Board 8 > Exdeath Plays Every Game in the GotD 2020 Contest

(+) Yeah! (+)

I should replay the Bayonettas. That first playthrough is pretty frustrating but I'm sure it's more fun once you know what you're doing.

Now that I think of it, there are parallels between Thane and Samara too. Both of them are mercenaries with a moral code, but Thane uses a religious code to absolve himself from his murders while Samara uses a militaristic code to justify her brutal methods.

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Finally made some progress on ME2. I made it all the way through the Horizon Colony. I'm really enjoying the more straightforward missions. Which gives me more time to focus on the cool stuff like finding Anomalies and talking to my crew members.

I really don't want to mention any criticisms yet, because I think I need to play more first.

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wallmasterz posted...

Those difficulty ones sound like a doozy, but I could see myself playing on normal to get the remaining chests and complete the portals.

Also, I just bought VVVVVV.

Yeah, given how much I struggled on Normal I imagine the higher difficulties would be a challenge. Given the game's generous continue system, I guess it might be possible to crawl through with a ton of deaths, which would still yield the trophy.

Have fun with VVVVVV! It's a nice, short and sweet game.
ZenOfThunder posted...

Once you do the Reaper IFF mission and get Legion you can only do 1 mission before the suicide mission or the non-essential crew dies when you find them

Yeah, that's weird. I wanted to pick up Legion sooner because he's one of the more intriguing characters. RIP. That isn't very intuitive, so I don't imagine I would've figured it out on my own.

Gall posted...
I should replay the Bayonettas. That first playthrough is pretty frustrating but I'm sure it's more fun once you know what you're doing.

Now that I think of it, there are parallels between Thane and Samara too. Both of them are mercenaries with a moral code, but Thane uses a religious code to absolve himself from his murders while Samara uses a militaristic code to justify her brutal methods.

I considered replaying the first Bayonetta on Normal to get higher ranks, before even going onto hard. I think that would've been fun, if I hadn't been busy with this project. I will say that the number of cutscenes can become a little annoying when you've already played it and want to skip them, though. It kind of interrupts the sense of flow.

Yeah, I can see that comparison between Thane and Samara. I'm curious to know how you felt about those two characters. I kind of like Thane's attitude because it shows a degree of repentance for what he's done, but in Samara's case her self-righteousness isn't as interesting to me.

BetrayedTangy posted...
Finally made some progress on ME2. I made it all the way through the Horizon Colony. I'm really enjoying the more straightforward missions. Which gives me more time to focus on the cool stuff like finding Anomalies and talking to my crew members.

I really don't want to mention any criticisms yet, because I think I need to play more first.

The second game is very streamlined compared to the first. I do have some issues with that, but I think it's a positive change overall. I think I mentioned before how I almost miss the Mako, just because it was nice to have something to break up all the shooting, but maybe that's just because I'm not too interested in shooters personally.

I'd say you're a little under halfway through the game now, depending on how many loyalty missions you've done.

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As promised, I completed Miranda's loyalty mission today. The objective this time around was to help relocate Miranda's younger sister. Miranda herself is a genetically-altered human designed to be intelligent and powerful, a decision she tells us was driven by her father's megalomania. Her sister is apparently the same, but Miranda kidnapped her at birth to give her a normal life, since her father was abusive to her. Now her dad knows where the sister is and Miranda wants her out of there before he drops by.

When we meet her contact on Illium, she tells us that an old friend of Miranda's, who is helping us with this task, has sent a message which amounts to the following: "pls let me escort ur sister myself so I can double-cross you xoxo." Miranda and her enhanced intelligence fall for this trick because she can't accept the possibility of this particular guy betraying her, but we still catch up in time to confront him and take the sister for ourselves. Miranda is so shocked by this betrayal that she kills the guy unless Shepard picks a Paragon option, but there's no way to actually save him, because the Asari merc boss just caps him in the back anyway. Afterward Shepard convinces Miranda to go talk to her sis for the first time, so that is kind of cute.

Thane solicited me for his loyalty mission, which also concerns family matters. He has an estranged son who he recently learned is following in his footsteps - something Thane understandably does not want for him. Sounds pretty interesting. I might do that one next. In any case, I have complete freedom over what order to tackle the remaining missions in now.

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Hey Exdeath I was looking through some of the games coming up and was wondering if you were planning on doing any co-op?

Games like Terraria and Minecraft are a lot more fun in multiplayer and getting Board 8 involved would be pretty dope.

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BetrayedTangy posted...

Hey Exdeath I was looking through some of the games coming up and was wondering if you were planning on doing any co-op?

Games like Terraria and Minecraft are a lot more fun in multiplayer and getting Board 8 involved would be pretty dope.

Yeah, I'm completely open to that idea. I was also thinking of trying to play some team games of Fortnight with b8ers when I reach that game. I'll work on organizing those plans when I'm a little closer to the games in question.

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Thane's loyalty mission turned out to be one of the only missions in the game with no shooting - perhaps the only one. Apart from the standard investigative conversations at the start, it's a quick matter of tracking an anti-human, Turian politician with a harmless-sounding high voice from a position in the rafters above him. It's quick and easy, but unlike the shootouts where failure means a game over screen and a second shot, it's possible to fail and have the game progress with Thane's loyalty permanently inaccessible, so I recommend saving before starting this mission, if anyone is playing ME2 and hasn't done it yet. In a successful run, we save the politician from Thane's son and the two begin their process of reconciliation - however, Cerberus note that they might hire a new hit on the same guy, in slightly subtler language.

The collectors tracked down the Normandy through viruses in the Reaper IFF, and used this information to kidnap everyone on board except Joker and the squad-mates, while Shepard was away on a mission. I guess this is how the game communicates the time limit that Zen mentioned, but since I made the mistake of picking up Legion I would've had to sacrifice him, Thane, Samara, Jack, and Kasumi to save the larger crew, not to mention turning down a lot of the game's content. It's unfortunate that I won't be able to save Yeoman Chambers and especially Dr. Chakwas, who had been around since the first game, but I'm not willing to make that sacrifice for them.

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I decided to take on Jack's loyalty mission next. It's a walk down memory lane from her childhood as a test subject in the least ethical scientific project in human history. I brought Thane along with me, but thinking back, Mordin might have been the more interesting choice.

Jack is the most powerful human biotic in existence as far as we know, and the entire intention behind the experiment was to maximize her potential. Children were imprisoned, tortured, injected with drugs, and pitted against one another like fighter dogs for the sake of this project. It smacks a little of something that would only be invented in a poorly-written story trying to emphasize the horrors man is capable of - but even worse things have been done in real life. Jack wants to blow up the facility in order to gain some kind of emotional closure. As the gang travels through the old place, they find out that some of the more twisted experiments were done for Jack's sake. Any method of increasing biotic potential was tested on the other kids first so it wouldn't hurt her. In what is probably the most interesting part of the mission, Jack is upset by this because it conflicts with her image of being an ultra-tough survivor. She doesn't want to believe that any of the others had it worse than her.

Another one of the test subjects survived and is squatting in Jack's old room. He wants to restart the project, so that the suffering he went through will be worth something. Of course, that's a ridiculous idea, and Jack goes through the loyalty mission cliche of threatening to kill someone only to be talked down by Shepard. Like every other character, she questioned whether letting the guy go was the right choice, but I look forward to hearing her thank Shepard for making it in the near future.

After the mission is complete, Jack and Miranda get into a fight over whether Cerberus should be blamed for what happened to Jack. This is a recurring element in this game. When you gain the loyalty of two conflicting characters, they'll have a little spat, and unless you have enough Paragon or Renegade points you have to pick one to side with, and you'll lose the loyalty of the other. This one could happen quite early on, but since I delayed Jack's and Miranda's missions for so long I was already at max Paragon, which is probably like twice as much as you need.

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Finished the remaining loyalty missions and started on the Shadow Broker DLC tonight. I'm hoping to finish the game either tomorrow or Wednesday. More substantial update coming tomorrow morning.

