Heavy Rain
=== Characters ===
There are four main playable characters. The player controls one character at a time, generally playing different characters in each chapter of the game. The characters were voiced, motion captured, and modeled after several actors; the three males are modeled after their voice actors, while the female is modeled after a professional model. Some chapters in the game have the players play as multiple characters.
Ethan Mars: A professional architect who lives with his wife Grace and sons Shaun and Jason. After Jason dies in an accident that also leaves him comatose for several months, Ethan abandons his career and wife, moving into a smaller house with Shaun. He constantly fears for Shaun's life, develops severe agoraphobia, and suffers from unexplained blackouts. When Shaun is abducted by the Origami Killer, Ethan is forced to undergo a number of trials (danger, suffering, brutal suffering, murder, and sacrifice) for a chance to save him. He is both portrayed and voiced by Pascal Langdale.
Scott Shelby: A former police officer and Marine veteran who suffers from asthma. He is currently working as a private investigator, investigating the Origami Killer on behalf of Lauren Winter, the mother of the killer's second victim, Johnny Winter. He is both portrayed and voiced by Sam Douglas.
Norman Jayden: An FBI profiler sent from Washington to assist the task force hunting the Origami Killer. He uses the ARI, or "Added Reality Interface", an apparatus which consists of experimental augmented reality glasses and a single right hand glove that allows him to reconstruct crime scenes and process evidence quickly. Overuse of the ARI, however, has also left him addicted to triptocaine, a drug that temporarily cancels out the side effects of augmented reality. He has an antagonistic relationship with his partner, police lieutenant Carter Blake, which only worsens his addiction. He is both portrayed and voiced by Leon Ockenden.
Madison Paige: A young photojournalist who lives alone. She suffers from chronic insomnia, which occasionally manifests as nightmares about her own death. Her investigation into the Origami Killer is initially aimed at revitalizing her career, but she eventually develops feelings for Ethan; in fact, two of the game's endings involve them either grieving Shaun's death or living together as a family. She is portrayed by Jacqui Ainsley, but her facial animations and dialogue are provided by Judi Beecher.
GamesRadar praised the Origami Killer's role as an antagonist, putting them in their 2013 list of the best villains in video game history at number 42. That same year, Madison was ranked as the 41st greatest heroine in video game history by Complex.
=== Story ===
The day after celebrating his son Jason's 10th birthday, Ethan Mars and his family go shopping at a local mall. While buying some balloons from a clown, Ethan notices that Jason has wandered off and frantically searches for him. Eventually, he finds him outside in the middle of the street, right in the path of an oncoming car. Ethan tries to push him out of the way, but Jason is struck and killed. After waking up from a six-month coma, Ethan, blaming himself for Jason's death, divorces his wife and moves into a small suburban house. He develops severe mental trauma and starts experiencing blackouts at an alarming rate. Two years later, while at the park with Shaun, Ethan suddenly blacks out. When he wakes up, Shaun has vanished.
To his horror, he soon discovers that Shaun was kidnapped by the "Origami Killer", a serial murderer whose modus operandi consists of abducting young boys during the fall season, drowning them in rainwater, and leaving an orchid on their chests and an origami figure nearby as calling cards. FBI profiler Norman Jayden, brought in to assist with the hunt for the killer, investigates the death of another Origami victim and concludes that he died the same day as a violent rainstorm, which flooded the cell where he was kept. Based on weather patterns, he estimates that Shaun has only three days to live.
Besieged by reporters, Ethan checks into a motel. He receives a letter from the killer, which leads to a shoebox containing a mobile phone, a handgun, and five origami figures. The killer calls him and explains that each of the figures contains instructions on how to complete a trial, which will allow him to determine how much Ethan loves his son. If he chooses to complete them, then he will receive a piece of the address where Shaun is held. The trials force Ethan to make increasingly difficult moral decisions, including driving against traffic at high speeds on the highway, crawling through a maze composed of active electrical pylons, cutting off one of his fingers, breaking into the apartment of a drug dealer and murdering him in front of his family, and drinking a glass of poison on camera. While undergoing the trials, he meets Madison Paige, a journalist who occasionally checks into the motel to deal with her chronic insomnia. She sympathizes with Ethan's plight, and decides to conduct her own investigation into the Origami Killer.
