01:50:25
Speaker
I don't think it's great. I do think it's a game that doesn't hold up on multiple playthroughs. I really think it's one that you should play once. If you want to play it, I didn't go watch us play. It's much better. But if you want to play it, play it once, and then probably don't go back to it, I would recommend. It doesn't hold up on multiple repeats.
01:50:46
Speaker
But I do think it is a good game, and it's out of the four main David Cage games. I've played two of them. It's my favorite. So we'll see if another one can know that you can knock it off of the top spot. But yeah, there's problems. There's lots of problems. But there is, as you can see, there's strong foundations.
01:51:04
Speaker
at the very least. As I said, very good ideas but poor execution for the most part. I feel as if they could have been tighter writing or certain aspects. In terms of a technical aspect, it is a very impressive game for the time. There's some bits that are a bit junky but I remember when this came out and it looking hyper-realistic and everything. It really was for the time. It was fantastic and it still holds up. The water or
01:51:34
Speaker
yeah most of it but the water physics is really well done like the textures when things are wet are really good everything else like the love story and yeah that's my closing point yeah if you're ever going to be romantically involved with someone in a motel room use the bed don't use don't use the floor for the love of god
01:51:59
Speaker
And if you're wondering what the hell I mean by that, just watch a playthrough. Just watch it, please. You'll know what we mean. Once you get to that episode, you'll be watching it and you'll go, ahhh, that's what I'm talking about. It's like, oh, I see. Yeah, but don't. Just, as I said, it's like, good ideas, poor execution. But for the most part, it did a good job in certain areas. Would I say it's like, game of the year? Probably not, but it's not far off.
01:52:25
Speaker
Nah, so it's very far off. But yeah, I would say, like, I don't know, like, between Heavy Rain and Detroit, I would say they're kinda tied, and I know you've still to play it, but, yeah. We'll see what you think, like, after we do the other two. A new champion emerges. Yeah, either between that or beyond. A drumble. Exactly.
01:52:46
Speaker
The Cage! So, yeah. On that note, while we wrap up, if you want to check out more of our podcast episodes, then you can check us out on Anchor, Spotify, YouTube, and really all good podcast distributors. Just search and name Chat Tsunami, and yeah.
01:53:03
Speaker
you'll definitely find us just look for the Red Panda. And as well, if you want to see more of my personal content, you can check me out on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, and of course Twitch under the name Satsanami42. If you look at the YouTube channel, that is where our heavy rain playthrough is, as well as our shenanigans in GTA, Breath of the Wild, and of course Warzone. So if you want to see Adam sacrificing himself in Verdansk, or...
01:53:32
Speaker
you know, our adventures as well with our good friend Green Shield. Feel free to check that out. Yeah, how about that eh? What masterpiece that was? What a masterpiece, well done. Yes, my thank you. I doff my literacy cap to you.
01:53:48
Speaker
Let as he can. What happened to your crown? Times are tough. Ah, of course. Well, you had to sell it to... you had to sell it to his banks. The lower master himself. His feet nearly counted. Yes, of course. And without any further ado and trying not to sound insensitive with it being heavy rain, but stay safe, stay awesome, and most importantly, stay hydrated. Especially in the heavy rain.
01:54:18
Speaker
Bye guys. Bye bye.