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shadow broker is a ton of fun, hope you enjoy it

some great banter in there

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Legion's loyalty mission is all fighting Geth, which are non-threatening at this point in the game due to Shepard's advanced AI hacking skill, and to make things even easier the game sometimes lets you reprogram rocket drones to work for you, after which you can just sit and watch as they clear out the room on their own. Narratively, it presents us with the choice to either reprogram the Geth heretics so they agree with Legion, or just kill them. The ethics of trampling on someone's free will like that can potentially be complicated, but it doesn't really work when the alternative is just killing them. I went for the reprogram route. In theory, it could mean more Geth to help us when we fight the Reapers. It turns out this choice makes it harder, but not impossible, to broker peace between the Geth and Quarians in ME3.

Tali and Geth have a spat akin to Jack's with Miranda, but instead of the simple "cut it out and focus on the mission" she used there, Shepard has to get into some fairly detailed politics to convince these two to stand down. It does ultimately come back to the Reapers, though: her main argument is that war between the two species would leave their strength depleted when the Reapers come knocking.

Although I'm not too fond of Samara as a character, she does have one of the most interesting loyalty missions. Like Thane's, it doesn't involve any shooting. It's a process of investigation to track down Morinth followed by drawing her out with Shepard as bait. You talk to other characters and look around the area to learn about things Morinth likes and then bring those up in conversation to win her over. It's not the deepest thing in the world, but I definitely find myself appreciating any time this game can go a full mission without resorting to the gunplay. You also have the choice of whether to kill Samara or Morinth, if you have enough Paragon or Renegade points to resist the latter's mind control. I sided with Samara last time, but I decided to do so again because I've always felt the other choice was just deeply irrational, especially for a Paragon Shepard. I think the idea is that both Asari are remorseless killers, so that the sociopathic Morinth isn't strictly worse than Samara, but at least Samara's targeting has rules - she strikes down the wicked according to a code that matches closely enough with normal human judgement, even if her response is often disproportionate. In contrast, Morinth makes sport of killing the best people she can find. Still, maybe the best thing Shepard could do for the galaxy would be to deliberately get whichever Asari she recruits killed off during the suicide mission.

Kasumi's starts out as a more interesting heist but eventually devolves into another big round of shooting, culminating in a boss fight against an armored plane, which is a job for the good old particle beam. At first, you're infiltrating a party to find information and break into a security system. It's too bad that you can run around the area like a total klutz obviously moving into restricted areas and no one at the party will bat an eye, but I can understand that it would've been a big ask for them to program such a thing. One thing that was funny was breaking into the storage room and finding lady liberty's head, complete with a codex dump on how it got there, as well as Michelangelo's David, which compared to its real-life counterpart had suffered some convient structural damage so that Bioware didn't have to model certain features of the sculpture. This is even funnier when contrasted against Animal Crossing showing the full statue with no censorship!

For the record, I decided to delete everything in the memory box, mainly because it's what Kasumi's lover asked her to do.

Shadow Broker is a Liara-focused DLC, complete with our old friend as a temporary squad mate. It's also quite the ME1 throwback section, even down to Liara's abilities being singularity and stasis from the last game, which are mostly not seen elsewhere in this one. I think Shepard can learn singularity as an Adept. The banter between Liara and Shepard definitely is a strong point, and they make some fairly amusing jokes about the mechanics of the previous game, namely omni-gel and the Mako. I still think the innovation of thermal clips makes the least sense out of everything though, so maybe ME2 shouldn't be talking smack.

The highlight of the gameplay is probably the boss fight against an Asari Spectre. She can warp around the battlefield at high speeds and get around your cover, which can make her a relentless attacker and much harder to thwart by just trading damage and then sucking your thumb behind cover while your health regenerates, which is the standard combat approach for me. The Shadow Broker himself is a less impressive boss, mostly just a big old damage sponge that keeps regenerating health. I did find it hilarious watching my skinny female Shepard beat the crap out of him with her bare fists though. He's a member of a lesser-known species called the Yahg, which are even bigger and more violent than Krogan, and have been relegated to their homeworld for slaughtering the Council's first contact party. I did like that as a tidbit of lore, but the character of the Broker himself was a little on the dull side. Now that he's out of the way, Liara has taken over his legacy and is planning to help Shepard fight the Reapers in her new position as Shadow Broker.

What I appreciated most about the DLC was the set of rewards you get for finishing it. I almost wish I had done it earlier, because it gives you access to info on which planets have high yields of specific resources, which can reduce the tedium of planet scanning. You also gain access to some of the Shadow Broker's information, including files on your squad mates, which I ended up reading in their entirety. A lot of them are almost cute - one I particularly liked was Grunt's online search history, which paints a picture of his increasing respect for Shepard and ends up with him reading Hemingway, and then looking up sharks after The Old Man and the Sea.

On top of those things, there's a lot of dialog with Liara after the fact, including what amount to a date scene on the Normandy. Pretty good writing in this DLC.

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Alright, I've finally finished Mass Effect 2! After well over a month, I'm finally moving on past the games released in January of 2010. That's a little disheartening to think about, but at the same time, you could say I've progressed through over ten years worth of games since I started.

Just like in the first game, you get the payoff for your romance option right before the final mission. This time around they decided to nix the paltry little sex scenes from the first game, possibly because Shepard can be partnered to a lot of freaky aliens in this more progressive age. With Garrus they kind of just touch heads before the fade to black. The scene made me feel sorry for Garrus more than anything. So if, like me, you were thinking of romancing Garrus out of some bizzarre curiosity regarding what a Turian looks like under the armor, I'm afraid you'll have to go to the ME wiki for that.

The Suicide Mission is very true to Mass Effect's pulp sci-fi adventure tone. Unlike its own sequel, it doesn't really try to present you with some revelatory philosophical concepts for its climax, or anything of that sort. It's just a simple base invasion with the stakes of an entire galaxy. It doesn't really do anything new in terms of gameplay, but it's cool to see the various party members you've gathered over the course of the game use their individual skills to help you through the Collector base. I had Garrus lead both fire squads, Tali do the hacking, and Jack provide the Biotic barrier.

Since I did a lot of missions between picking up Legion and now, Dr. Chakwas was the sole survivor of the Normandy's crew. You can send someone to escort her back to the Normandy, and I picked Legion since it made sense to use a stealth specialist for a job like that.

The final boss is a half-formed humanoid Reaper. Apparently the Collectors were rounding up so many Colonists to grind them into juice as part of the raw material for this Reaper. It's a very classic video game boss fight, where you shoot it in the big glowing weak points for a long time until it dies. Although it has some pretty wide-coverage attacks, the cover system makes them as easy to avoid as anything else. Collector minions spawn in every now and then and are probably a bigger threat than the actual Reaper!

I had Garrus and Mordin with me at the time. I picked Mordin because I had a memory of him "randomly" dying trying to hold off the Collectors when left behind. Unfortunately, this set of choices led to Tali suffering the same fate. I'm not really interested in going through ME3 with Tali dead, so I admit I turned the difficulty down to Casual for expedience's sake, read about the mechanics online, and ran through the Suicide Mission a second time to save everyone.

Here's how it works: first of all, you'll lose one character for each ship upgrade you're missing. Next, your specialists will always die if they aren't loyal, and will die even if loyal unless you pick a few specific characters. It's pretty intuitive overall. Tali, Legion, and Kasumi are the only characters who can live through the hacking, since they are the true tech experts of the team. Garrus and Miranda have leadership experience, so they're best for the fire squads. I think Jacob can pull it off as well. Miranda can even lead the second fire squad without being loyal! The chart I looked at said Samara, Jack, or Morinth has to provide the biotic field, but Gall seems to have had Thane manage it successfully as well. Whoever you sent to escort the Crew will always live if loyal and always die if not. The same goes for the two you bring with you to fight the Human Reaper.