Jayden and his partner, Lieutenant Carter Blake, investigate several suspects, including a butcher and a religious fanatic, but nothing pans out until Grace Mars arrives at the station, fearing that her former husband is involved in Shaun's disappearance. After Ethan's psychiatrist reveals that his patient has a history of blackouts, Blake and his superiors put out a warrant for his arrest. Unconvinced, Jayden continues to investigate other leads. During these events, private investigator Scott Shelby meets with the families of the Origami Killer's victims, collecting the letters and other items they received when their loved ones were abducted. One of them, a prostitute named Lauren Winter, persuades Scott to let her accompany him. Their investigation leads them to an attention-seeking playboy who claims to be the killer, but when they try to question him, they are knocked out and wake up in a car sinking to the bottom of a river. After getting Lauren to safety, Scott tracks down the kid's father and forces him to confess that he was responsible for an accident that occurred years before in which a little boy was killed.
=== Ending ===
Throughout the game, the player experiences two separate flashbacks that reveal the true nature of the Origami Killer. The first takes place 34 years earlier, with two twin brothers playing in a construction site. One of the two, John Sheppard, falls into a broken pipe and gets his leg trapped, just as a rainstorm causes the pipe to begin filling with water. The second occurs shortly after, with John's brother running home to warn their father, only to find him too drunk to help. Scared and confused, the boy could only watch helplessly as his brother drowned. Thus, the Origami Killer was born: a killer who searches for a father willing to sacrifice himself. He kills his victims the same way his brother died. The boy turns out to be Scott; after he reached adulthood, he changed his surname to Shelby. His actions as an investigator are not meant to get justice for his victims; rather, he needed to collect the evidence of his crimes, which he burns in his office wastebasket.
The final chapter of the game, titled The Old Warehouse, serves as the climax. Each of the three main characters (Ethan, Madison, and Norman) have the opportunity to find the warehouse where Shaun is, rescue him, and stop the Origami Killer, depending on their actions and choices throughout the game. In all, there are eight possible endings. If Ethan goes alone, he can either save Shaun or watch him die, and either spare or kill Shelby. Regardless of what he does, he will be shot dead by the police when he tries to escape. If all three make it, Ethan and Madison will have to save Shaun while Norman deals with Shelby. If Ethan fails to arrive or Norman dies, Madison can help the other one rescue Shaun and fight Shelby, and if neither arrive, Madison will perform the rescue and the fight herself. Once the chapter is complete, a series of clips and news reports will play, and then the player will learn what happened to each character. Each ending is determined by what occurred in the final chapter. The best ending shows Ethan and his son starting a family with Madison, Lauren spitting on Scott's grave after cursing his memory, and Norman retiring from the FBI to focus on treating his addiction. The worst shows Madison and Norman dead, with Ethan being successfully framed as the Origami Killer by Blake and Scott escaping in the chaos. Giving in to his pain, Ethan commits suicide in his cell.
=== Heavy Rain Chronicles ===
The Chronicles are prequel segments that take place during the initial murders of the Origami Killer. The first one, The Taxidermist, was released on 1 April 2010, available for purchase from the PlayStation Network. It was also included with the original game when pre-purchased from selected retailers. The original intention was for there to be four episodes which would focus on the main characters' backgrounds. In July 2010, David Cage of Quantic Dream announced that future downloadable content would be put on indefinite hiatus due to Heavy Rain: Move Edition taking up the production time allocated to the Chronicles. Once the Move Edition development was completed, the team planned to either go back to working on the Chronicles or move on. Ultimately, the team decided to cancel the rest of the series so that they could focus on Quantic Dream's next title, Beyond: Two Souls. In October 2014, Cage announced that Heavy Rain Chronicles has been cancelled and confirms that the team is currently not working on it.
The first and only episode, The Taxidermist, follows Madison as she visits Leland White, a taxidermist, to question him about the Origami Killer. Finding his house empty, Madison breaks in and discovers an upstairs area containing several female corpses, stuffed and posed in various positions (including a freshly killed cadaver in a bathroom), which Leland created in order to satisfy his agalmatophilia fetish. After collecting information, Madison hears Leland's car return. From here the player's actions can lead to several different endings – she can surprise Leland and kill him, be killed herself and added to his collection, escape, or contact the police and wait for them to arrest Leland. Regardless of what happens, it becomes clear that he has no connection to the Origami murders.
violence, flashback