Method Acting 101: Performance and Improvisation
Heavy Rain
To best elaborate on what I mean by “performance and improvisation,” I’d highlight a quote from Anna Anthropy, author of the book Rise of the Videogame Zinesters, where she elaborates on how the player’s agency impacts a game’s story in subtle ways:
[We, as game storytellers,] are not directing static stories take-by-take but rather arranging the scenes that will comprise the shape of our story. We can begin to think of the player as someone performing a role we’ve written rather than as an audience who experiences our story without any input as to its outcome. We allow room for improvisation, room for the player to make a role her own. (Anthropy 61)
Anthropy is emphasizing the importance of improvisation to the player experience, seemingly insignificant actions and choices that tune otherwise static characters toward the individual player’s vision for them. This notion of performing a character is perhaps most tangible when a game contains major built-in decisions that alter the game’s plot in significant ways, but it applies also to any minute improvisations that the player makes, little details that collectively create a version of the character that is uniquely the player’s.
Heavy Rain's design emphasizes player agency, encouraging the player to put their own performative spin on its story and characters
Heavy Rain is a game whose systems feel designed to account for exactly this kind of player agency. It’s a game whose marketing emphasized the degree of control players would have over both character and story through systems that ditched conventional video game formulas in favor of something more cinematically focused. For this reason, Heavy Rain is something of a contentious title in the video game community, but it’s also a near perfect example for observing how games allow for subtle displays of player agency within their established contexts.
Heavy Rain puts the player in control of four different protagonists, each with their own distinct background, personalities, and established goals that the player strives to perform. In a way, the game demands performative nuance from the player, for the purpose of both story and gameplay functionality. The player is offered countless choices over the course of the game, some of them inconsequential to the overarching plot, others with devastating repercussions for the story. The game only asks players to interact with scenes that fit into the story their choices have worked to establish, allowing them great control in shaping the arcs of each playable character in a manner defined equally by player agency and player ability.
Chapter "Father and Son," where the player isn't required to do anything specific, and is encouraged to improvise how they'd like to play the character
One of the earliest chapters of the game, titled “Father and Son,” places players in control of Ethan Mars between picking up his son from school and putting him to bed at night. The game condenses the hours within the chapter down to a few minutes, and imposes few restrictions on what the player can have Ethan do in that time, though Ethan’s thoughts (which the player has the option of reading at any time) gently nudge the player toward taking care of their son, Shaun. There is a schedule in the kitchen that lists out what the player should do with Shaun and at what time, involving ordinary fatherly activities like giving him a snack, making sure he does his homework, and putting him to bed at an appropriate hour.
The player may follow this schedule perfectly, stick to it loosely, or avoid these tasks altogether in favor of other distractions. This is all, too, contextualized by the game’s previous chapter, which saw Ethan go through the utterly traumatic event of losing his other son in a car accident. Though “Father and Son” takes place years later, Ethan is still deeply unsettled by this event, and the player, having just experienced it moments before, must navigate this scene while they, too, try to make sense of what has happened.
The number of possible combinations for how this chapter may be spent are many, but ultimately, however the player spends their time is insignificant to the events of the game. Later story points do not hinge on whether or not Ethan acted as an attentive or absent father in this scene, so why even have this sequence in the game to begin with? While what the player does in this chapter may not have profound influence on the overall plot, their actions here go a long way in establishing a nuanced portrayal of Ethan that will be different and appropriate for every player.
"These outcomes are not important for how they directly influence the game’s story, but for how they shape the player’s understanding of Ethan, which will inform how they continue to play Ethan throughout the game"
Perhaps the player follows the schedule, gets Shaun medicine when he sneezes, and finds his teddy bear when he goes to bed: they’ve established Ethan as a committed father who is doing his best for his son despite his grave circumstances.
Or perhaps the player ignores the schedule altogether, chooses to watch old videotapes upstairs or shoot baskets in the backyard while Shaun has to feed himself and put himself to bed: they’ve established Ethan as distracted by his inner-demons, perhaps even afraid of acknowledging his son because of how it reminds him of what he has lost.
These outcomes are not important for how they directly influence the game’s story, but for how they shape the player’s understanding of Ethan, which will inform how they continue to play Ethan throughout the game. The influence of these decisions do not come from the coding of the game itself, but from the impact the scene has on the player. Perhaps the heartbreaking scene of Shaun having to microwave his own pizza for dinner because the player neglected to take care of him will spark a guilt within the player that will later drive them to go to greater lengths to assure Shaun’s well-being; or perhaps the player’s attempts to connect with Shaun that fall flat will only further distance them from him, which could prove fatal once Ethan starts having to make decisions that put his life at risk for Shaun’s sake.
The subtlety of possibilities here would be impossible to build into a working function of the game, but no less contribute greatly to the overall arc that the player’s decisions establish for Ethan. While the events later in the game may be the same regardless of the player’s performance in this chapter, the meaning of those events is largely defined by the choices the player makes in moments like this.
Heavy Rain is packed with such subtle moments, giving the player a lot of room in which to improvise their performance of each character, but the game’s use of improvisation extends beyond these internally-significant moments. In fact, Heavy Rain often challenges the player, with the consequence of failure meaning severe ramifications for the plot altogether.
Certain scenes present challenges for the player, potentially with fatal consequences for the game's characters
Fail to hit the right buttons during the choreographed action sequences and a character may die, the rest of their story cut out of the game. Fail to find enough clues so as to solve a puzzle, and the character will actually fail and face repercussions as a result, not appearing where they otherwise would at vital points in the story. In this way, the challenge posed to the player becomes a kind of improvisation, where the player must perform to a certain quality in order to achieve a favorable outcome for their character, often with fatal repercussions for the story.
More often than not, video games have safety-nets built in to keep the player from ever failing beyond eventually overcoming an established challenge. In most games, dying only means restarting from the last checkpoint, failing a puzzle means starting over from the beginning, but there isn’t anything particularly permanent in the failure. Heavy Rain is different in that the tests it puts forth for the player are not obstacles that must be surpassed in order to progress, but are instead moments where the player's ability or inability to succeed determines the course of their story.
Should the player fail in a vital segment, their story isn’t delegitimized or brought to a full-stop, but continues on, the story and characters adapting to the outcomes of each individual scene. While in most games failure is treated as a speed-bump that only serves to frustrate the pacing of a game and allow for the player to build up a sense of challenge that they may eventually triumph over, Heavy Rain weaponizes failure as a storytelling tool. Fail to perform a task, and instead of getting the opportunity to just try again, you must live with your failure for the remainder of the game.
Crime scene investigation sequences challenge the player to locate and contextualize clues in order to find out more about the game's elusive killer. Whether the player succeeds or fails, the game still progresses, accounting for the player's success/failure in future sequences
The remarkable thing about this aspect of Heavy Rain is how cohesive the story remains despite the variability that is possible. If it were the case that losing a character too early meant that the remainder of the game felt vacant and broken, or that a near flawless playthrough meant that all the complexities of the game were solved in fairy-tale fashion, then this system would not be worth much.
Instead, it allows for a story that is driven by established contexts in the game (the characters, the plot, the options made available to players) made variable by the factor of a player’s performance, making it a story that maintains its internal logic and narrative cohesion whilst being able to take countless varying shapes and sizes dependent on the player’s performance. While its critics may say it’s more film than game, Heavy Rain's utilization of the player’s improvisational ability and performative quirks in the presentation of its story is something that could only be achieved in a video game.