The most complicated part is the survival of the distraction squad that holds the Collectors off while you do so. There's a mathematical points system to determine how much value a given character contributes to that team, and a number of characters will die depending on who you leave there. Every character is worth slightly more when loyal. Garrus, Grunt, and Zaeed, if you have his DLC, are worth the most, while Tali, Mordin, Kasumi, and Jack for some reason are worth the least. Since I brought Garrus with me the first time, I deprived the distraction team of one of their best potential assets, which left me in the range where one character would die. Any unloyal characters will die first, and after that Mordin, followed by Tali. So bringing Mordin with me was what sealed Tali's fate - not that I would want to play ME3 with a dead Mordin any more than Tali.

Basically, the goal is to get rid of those last four characters on some other task, so the second time around I sent Tali to escort Dr. Chakwas and took Mordin and Jack with me to the final boss, and that worked out with no casualties.

There's also the choice to either destroy the Collector base or hand it over to Cerberus. I do think that preserving the base is the rational choice, but Paragon Shepard screwing over Cerberus in the end is funny and satisfying, and I already know that they will become one of our primary antagonists in ME3, so I blew the place. When I returned to the ship post-game, most of the characters approved of my choice, even Miranda, who I thought would be super pissed. The picture of Kaidan that Shepard kept in her room has now been removed. There's no replacement picture of Garrus, oddly enough.

Final Thoughts on ME2 + Squad Mate Tier List coming shortly


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If your biotic is bad they won't die but one of your squadmates will, in my case Legion. I hardly knew ye.

I figured it would be much safer to go to the final boss with me than be on the distraction squad, so I took Mordin (because he seemed the most likely to die unsupervised) and Thane (because he was the one I really didn't want to die.) Funny that Jack is bad there, since she was the one who replied to me after the final boss and she seemed to be doing fine.

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Final Analysis: Mass Effect 2

What I thought of ME2: Solid game, worthy of a high seed
Would I play ME2 again? Yes, at least if it wasn't bound to ME1
Did it deserve to win its division? I don't mind, but I don't expect it to make my top 8

Choice-based narrative games were all the rage at the start of the decade. After ME2, I'm going straight into Heavy Rain, another game that emphasizes this element. There is, of course, a much better game to discuss this with, but it seems like the popular conception of that type of game is much less approving today. I think it's partially because, as more and more people finished second and third playthroughs, the flaws in the construction became visible. For example, a seemingly-pivotal choice in Mass Effect 1 is whether to save the life of Kaidan or Ashley, but these two characters go on to do precisely the same things for the rest of the trilogy. Given the complexity of human beings, you would expect some changes in career trajectory between two people.

Mass Effect 2 is a much more polished game than its predecessor, with modernized controls and the removal of tedious elements like the equipment management and the poorly-made vehicle sections. Its revamped combat system makes ability choices more strategic, classes more differentiated, and party composition more important, which help its case as a shooter-RPG hybrid. It still isn't what I'd call a thrilling shooter. You spend most of the time huddled behind cover waiting for your health to regenerate, combing cleared-out areas for ammo clips, or playing totally inane hacking minigames for small change. Its rare for the gameplay to deviate much from the mission structure of shootout after shootout, which, at least for me, led to a certain feeling of monotony. The newly-added planet scanning is about as much of a chore as playing a video game can be, and I stopped doing it as soon as was viable.

Like its illusion of a branching narrative, Mass Effect's illusion of a wide-open galaxy has major holes. There are about 5 tiny hubworlds in the galaxy and the rest of space is just a progression of chest-high walls for combatants to bob behind and shoot each other. It's a work of sci-fi intended to instill a sense of adventure, but its universe often feels more like the terrain of a bored contractor or businessman. Another thing (and you know it's bad when a guy like me makes this complaint,) is that there are too many boys. Over the whole course of the first two games, I did not encounter a single female Krogan, Turian, or Salarian, despite various characters' insistence that they exist. No kids either. This is the case because Bioware couldn't spare the budget to model female or child aliens, I suspect.

Those complaints aside, the characterization and world-building are what make Mass Effect worth it. There are enough different concepts and species to give the impression of a self-contained world, it's often quite funny, and the numerous crew members Shepard picks up are ultimately all well-developed. I would keep playing just to make it to my next conversation with the squad mates. Over the course of two straight games, I definitely felt as though I had built up a strong relationship with a lot of them.

I also appreciated the character of Commander Shepard a lot more this time around. In my first playthrough I thought of Shepard as a dull blank-slate character, but this time I found it interesting to see her methods in action. They did a good job writing her as a persuasive speaker - I noticed that she would respond in very different ways depending on who she was speaking to. She would take a more aggressive stance with a Krogan, for example, because she knows that's the sort of thing they respect and respond to. When I started the first game, I was worried that playing Paragon would be boring compared to the headbutt-happy hilarity of Renegade mode, but I would say those fears were ultimately unfounded. I liked Shepard as the caring team mom.

Mass Effect 2 is a game whose appeal is difficult to sum up in a quick synopsis. It doesn't really come down to any single moment or idea, at least not for me. It's more a case of consistently decent writing that builds upon itself. By the end of that 30-hour process, I was mostly converted.

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Gall posted...

If your biotic is bad they won't die but one of your squadmates will, in my case Legion. I hardly knew ye.

I figured it would be much safer to go to the final boss with me than be on the distraction squad, so I took Mordin (because he seemed the most likely to die unsupervised) and Thane (because he was the one I really didn't want to die.) Funny that Jack is bad there, since she was the one who replied to me after the final boss and she seemed to be doing fine.

Ah, I see. I was wondering if you lost Legion's loyalty during the Tali argument.

Yeah, I don't get why Jack would be bad in the distraction squad, because her super-powerful biotics should be applicable to combat and she's even introduced tearing a space station apart.

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Mass Effect 2 is my second favorite video game and i love it so much that i even love the awful giant skeleton video game final boss

Probably the most disappointing thing is that they make this big deal that Reapers are made up of the goo of a crushed species and the Reaper will look like that species even going so far as having a big dumb skeleton be the final boss of ME2

then in ME3 all the reapers are the same thing cuz hey aint nobody got time for a hundred unique reaper designs


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Mass Effect 2: Squad Mate Tier List

Top Tier
Mordin
Garrus

High Tier
Thane
Tali
Legion

Medium Tier
Grunt
Kasumi

Low Tier
Miranda
Jacob
Jack
Samara

Mordin: It feels like they either put more effort into writing Mordin, or just had their best character writer in charge of him. The guy has a backstory with moral complexity, feelings of self-doubt and regret, an interesting point of view that makes him fun to bring on missions, and even more dialog than anyone else when he refuses to talk to Shepard. Just a really good character that I would hold up as an exemplar for this medium as a whole, not just Mass Effect.

Garrus: In contrast to Kaidan's stay at home boyfriend status in ME1, Garrus accompanied me on more missions than anyone else. One of the main appeals to playing as a female Shepard, for me, is that you can romance him. Garrus' appealing personality is more or less intact from the first game, and his personal history from Shepard's two-year absence is compelling enough. It renders him kind of a sad character, but one you can understand and sympathize with.

Thane: The standout of the late-joiners. I like the lore about the Drell and Hanar a lot, and Thane himself is another character who showcases self-doubt, regrets, and remorse. His attitude towards his imminent death certainly makes for an interesting facet of the character.

Tali: Definitely a character who benefits from being around so much. I like the sense of attachment that Tali and Shepard build over the first two games. Sometimes the collectivist attitude of the Quarians can feel a little alienating, but I do ultimately think their history and politics are well-written, and the importance she places on the Flotilla gives her a nice emotional investment in the events of the story.

Legion: The Geth's AI hivemind can feel like a bit of a sci-fi cliche, but he's ultimately an endearing character. I like the contrast between his emotionless pretense and his fanboyism toward Shepard, and his conversations about philosophy tend to make for good banter. I like his dynamic with EDI, too.

Grunt: The constant aggression from Grunt can be a bit much, and he's a little more one-note than the best characters, but I do think he's cute. It's nice to see him slowly discover a sense of meaning for himself.

Kasumi: You can tell Kasumi is a little under-implemented, being a DLC character, but I think the quality of the writing behind what there is for her is good enough. The stories she tells you about her old heists and adventures give some decent depth to her character. I especially liked the one where she rescues a child painter from Batarian slavers.

