Heavy Rain and regret

Warning, Spoilers incoming

Heavy Rain is not an easy game to like, it has bad voice acting, writing that borders on atrocious, gaping plot holes, and severe case of the uncanny valley. I hate these things about the game, and they are what kept me at arms length throughout most of the time I spent with the game, but all is forgiven in a few scenes which really show the power games hold to elicit emotion.

I'm only going to talk one scene right now because it's late and I'm tired.

In the scene, you play as Norman Jayden, an out of town FBI agent who is investigating the Origami Killer. Jayden is partnered with Blake, who clearly doesn't like him.

Jayden and Blake have illegally entered the apartment of a suspect. The walls are covered in crucifixes and passages from the bible. You explore the apartment for a little bit, discovering various things, until the suspect, named Nathaniel, returns.

At this point, you try to talk to Nathaniel, while Blake taunts him. Nathaniel gets agressive towards Blake, claiming he is the anti-christ, while Blake grills him about voices Nathaniel hears.

The scene becomes interesting when Nathaniel pulls a gun on Blake, at which point you pull out your gun and you have two options. You can try to talk Nathaniel out of shooting Blake, or you can pull the trigger at any time.

My experience was that I talked him out of it, at which point Blake moved in to arrest Nathaniel. Nathaniel started struggling and seemed to pull out a knife. I shot without thinking, and saw a cross in his hand.

This moment left me feeling bad enough that I needed to stop playing the game and try to justify my actions. I thought about trying the scene again. I honestly felt regret for killing someone in a video game.

I want to talk more about the way Heavy Rain leverages it's gamenessin interesting ways, which has really got me thinking.

Sorry about going kinda nowhere with this, but as I said beforeit's late and I'm tired. I would love to hear people's thoughts on the game and this scene in particular.