But I recently read an article by Anthony Burch, linked on Ebert's twitter, that agrees with him in a way I CANNOT ABIDE. He cross-invokes Heavy Rain and Se7en as his case studies in games and film, starting out like so:
Detective Mills, having lost everything dear to him, has to decide John Doe's fate. He desperately wants to avenge the death of his wife, but Somerset has warned him: John Doe wants you to kill him. He wants you to be overcome by Wrath.
What if we could choose whether or not Mills should pull the trigger? What if, as Heavy Rain so often does, we were allowed to decide not only what Mills should do, but subsequently who he is as a person, and what the overall theme of the film should be?
On the one hand, that'd be a satisfyingly difficult choice to make, in the context of a BioWare RPG or whathaveyou. No clear "right" answer. Could be a pretty suspenseful moment of contemplation for the player.
On the other hand, Mills is already his own character: he went through the entire film getting into arguments and beating up paparazzi. If the player made Mills put his gun down and let John Doe rot in prison, it'd be wildly inaccurate with his character, and it'd effectively demolish the thematic punch of the scene's true outcome. Se7en is (amongst other things) about the ubiquitousness of human evil, and how we can't truly separate ourselves from it. If Mills lets John Doe live, it becomes a story about a Really Good Cop triumphing over a Really Evil Guy.
Burch is arguing that a single decision negates the identity of Detective Mills, if that decision doesn't fall in line with Burch's expectations. But really, Mills doesn't turn into a Really Good Cop if he doesn't shoot John Doe. He becomes a Deeply Flawed Cop who Made A Decision to deny a Really Evil Guy the victory he was looking for. It's not a terrible story - maybe an inferior one- but clearly that wasn't the story Se7en was trying to tell.
But the fact that it was a decision is the whole point of that scene. It's a good choice for a discussion about narrative in video games, actually, since decisions are where interactive media has the almost-totally-unrealized potential to transcend traditional media.
Burch hints at the problem in realizing that potential - it's way, way too easy to make the right decision. The morality systems in most video games are often highly transparent, and you can pretty easily guess how your Morality Meter is going to swing based on your actions. Detective Mills' decision, for players, is a cakewalk, whereas in Se7en it's a gut-wrenching, ultimately futile struggle. But interactive media has the potential - as far-off as it might be - to make that decision almost as hard for the player as it was for Mills.
I don't know who's going to make that game; it'll be a hell of an undertaking to make that experience, pulling the player through a sicking lower-intestine waterslide of violence and psychosis and horror and plopping them down into a desert with a man at the end of their gun barrel and they want that man dead, dead, dead, dead and when you can inspire the feelings of loss and rage that Mills feels in that scene, something that tugs at a player's gut and forces them to pull that trigger, you'll have done something that no movie can do. But I don't know that anyone's come close.
Burch moves on to Heavy Rain, arguing that player agency, insofar as Heavy Rain provides it, is a choice between making the character act consistently or inconsistently.
Heavy Rain's player/avatar dissonance is even more pronounced when the player and the character desire different things. Say you're interested in getting the "best" ending, because you really want the Four Heroes trophy. Since you assume that getting to Ethan's son is the best way of assuring Ethan survives, you successfully complete the first four trials without difficulty.
Upon reaching the fifth trial, however, you find yourself in a pickle: the only way to get the final piece of the address is to force Ethan to drink poison, which will absolutely, positively kill him in sixty minutes (if you've already completed the game, please try to ignore the fact that it absolutely, positively does not). You want Ethan to survive so you can get that Four Heroes trophy, so you decide not to have Ethan drink the poison. But wait: you just created a version of Ethan Mars who is willing to endure intense physical torment and commit murder to save his son...but who won't drink some poison to completely ensure Shaun's survival? That doesn't make any sense. You wouldn't accept that if you saw an otherwise-consistent character do that in a film, would you?
Really? You don't see how that would work, dramatically?
You don't think it's potentially compelling for a father who's just gone through hell for his son to discover that his own life is the one thing he values above his son's? Think of how harrowing it would be for a father to learn that about himself. Imagine the guilt in his eyes when the other protagonists bring him his son, safe and sound, and he has to go back to his life with his son - a relationship that was already in tatters - knowing exactly what he would sacrifice for his son - and what he wouldn't.
If you don't think there's a story there, that's your problem. And player agency doesn't have to be a choice between upholding or subverting the integrity of the player character. With a sufficient investment of time and manpower, you could make a game where the player's actions truly shape a character, rather than just guiding a pre-made character through a sequence of misadventures. Ultimately, Heavy Rain only scratches the surface of what would be possible if you had thousands of people working on a game for infinity billion years.
Storytelling potential aside, though, it's true that the player's motivation differs sharply from Ethan's, even without the trophy. The player knows there are four protagonists and that the story can continue if one of them dies; they know that 1) they've got a shot at seeing the story end properly, with or without a living Ethan and 2) Even if Ethan doesn't get the last part of the address, the other protagonists have a shot at figuring it out. Both of those things cause the player to value Ethan's life in a very different way than Ethan himself would.
If you want Ethan's life to mean as much to the player as it means to him, you can't have the other protagonists. You can only have Ethan, and when he's dead, you fade to black and the story is over. Best-case scenario, you drink the poison (I'm going to pretend it really does kill him, because that's tons more fun), rush to the address, save your son, take him in your arms, and then - dead.
Worst-case, you don't make it there. Dead.
Middle-case, I guess you call the police and give them the address, and then dead. Is your son going to be okay? Eh, maybe. You're dead, you don't get to find out.
Or you don't drink the poison. Obviously that's still an option.
As for the sex scene, let me defend Heavy Rain in no uncertain terms by saying that, uh, yeah, the sex scene really didn't work for me. Didn't feel like the story had earned it. Didn't feel like these characters shared that kind of connection. It sucked. Can we agree that the shower scenes were pretty okay, though? Let's not be hatin' on nudity.
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