Miranda: I might have appreciated Miranda more if I had done her Loyalty Mission earlier. I do like how she goes from doubting Shepard to trusting her, but otherwise I found her a little on the dull side. I also think it's a mistake, at least within this game, that her father's cruelty is never actually demonstrated, but merely explained by Miranda.

Jacob: Like his Cerberus coworker, Jacob just feels a little dull. He's mostly just the nice guy with a bog-standard loyalty mission. Maybe I should've brought him on more missions.

Jack: I would hesitate to call Jack a poorly-written character. Her cynical attitude and violent nature ultimately make sense given what she's been through. She just isn't very lovable, and a lot of her dialog feels repetitive because she always defaults back to how trust is for dummies and being alone keeps you safe. She seems like a character who benefits a lot if you romance her, since that might lead to more change in her personality.

Samara: Despite a cool loyalty mission, Samara is probably the worst-written party member in the series so far, with her Justicar code feeling tailored to the specific situations she appears in rather than organic and her quest to kill her daughter having slightly uncomfortable implications. In contrast to someone like Thane or Mordin, her piety leaves no room for self-doubt, which is not as interesting. That being said, every character in this game has some good dialog, even Samara.

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here is the zenofthunder ranking with no explanation:

Zaeed > Kasumi > Jack > Tali > Garrus > Mordin > Legion > Miranda > Thane > Grunt > Jacob > Samara

i guarantee you will not find another person in the world with this character ranking

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Previous Experience with Heavy Rain: Watched a Playthrough on Youtube
Expectations for Heavy Rain: A joke, at the expense of the art of writing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EV5du1fhp20

If one of the decade's themes is "fallen giants," we can include David Cage, and perhaps Heavy Rain in particular, among the examples. I remember this was a really well-received game when it came out! It has an 87 on Metacritic and was talked about as a must-play for people who like story-focused video games.

How hilarious it is to look back on that now. David Cage's writing is generally embarrassing. It's full of plot holes, character actions with no resemblance to human behavior, and pointless melodrama that the only entertainment value it really has comes from mocking it. His latest, Detroit: Become Human, is one of the more laughable attempts at a serious story I've seen in years, although I thought the dynamic between the two cops was kind of cute at times. It's definitely a game where you're constantly screaming questions at the screen. The guy just doesn't think his stories through. I've heard Beyond: Two Souls is somehow even worse!

Hilariously bad is at least a lot better than bad but boring. That's why something like The Eye of Argon can become a literary party game. I'm a big fan of it, really - I watch anime I know will be trash more often that I watch anime I expect to be good. The playthrough of Heavy Rain I watched a couple years back was a riot. I'm hoping I'll have just as much fun playing it myself.

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please make sure not to press any buttons are norman when chasing the guy thru the market

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I just played through Heavy Rain. *grabs popcorn*

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heavy rain came out the same day as that awful alien vs predator game and i couldnt figure out which one to buy. i ended up getting AvP and it was awful. got heavy rain like two weeks later

it was a literal "whoever wins... we lose" kind of deal

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I actually have a little respect for Heavy Rain, pretty sure it was one of if not the first game of its kind. Paving the way for much better games.

Even without that though I like it for some easy laughs, sort of like The Room

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i think i've played thru heavy rain entirely like 6 times, i actually love it, i also hate it with a passion. i have a lot of mixed feelings about david cage and his games but i always get them soon after release and i always have a blast playing them

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I actually enjoyed playing Heavy Rain, but once I finished I had some immediate and pressing qualms with the story. It was still worth it - I played free via PS Now.

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Jack being bad in the distraction squad kind of makes sense if you assume that she would try to kill as many enemies as she could and neglect defending the team. That's why I didn't trust her with the biotic field, anyway.

I will be watching a Heavy Rain let's play by the Two Best Friends:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL57hJfweW_2t7KX-BKMwVbXfPWPBGy3ut
They're what you might call David Cage enthusiasts, and I've seen their Omikron, Beyond Two Souls, and Detroit playthoughs, but not this one yet. I'm excited.

Still working on my Mass Effect 2 final thoughts. I'll probably split it into 2 parts with what I liked and what I didn't.

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the TBFP omikron LP is honestly one of the funniest things i think i've ever seen, it's so consistently great

just the thought of the phrase "koopy sandwich" still makes me smile. i am literally smiling right now.

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I booted up Darkest Dungeon to play for a half hour or so before starting Heavy Rain, and then the next thing I knew that half hour had turned into almost 4 hours and it was time to go to work. Looks like this will be another day where I only play a few minutes of Pokemon for this project. I'll try to make some headway on HR tomorrow to make up for it.

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Made a lot of ME2 progress today.

Recruited Samara and Tali. Samara kinda seems cool, but she doesn't seem too popular so I'll see how that goes. I really liked Tali's recruitment mission, adding in the overly intense sun was a nice touch.

Did Miranda, Garrus and Thane's loyalty missions. Miranda's was very touching, didn't enjoy Thane's too much, but it was nice for world building. Now Garrus' on the other hand was phenomenal. I really enjoyed seeing how dark his mentality has become over the past two years and Shepard purposely standing in his sights was great. Really eager to see how Tali turns out.

I also feel more connected with this cast than in ME1. Like the only one I really liked in 1 was Wrex. Like everyone else was fine, but my Partners for every single mission was Wrex and Garrus, here I feel obligated to switch them out.

Also cleared the Collector Ship. Such a great level, the major plot twist was really cool as well as the new questions it raised about the Reapers following Shepard and the Illusive Man's motives. Plus it had really cool atmosphere.


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Did the next story mission where you get Legion (who is really cool btw). I also have everyone but Jack and Legion's Loyalty Missions done.

I think I enjoyed Tali's the most. So much so that I decided to romance here. I went for Liara in the original, but Tali has become a much cooler character since then and she's almost as cool as Wrex at this point.

Will likely finish the game tomorrow or Saturday

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ZenOfThunder posted...

here is the zenofthunder ranking with no explanation:

Zaeed > Kasumi > Jack > Tali > Garrus > Mordin > Legion > Miranda > Thane > Grunt > Jacob > Samara

i guarantee you will not find another person in the world with this character ranking

Zaeed in first - maybe I should've shelled out for his DLC after all. Our rankings aren't too different over all, with my top 3 still being fairly high on yours and some agreement on the bottom couple of characters. Do you usually romance Jack? Since you've played the game a few more times, have you ever sided with Morinth over Samara, and if so, would you rank her any higher than her mom?

BetrayedTangy posted...

I actually have a little respect for Heavy Rain, pretty sure it was one of if not the first game of its kind. Paving the way for much better games.

Even without that though I like it for some easy laughs, sort of like The Room

It is something of a pioneering game, yes. People who like Telltale's stuff or Life is Strange might owe a little bit of thanks to Heavy Rain for popularizing the whole mostly QTE-based branching narrative game, although some of HR's mechanics were already done by Cage's own Farenheit and even Shenmue.

Incidentally, the playthrough of Heavy Rain that I watched was Slowbeef's "wifestream:"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9bFb3kpKeM

I played about two hours of the game today, which is just enough time for the game to establish the basic plot. Calling this "slow-paced" is a bit of an understatement. The game opens with protagonist Ethan Mars getting out of bed, taking a shower, and then getting dressed, all of which we have to manipulate using a slightly cumbersome set of controls. What, no special interaction for making the bed, David Cage? I guess the takeaway is that Ethan is a slob.

There's an anime called 21 Emon that also starts with the main character waking up and having a shower, but the crucial difference is the whole thing takes about 10 seconds in that and more like 10 minutes in Heavy Rain. Aside from this glacial pacing, the most immediately apparent thing about the game is that it has a really bizarre control scheme. It kind of works like the old tank controls in Resident Evil, except you have to hold down R2 to move forward. I also hate the QTEs that require you to move the entire controller around.

