I think I just experienced the first real "should I be doing this?" moment in my game playing history (with qualifiers, if asked). So I'm playing Heavy Rain, and I take control of Madison Paige for the first time. She wakes up in the middle of the night, apparently after falling asleep on the couch. The t.v. is still on, which I turn off. I have her look at her watch, and it's almost 3am. She seems frustrated at the late hour, so I figure she could use some freshening up. I start walking around the apartment looking for the bathroom, and I find it soon enough. But once I enter it, my mood changes from curious to thoroughly disturbed. I've never played anything like this before, and that includes Indigo Prophecy or any other narrative-driven game.
Once inside the bathroom, I head straight for the sink. I turn it on, and she splashes water on her face. Mission accomplished so far.
I want to quickly digress to make a side point. The Uncanny Valley is a very real thing, and it's no more evident than with Heavy Rain. Everything looks so authentic and genuinely impressive that it's the little things that stand out. For example, as Madison goes to the sink to splash water on her face, she turns the faucet on and water comes out. So far so good, but when she cups her hands and motions toward her face, the water disappears. Nothing actually splashes her, and her hands don't make contact with her face. Things like that are instantly noticeable when everything else is so incredibly detailed. I'd venture to say this could be the best-looking game I've ever played as far as believable, real-world environments and characters go, but it's evident that true photo-realism is still a little ways off. However, the strides that have been made toward that goal are immense, and such efforts will only get better with time.
Anyways, back to the reason for this entry: me being creeped out. After splashing the water on Madison's face, I look around the bathroom, and move her towards the toilet. I've had two other characters use the bathroom so far, so why not her? Well, that was the first wrong move. As she was sitting down on the toilet, the camera switched angles multiple times, and some of them were wide shots of her sitting. It felt invasive and weird to watch her, and I wished I had skipped that action almost immediately. But once that was over, I had her walk around the other side of the bathroom near the shower. She has a big-ass shower, by the way. Three nozzles in a row, even. So I decide to have her take a shower, and that's when I started really feeling like I was doing something inappropriate and sleazy. For starters, there are two contextual actions: moving the analog stick up, or down. When moved up, Madison takes her shirt off. When moved down, she takes her underwear off. Then she immediately walks into the shower and turns it on. There are gratuitous close-up shots of her breasts and ass, and multiple camera angles from which the show continues. It goes on for what seems like forever, and once she's finished, I had to manually put her clothes back on again. I wasn't sure at first the reason I felt so uneasy about this. After all, I've seen hundreds of movies with this exact same scene before, and I'm not sexually repressed, so what's the big deal?
The big deal is agency. I had to take her clothes off and get her to take a shower, and I sat there and watched while she did it. It felt like a huge, huge invasion of privacy, and also manipulative. It was exactly like all those movie scenes I've watched, but with one big difference. I actually felt like I was preying on her in some strange way; like she just didn't know I was watching her every move. This brings up a very unique situation for me, and it's one that I wish more games were capable of handling. Heavy Rain doesn't feel anything like the countless fantasy or role-playing games I've played in the past. All those games had stories and dramatic character arcs, but none of them ever made me feel like I was watching and interacting with someone else's life. Heavy Rain does that for each character, and with Madison Paige, for the first time in a game I felt like I shouldn't be doing what I was doing. If she knew about it, she would be horrified.
There were other reasons for my unsettled nerves, though. As I said, it was almost 3am, and all the lights in her apartment were either off or very dim, and her waking up the way she did made me apprehensive about....something. Also, I tried putting some clothes on her besides basically a bra and panties, but I couldn't. I was forced to have her walk around a disturbing environment in what I deemed a vulnerable state, and I wasn't happy about it. Now, bear in mind that the opening scene of the game entails a man waking up and taking a shower (if you so choose, which I did). I felt none of the emotions I was experiencing with Madison, and for good reason. The character in the beginning of the game seems at peace with himself and his surroundings. Everything is nice and bright, almost idyllic. There's a beautiful back yard that's accessed by an awesome balcony, and I was able to have him lazily walk out and stare out at the nice, sunny morning. When I had him take a shower, there was nudity, but it was relatively quick and it just felt natural. He's in the shower, so he's naked. No big deal. But as I watched Madison take hers, the shots lingered, and I also had much more agency with her character. Couple that with the uneasiness of the surroundings and it's easy to understand the difference between the two scenes.
All these feelings came about before Madison started seeing things. As I sat her down to flip through a magazine, she suddenly looked up and became startled. Did something move? I wasn't sure, but I decided to have her walk around a bit. Once she made it to the other side of the apartment, I turned her around, and the fridge was open. I had literally just closed it, so I immediately wanted to get the hell out of the apartment. I tried to put some clothes on her but there was no option for it. Again, the vulnerable state of a woman by herself when something seems off started freaking me out. There wasn't anything really happening at this point; it was all just in my head. And to those who would say that I shouldn't be feeling like that because a woman can take care of herself, give me a fucking break. There are factual differences between men and women, and there are times when a woman is more vulnerable than a man would be in the same situation. This was one of those situations, and I didn't like it. Anyways, like I said, I've never played a game that presented me with something like this before, and I was really conflicted over how the overall scene made me feel. It was almost like I was the person stalking her, while at the same time acting on her behalf. I'm pretty sure the confusion was on purpose, and it definitely set the desired mood for what was to follow.
And this, my friends, is the nearly untapped potential of gaming. Agency can elicit all types of emotions, but up 'til now it's only given me a very narrow spectrum of samples to choose from. Heavy Rain looks to be significantly broadening the scope of what a game can be, despite some shortcomings I've noticed with certain characters. The voice-acting is really hit-or-miss, depending on who's talking. But when it's good, it's damn good. My hope, though, is for it to continue poking around inside my head, looking for different responses than I'm used to giving to a video game. And even if it can't sustain itself for the duration, moments like tonight will stay with me for a long, long time.
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