In any case, the essential purpose of this opening is to give us some emotional investment in Ethan and his family, so that it's at least a little bit impactful in the very next scene when Ethan's 10-year-old son wanders off into traffic and gets fatally run over. This scene and a later one where his brother, now around the same age, needs a teddy bear to go to sleep made me realize that David Cage writes based on the Sims school of child development, where there's no real difference between a toddler and a 12 year old and kids only start to acquire higher brain functions when they hit the teens. Then again, Ethan hasn't displayed much in the way of higher brain functionality yet either.

This writeup to be concluded tomorrow morning.

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Evillordexdeath posted...

Zaeed in first - maybe I should've shelled out for his DLC after all. Our rankings aren't too different over all, with my top 3 still being fairly high on yours and some agreement on the bottom couple of characters. Do you usually romance Jack? Since you've played the game a few more times, have you ever sided with Morinth over Samara, and if so, would you rank her any higher than her mom?

People usually are indifferent to or hate Zaeed, I absolutely love him, I know people don't like him because he's a dick but I think he's a ton of fun to have around. If you bring him to Garrus' recruitment mission at the end when Garrus gets exploded if you have Zaeed with you he's the only party member to react negatively, he just says very bluntly "E'S NOT GONNA MAKE IT" and i love that, he really doesn't fit in and he always makes me laugh. his voice is great too. i also really enjoy his entire thing is that whenever he is on a group mission everyone dies but him, so i always have him lead the fire team in the suicide mission (he's not qualified for it even if he's loyal) and make it so that he's the only one that dies in the end, i feel like it's super poetic

i almost always romance jack even when i start a run and don't want to, i am super into bald tattooed chicks, i also like the contrast between her and paragon shepard, it's an opposites attract kinda thing

I chose morinth ONCE, what a fucking waste, she just acts like her mom most of them time and is barely morinth, also if you romance her before the suicide mission you fucking die, honestly really lame and underutilized. theres also a bunch of scripting errors where the game forgets shes morinth showing how little care they put into it

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I also think that Jack might develop more as a character if Shepard romances her. What arc she has is about learning to trust again but that isn't very pronounced normally. I think it helps her case if she's doing that through a romantic bond with Shepard.

That's too bad about Morinth. I don't mind how you die if you romance her. The game does warn you and it's kind of funny, but otherwise picking her up definitely seems like a let-down.

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Yesterday I talked about Heavy Rain's opening, where we see Ethan bumble around his house on a normal day for a little while followed by his son's accidental death. The next scene after that is essentially the sad version of the prologue. Ethan spends a day with his surviving son Shaun, making dinner and helping him with homework while time slowly ticks by in a manner very reminiscent of Shenmue. Like that game, it leads to a lot of waiting around for enough time to pass that the plot moves on, and was probably the most boring part of the game yet. In typical Cage fashion, it really exaggerates how much Ethan's life has deteriorated, with him now divorced and living in a small beat-up looking house and Shaun now awkward and emotionally distant. He spends the whole day repeatedly watching a twenty second loop of French animation. Once the kid is in bed, Ethan experiences a blackout and comes to in the middle of the street.

Heavy Rain has four player characters, and I got introduced to two of the others: the private detective Scott Shelby and most people's favorite character in FBI Agent Norman Jayden. The actual plot of this game revolves around a serial killer called the Origami Killer who targets little boys. Ethan can read about the Killer in a newspaper but at first only Scott and Norman are concerned with him. If anyone is reading this without having played Heavy Rain, I imagine you can guess how Ethan will fit into this plot.

Scott has a short section where he interviews a prostitute whose son was one of the victims. Once he leaves, an aggressive ex-client breaks into the woman's apartment and Scott has to fight him off via a long section of quick time events. I guess there can be a little bit of tension to these sequences and I like how failing at a couple of the prompts can make a fight scene more evenly-matched. This might also provide the game's first substantial choice where Scott can just walk away without fighting, but I didn't try it so he might refuse to leave in that case, similar to how Ethan will refuse to go downstairs in his underwear in the prologue.

Norman's section contained the closest thing to substantial gameplay so far with a sort of investigation sequence. Norman has a special glove and pair of glasses that can instantly identify clues for him and you walk around the area spamming a little hand-gesture that tags things in a short radius for you to examine. For now he just examines the body of one of the Origami Killer's victims and finds some footprints and tire tracks. I also had him stumble very gracelessly up a steep hill you climb by QTE, and fall his way down afterward, so that was funny.

Finally, Ethan has a section where he hangs out with Shaun at a park, has one of his blackouts, and finds a paper dog at his house once he comes to and returns, looking for his now-missing son. I imagine his ex will have some harsh words when she learns that he has now lost the other one. The dog course signifies that the Origami Killer has taken Shaun. One thing I can say after both this and Jason's death scene is that I don't think I'm feeling the things David Cage wants me to feel. Instead of tragic, so far the game is intermittently very funny and extremely boring.

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yo dude you watch finally arrived, i'm going to ship everything sometime early next week after the (american) holiday

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Finished Mass Effect 2 today. So I find it really interesting how ME2 is almost the reverse of ME1. I really got into the first entries variety in gameplay. I honestly enjoyed the rover missions and I felt like the powers were a lot more useful there. You actually had to strategize. However the story was incredibly generic. The Geth were your typical evil robots and I found Saren to be pretty generic.

Mass Effect 2 on the other hand had a much cooler story. It had a great opening and ending that leaves plenty of hype for ME3 and there's plenty of twists and turns along the way. Plus the cast is overall much cooler and get some great backstory with the Loyalty Missions. I do really agree with what you said though Exdeath. It's a really basic shooter, there's not much variety or strategy and a most of the time I was just worrying about ammo, also yeah constantly having to scan planets just for upgrades became really dull really fast. It was serviceable though, which makes me think 2 > 1

Crew Rankings: Tali > Mordin > Grunt > Garrus > Thane > Legion > Miranda > Jacob > Samara >Jack

Also in regards to Heavy Rain, I'm loving your description of it so far, it's really bringing out the humor of that game.

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exdeath make sure you are checking your character's thoughts as often as possible in heavy rain, everyone always forgets it's an option (as far as i've seen from LPs)

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I am one trophy away from getting the platinum on Heavy Rain. My new alternate title for this game is Heavy QTE. I have enjoyed it more than I should, and its definitely unintentionally hilarious at times.

One of my favorite moments:

Lauren, 130 pound woman who has just taken a shower: I took the liberty of borrowing your bathrobe. (It fits her perfectly)
Scott, a seemingly 300+ pound man and owner of the bathrobe: It looks better on you!

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ZenOfThunder posted...

yo dude you watch finally arrived, i'm going to ship everything sometime early next week after the (american) holiday

Nice! I'm looking forward to it!

BetrayedTangy posted...

Finished Mass Effect 2 today. So I find it really interesting how ME2 is almost the reverse of ME1. I really got into the first entries variety in gameplay. I honestly enjoyed the rover missions and I felt like the powers were a lot more useful there. You actually had to strategize. However the story was incredibly generic. The Geth were your typical evil robots and I found Saren to be pretty generic.

Mass Effect 2 on the other hand had a much cooler story. It had a great opening and ending that leaves plenty of hype for ME3 and there's plenty of twists and turns along the way. Plus the cast is overall much cooler and get some great backstory with the Loyalty Missions. I do really agree with what you said though Exdeath. It's a really basic shooter, there's not much variety or strategy and a most of the time I was just worrying about ammo, also yeah constantly having to scan planets just for upgrades became really dull really fast. It was serviceable though, which makes me think 2 > 1

Crew Rankings: Tali > Mordin > Grunt > Garrus > Thane > Legion > Miranda > Jacob > Samara >Jack

Also in regards to Heavy Rain, I'm loving your description of it so far, it's really bringing out the humor of that game.

Yeah, refining the Mako gameplay rather than removing it altogether would probably have been the way to go. ME2 does kind of expose how it was an essential ingredient in the first game just to add a little more variety. I definitely got a lot more invested in the story and characterization in the second game, which I would say is the main reason I liked it a lot better. It looks like our character ratings are quite similar. Tali/Mordin/Garrus being near the top and the humans being near the bottom is a common point of view from what I've seen.

Thanks for the compliment! That is kind of what I'm trying to do with Heavy Rain. I think the game is probably best experienced by playing it with a friend and making fun of it, which is how I went through Detroit, but I'm trying to replicate that kind of experience as best as possible through text.

ZenOfThunder posted...

exdeath make sure you are checking your character's thoughts as often as possible in heavy rain, everyone always forgets it's an option (as far as i've seen from LPs)

When I played it tonight there was a moment when I realized I was neglecting that. I'll try to make more use of it going forward, because it does seem funny most of the time.

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Today I picked up at the scene where Norman gets introduced to the office space at the local police precinct, where he will be working for the duration of the Origami Killer case. The most notable part about this chapter is the classic scene where Norman is tasked to tie up another man's necktie. Due to the unwieldy controls, this is one of the most difficult tasks in the game! The man struggles to do his own tie at first, but if you fail for long enough he will stop you and tie it perfectly on his own, which makes me think it's some kind test of Norman's masculinity, where the local cops won't respect him until he shows that he can tie a necktie.

With that test passed, Norman has access to his new office. Ever the man of priorities, he cleans up and fiddles with his little FBI hologram device to make it look like he's underwater before he starts working on the serial murder case he's investigating. After going over the clues the player gathered before, he concludes that he doesn't know shit about the case yet.

Norman is dealing with a smack habit, and starts withdrawing in his office. There are apparently two ways to get through these withdrawals: one is to take another dose, and the other is to wash his face. I've still got the team mom instincts going from ME2, so my intention is to try and help him kick. This is a kind of extra challenge where he gets the shakes and you have to hold down a lot of buttons to help him stay steady enough to reach the bathroom without falling over and embarrassing himself.

Ethan comes into the precinct and we briefly take control of him in order to give testimony. The game asks you to remember details like what time it was when Shaun disappeared and what the kid was wearing. I must have given them terrible information, because I couldn't remember for the life of me and ended up making blind guesses. I can't help but imagine that David Cage pictured every player being so enraptured with his game that they would answer perfectly. Ethan really does get chewed out by his wife for losing his second kid, which makes sense, but the dialog and acting are just so stilted. I don't think I can do justice to it by description. I wonder if it's any better in French.

Scott "the fighter" was next up. He goes to interview another reluctant parent of an Origami Killer at a convenience store, when a mugger tries to rob the still at gunpoint. Scott sneaks up and knocks the guy unconscious. The whole thing is quite convenient, really, since it convinces the shopkeep to testify. Thanks robber man! The guy shows Scott a box of clues that the Origami Killer sent him just after abducting his son. I don't really see much point in this scene, because Ethan has to go about picking up a similar box of clues to Shaun's location shortly afterward, and that sequence is kind of undermined since the player already knows what he will find. One thing that is kind of nice is the apparent irony of the shopkeep saying that this encounter has restored his faith in the goodness of humanity, when the person who gave him that faith is in fact his son's killer

But in terms of baffling pointlessness, it has nothing on the next scene, which introduces our fourth and final player character, Madison Paige, who wakes up on the couch in her apartment. From the training of the prologue my first instinct was to have her get dressed, but she is some kind of anti-Ethan and refuses to do anything but wander around the apartment in her underwear. Madison bumbles around her apartment for a little while before some masked men break in and assault her. The best possible outcome for the resulting QTE spree is that she gets far enough away to hide in the bathroom, but then another man appears behind her and slits her throat, whereupon it's revealed that the whole sequence was a dream. This is how the character is introduced! The only possible reason I can think of for this to be included is that the devs thought the last couple of scenes might have seemed a little slow-paced and a scene like this would get people on the edge of their seats, but then why do we spend 10 minutes wandering around Maddy's apartment? That was one of the most sleep-inducing parts so far!

Incidentally, there's a lot of criticism around the sexualization of Madison's character. I don't want to dismiss such concerns entirely, but to be fair to Cage we haven't seen her bare ass yet, which regrettably cannot be said of Ethan. Perhaps part of it is just the more liberal European attitude toward nudity.

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Evillordexdeath posted...

Scott "the fighter" was next up.

Haha this made me laugh. He's such an overly aggressive character and it's really fun to amplify that with the gameplay choices.

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BetrayedTangy posted...

Haha this made me laugh. He's such an overly aggressive character and it's really fun to amplify that with the gameplay choices.

I will say that his first few levels have given me the impression that whenever it's his chapter, there's gonna be a fight. This generally makes me look forward to his chapters!

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So Ethan gets his mail from the Origami Killer, with directions to open a safety deposit box for more clues. In one of the more hilarious scenes in the game so far, he has to navigate a crowded station of some kind, and displays a phobia of large groups of people, brought on by Jason's death. Just in case you thought the normal walking controls weren't bad enough, you have to alternately press the shoulder buttons at each step in this sequence. Between the shower scene at the start and this gameplay based around unsteady walking, this game is actually reminding me a lot of Death Stranding. I almost wish it was the first game of the project so I could make jokes about those two bookending the decade.

This part is also a little bit reminiscent of Mass Effect 3, to bring the theming a little closer, because Ethan has a hallucination brought on by the guilt of failing to save Jason. Time seems to stand still and he hallucinates Jason, still holding his balloon. What makes this scene especially fun is that whenever you bump into a passerby, they crumple to the floor in a funny ragdoll motion. You're supposed to follow Jason, but I eventually became more interested in crumpling up as many NPCs as I could. Eventually the game got tired of this and just moved me onto the next scene.

Norman Jayden gave a little presentation on the Origami Killer at the police precinct. One cop he had met earlier arbitrarily started being a complete dick to him, presumably because he had gone home the night before, watched some hackneyed police dramas, and learned that the FBI and the local police are supposed to antagonize each other. Since they get along so well, he and Norman partnered up to go interview a suspect, who was a delusional religious zealot whose apartment was covered in crucifixes from top to bottom. He's not home when Norman and his buddy barge in, but returns while they're rooting around and pulls a gun on the local cop. I think you have the option to just blow the guy's brains out, but I decided to try and talk him down. This is a decent concept. It's kind of similar to a quest in the original Fallout where you can persuade your way through a hostage situation. The major difference is that in that game you could read out the dialog choices in full and the logic you used to de-escalate things at least made some degree of sense. In Heavy Rain you have single words flying around your character's head like little moons and a time limit, so you just pick options at random. I somehow convinced the suspect to give up by sort of playing along with his delusions and then immediately reverting to the normal cop routine of telling him to drop his gun and put his hands on his head. Whatever works, I guess - at least the other officer was impressed.

Lastly, I did a scene with Scott. No fight this time, I'm afraid. He goes to interview the mother of another victim but finds her in the middle of a suicide attempt, bandages her up, and then takes care of her child for a little while. He doesn't learn much of anything new as far as I remember, except that this woman's husband went missing immediately after her son, which kind of implies that the little trials the Origami Killer puts dads through present mortal danger.

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suspect, who was a delusional religious zealot whose apartment was covered in crucifixes from top to bottom.

I actually enjoyed this chapter. I had been waiting for the game to get more atmospheric, and this location had me intrigued.

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wallmasterz posted...

suspect, who was a delusional religious zealot whose apartment was covered in crucifixes from top to bottom.

I actually enjoyed this chapter. I had been waiting for the game to get more atmospheric, and this location had me intrigued.

I think a lot of this game's story can be kind of fun as long as you acknowledge how silly it is, and this scene kind of fits in with that. It's too exaggerated to really grab my attention, but it was fun for what it was.

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Today's session began with Ethan's first trial for the Origami Killer, which involved driving into oncoming traffic for a bit. I fucked up several of the QTEs, and the car ended up crashing and lighting on fire, but the game awarded me the "good driver" trophy in any case. It turns out the clue was in the locked glove compartment all along.

The way this works is that for each trial you pass, Ethan gets a few more letters out of the address to where Shaun is. I know it's possible for him to guess the correct location without passing every single trial. I think you can fail one or maybe two.

I had been wondering what the point of Madison as a player character was. Apparently it's to patch up Ethan after every single trial. Apart from the random dream sequence that introduced her, that's all she's done thus far. Ethan's car accident led to a few shattered ribs, and when he returns to the motel he's been staying at, he bumps into Madison, who helps him to his room and gives him some painkillers. After his second trial, which involved crawling over broken glass and climbing around electrical wires, she takes his shirt off to dress his wounds and apply ointment to the burns. This is probably in part because David Cage has a Holden Caulfield style fantasy about being cared for by a doting woman, if I had to speculate.

Next was the scene where Norman chases another suspect through a marketplace. I took Zen's advice and refrained from pressing any buttons for the first little while, which did make an already very silly chase sequence even funnier. The guy tries to give you the slip by scattering ice cubes on the ground and unlocking a chicken coop so the livestock flutter in your face as you try to run after him, and you corner him in a meat freezer for a dramatic fight scene. He turns out to be absolutely no one, and claims to have given Norman all this trouble because he had been violating his parole curfew and was afraid Norman was after him for that. Seems a little drastic, but okay.

Lauren, the prostitute Scott spoke to for his first chapter, showed up at his apartment and offered him some extra evidence in exchange for letting her partner with him. He accepted and brought her to a party where he was planning to interview some rich guy's suspicious son, but all she did was sit on the couch and complain about how much the party sucked! You're the one who insisted on coming, Lauren! Scott has to trick some bodyguards to get upstairs, where the guy throwing the party is sitting on his own watching another short loop of French animation. Makes you wonder why he bothered with a party in the first place. Perhaps he'd have more fun hanging out with Shaun, since they have shared interests. Scott questions the guy and he confesses to being the Origami Killer, and then sics his bodyguards on Scott. Naturally, the seasoned fighter takes them both down with no effort, but then he just leaves. Later the guy's dad invites Scott to golf, tries to bribe him into leaving his son alone, and then threatens him when that doesn't work.

Back at the police precinct, Ethan's wife comes in to tell the cops how suspicious Ethan is. Norman and his ornery partner, Carter Blake, then go out to interview a shrink we saw Ethan speak to earlier, who refuses to testify because of his oath of client confidentiality. Since Carter is a complete dick, he starts trying to beat the information out of the guy. I had Norman tell him to cut it out, whereupon the therapist just spilled his guts anyway. What he said basically boils down to "yeah, Ethan Mars is the Origami Killer, lol," so now the cops are after Ethan, and we have a direct conflict between two of our player characters. There's a scene in Detroit that parallels this very closely.

I'll probably play a little more soon.

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There's a REALLY stupid out-of-universe reason why Ethan is suspected to be the Origami Killer.

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Haha that therapist is awful. Ethan blames himself for Jason's death, so he likely blames himself for Shaun as well, leading him to becoming delusional about potentially being the killer. I don't think any therapist worth their salt would believe he actually is the killer. And that's not even accounting him breaking the privacy of his patient.

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A deleted plot element involved Ethan developing a psychic link with the Origami Killer, who was present when Jason died, thus explaining Ethan's blackouts. This was removed because the developers thought it was too ridiculous, but it was too late in production to re-write the script in turn.

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And so they simply didnt explain it at all. Not exactly the modern peak of storytelling!

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Haha yeah like that would be the most ridiculous thing in the game

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LinkMarioSamus posted...

A deleted plot element involved Ethan developing a psychic link with the Origami Killer, who was present when Jason died, thus explaining Ethan's blackouts. This was removed because the developers thought it was too ridiculous, but it was too late in production to re-write the script in turn.

That definitely would have been a little absurd. I'm not sure it would've been totally out of place for me, alongside the over the top fight scenes.

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I picked up at one of the most well-regarded scenes in the game, which is Ethan's third trial. The challenge is this: he has five minutes to cut his own finger off in front of the camera. It's definitely an intense scene, and it does make good use of the medium for once by forcing the player to go through with it. It's kind of reminiscent of certain scenes in Telltale's Walking Dead or even MGS3 in that way. Now, I mentioned before that Ethan can find Shaun without passing every trial, and that invites players to try for a truly perfect ending where not only does everyone survive, but Ethan gets to keep all his fingers. Personally though I tried to reduce the meta-gaming and chopped off his pinky.

In the next scene you play as Madison. The police have found Ethan's car outside of the apartment where he chopped his finger off and are about to arrest him, and as Madison you can help him get away. I'm pretty sure this is an example of how David Cage fails to understand which of his characters have access to what information, because I don't remember it being established that Madison knew where Ethan was or that the police were about to arrest him. Maybe she could've found his origami figures - it is possible to inspect the box when you're playing as her earlier, but she doesn't unfold the figures or anything. In any case, you go through some QTEs to drag Ethan through a subway station and give the fuzz the slip, while he practically bleeds out from his freshly mutilated extremity. This scene in particular is repeated almost verbatim in Detroit!

Incidentally, I re-watched parts of the old Wifestream playthrough, which is notable because it gives you some insight into how a more inept playthrough of Heavy Rain proceeds. It's actually possible to fuck up this escape sequence and get Ethan arrested, in which case Norman, who doesn't think he's the Origami Killer, will bust him out. This is one of the more ridiculous things to happen in the game, both in terms of Norman's motivation for taking on such huge risks to his career to do it and in terms of how it actually plays out. Ethan basically puts on a police poncho and walks out of the crowded precinct without being noticed! Likewise, I don't think there's enough reason for Madison to aid a fugitive like this. Her nursing Ethan back to health I can buy as the act of a good samaritan, but this is a little bit much, especially since she still helps Ethan when he confesses to being the Origami Killer, since the case for that is supposedly so convincing that even Ethan himself believes it.

But in my version of the story, Ethan gets away and the police have the media announce that he's a serial killer at large, but Norman still doesn't believe it and wants to hunt down the real murderer. He finds some security camera footage of a car that matches the tires tracks he found at the last crime scene, and connects that car to a shady salesman named Mad Jack, who he goes to interrogate.

Scott goes to visit an old friend who runs an antique shop, and asks him about the font on the envelope Lauren received from the Origami Killer. The guy identifies it and goes to get a list of clients who have either purchased or paid for repairs to the model of typewriter it matches, but while Scott and Lauren wait for him the Origami Killer busts in and murders him. Scott doesn't want to waste time explaining things to the police when Shaun's time is ticking away, so he wipes down everything he's touched since he came in and books it. That is kind of a nice idea for a setpiece in a game like this, but the scene is also notoriously illogical when you know the Killer's identity. Scott could have avoided the need for this murder by just refraining from mentioning the type as a clue to Lauren, who wouldn't have known better, and the time frame of the scene makes no sense. There are a few seconds worth of shots of Lauren looking at a music box, and we're supposed to believe that in this time Scott could walk across the building, murder the antique dealer, call the cops, and then walk back. That's to say nothing of how off his thoughts are if you press L2 and listen to them.

I apparently wiped everything down, but if you do mess up there's a short scene of a policeman telling Scott not to leave town and then letting him go free.

Ethan's next trial involves killing a man. He's a dealer, and after Ethan pulls a pistol on him he knocks the gun away and then retaliates with a big ass shotgun. Very American scene. You can fail to get the clue by messing up the QTEs in the resultant fight scene, in which case the guy will just throw you out after missing several shotgun blasts, and you can also choose to spare him, which I ultimately did. Looks like I'll have to guess the position of a few letters in the endgame.

Madison pays a visit to the owner of the apartment where Ethan cut his finger off, as a possible connection to the real Origami Killer. I don't know how she learned who that was as a photographer with no connections, but I won't fault the game too much for that because it probably would be possible. The guy offers her a drink which he unsurprisingly drugs and then ties her up and tries to murder her with a power drill to the crotch. Starting to see where some of the sexualization complaints come from here. Keep in mind that he admits he doesn't know anything about the renter or what he's up to. This guy is just a random unrelated psychopath. Madison manages to struggle out of her bonds while the guy deals with a convenient religious door to door solicitor, and then overpowers him and terminates him with his own would be murder weapon, after which she robs his house for clues.

In a similar scene, Norman goes to talk to his car thief lead, finds out that the killer's car has been here and that Mad Jack has been murdering cops and dissolving their bodies in acid, and then has to fight him to the death after his withdrawals kick in very inconveniently during the middle of him arresting the guy. As much of a prick as Blake is, Norman probably should have brought him along for backup. This just might be the most over the top fight scene yet, with Norman busting his way out of a car as Mad Jack drops it into a mechanical grinder by forklift, followed by a wrestling match to try and knock each other over such that the loser gets crushed under the forklift's treads, which Norman ultimately wins, though it is possible for him to croak here if you mess up the button prompts.

Finally, Lauren took a list of customers from the antique shop and checks it against subscribers to an origami magazine, and the one match belongs to a John Sheppard, who died at ten (I could've sworn he lived to adulthood and saved humanity from the reapers, but I might have him confused with someone else.) They visit the kid's grave and learn from a caretaker that his brother watched him drown after an accident at play in a building site, a strong indication that he grew up to be the Origami Killer. As they leave, Scott notices the rich guy he played Golf with earlier leaving flowers at John's grave.

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wallmasterz posted...

And so they simply didnt explain it at all. Not exactly the modern peak of storytelling!

Yeah, Ethan's blackouts have no real explanation thanks to the change. They just didn't think a lot of things through!

BetrayedTangy posted...

Haha yeah like that would be the most ridiculous thing in the game

I was tempted to say this too but felt like being diplomatic.

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I watched an LP of the game earlier this year, and have seen a fair number in the past too.

Pretty sure it's implied Madison has just been following Ethan around. Wow that sounded much better in my head.

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I love how this game wants to be a gritty crime drama, but there's all these 'bosses' that are just over the top lunatics.

Also I will say Ethan's mission where he has to kill the drug dealer might be the only part of this game that actually felt kind of heavy. Especially if you choose to execute him.

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LinkMarioSamus posted...

I watched an LP of the game earlier this year, and have seen a fair number in the past too.

Pretty sure it's implied Madison has just been following Ethan around. Wow that sounded much better in my head.

Alright, I'll let that one slide then. That works well enough even if the motives behind it aren't very believable.

BetrayedTangy posted...

I love how this game wants to be a gritty crime drama, but there's all these 'bosses' that are just over the top lunatics.

Also I will say Ethan's mission where he has to kill the drug dealer might be the only part of this game that actually felt kind of heavy. Especially if you choose to execute him.

The number of psychopaths the main characters run into is pretty comical, yeah. It shows David Cage's lack of subtlety as a writer.

For me the cutting off the finger scene is the most intense, but that part is as complex as the game's morality gets. If it means saving Shaun, it's a life for a life, and you can argue the ethics of it at least a little bit. That's undermined a bit by how easy it is to save the kid without killing the guy off though.

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Alright, I've finished Heavy Rain! Let's go over the last few chapters.

Madison follows up on the info she got robbing the home of that guy she murdered to a nightclub. She decided to use the old feminine wiles to get to the proprietor, and then knocked him out, bound him, and extorted information through testicular trauma, which I've always thought was a low method to the point where I almost sympathized with him over her, even though David Cage went far out of his way to establish how much of a scumbag the guy was. She learns John Sheppard's name from this effort.

Norman visits the same guy immediately afterward, but the Origami Killer, here represented as a tall skinny guy in a mask and trenchcoat puts him down just before Jayden can arrive. They have a little tussle in the dead man's apartment, and the Origami Killer displays his skill in hand to hand combat by easily thwarting the wimpy FBI operative and then scarpers. Norman is left behind to pick over the crime scene. He finds Madison's prints but never does anything with them. More importantly, he picks up a pistol left behind by the O.K.

Back at the apartment complex, Ethan mopes about how he didn't have the will to blow the drug dealer's brains out even when his son's life depended on it. As Madison tries to console him the player is treated to a truly pivotal choice between "kiss" and "don't kiss." I went for kiss, which resulted in a hilariously awkward player-controlled sex scene. Madison must really get turned on by guys with injuries, because this romantic subplot is about as forced as it gets. Once that's over with, Lieutenant Egregious Asshole Blake shows up with a swat team to arrest Ethan and he has to spend a full ten minutes clambering around the rooftops to get away, followed by a GTA-style commandeering of a taxi and a quick drive off to his last trial.

The rich dad from earlier breaks into Scott's apartment, has his goons K.O. Scott (whose fighting skills don't come into play for once,) and leaves him and Lauren tied up in a sinking car. Scott unties himself and carries an unconscious Lauren to the shore. You can also just leave her to drown if you want. I guess it's nice to have player choice, but that seems a little irrational. Afterward, Scott drives through the walls of rich dad's mansion, shoots up wave after wave of armed guards while tanking their own shots with his huge gut, and then confronts rich dad, who reveals that the whole subplot with his son was essentially a big fat red herring. He was a kind of Origami Killer imitator responsible for only one of the victims. Then he randomly has a heart attack and the player chooses whether to save him or let him die. For the record, I saved him.

Although the police saw Madison act as his accomplice last time, they don't seem to make any effort to bring her in, and she goes off to see Ann Sheppard, the Origami Killer's geriatric mum. She has to show the old broad various objects from around the room, and finally give her some flowers, before she spills the O.K.'s name, whispering it outside of the player's hearing for the extra suspense. Madison has never encountered Scott before and doesn't know who he is, but still acts shocked and then scoots straight to his apartment.

For Ethan's last trial, he has to drink a vial of lethal poison in front of the camera. It supposedly gives him an hour to live, which is just enough to save Shaun. Of course, it's a total bluff on the killer's part, and even if you swallow the stuff Ethan lives to save his son. Since I didn't kill the guy earlier, I had to guess between three different locations, but I figured out the right one because you can hold up the phone and hear a foghorn noise, and it's the only one near a river.

Norman figures out who the killer was by investigating the gun he found, which turned out to have been confiscated as evidence by police and then checked out by someone, narrowing down the location with some gas station receipts that belonged to the murderer, and then finding out that only one cop, current or former, lived in that zone. Quite impressive to manage it without mutilating himself, though he did have to kill a guy. In this run, Ethan is the only player character who hasn't committed a murder!

Next is the second half of the Origami Killer's flashback, where he tries to get his dad to save his bro only to be beaten and ignored. The scene also reveals that Scott is the killer. His whole motivation has been to find a father who would lift a finger to save his son. Now, it's pretty odd that Scott would respond to an experience like this by killing more young boys, but we'll leave that aside. He's been collecting evidence under the cover of a P.I. and burning it to hide his crimes. I guess this does explain why he had to kill the antique salesman, since he would want to keep using his typewriter for theoretical future crimes.

Madison goes to Scott's office and quickly finds Shaun's location on a computer in his hidden orchid growing room, but Shelby shows up and locks her in his apartment and then sets it on fire, leaving a canister of gas to explode. Madison uses the tried and true Indiana Jones trick of hiding in the fridge. It's as logical as it was there, and then she just kind of escapes the still-burning apartment offscreen. She can also call either of the other two player characters to tell him the location, even though in this run she doesn't know who Norman is or that he's sympathetic or Ethan.

So I successfully got everyone to the big final showdown. In this variation, Ethan's job is to rescue his son and perform CPR, Norman's job is to inexplicably beat down Scott the Fighter, and Madison's job is to help Ethan get out afterward without being shot full of holes by Lieutenant Dickhead and his police squad. After losing to Norman in the fight scene, Scott falls into another one of those mechanical car grinders, which is a very Disney Villain death for a gritty crime drama. All that's left after that is a quick wrap-up ending: Ethan, Madison, and Shaun move into a nice apartment together, Norman gets a nice interview on a talk show for finding the Origami Killer, and a betrayed Lauren spits on Scott's grave. Apparently there are some ways to keep Scott alive and get him to surrender to police, so I sort of missed out on the perfect ending.

Final Thoughts on Heavy Rain coming later - probably tomorrow.

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