Heavy Rain and Stanley Kubrick

Just a quick observation from playing "Heavy Rain" and being a huge Stanley Kubrick fan: I had heard before that Heavy Rain director David Cage was a Kubrick fan, and the game appears to have two clear allusions to Kubrick films.

First off, Norman Jayden sees an odd red-suited character while inside his ARI alternate reality system he uses to solve crimes. You can see what I'm talking about just briefly within the first thirty seconds of this video. Now, compare that to the bartender, Lloyd, who talks to Jack in "The Shining," pictured above. Start this video at 1:24 to see his role in the movie. Given that Cage is a Kubrick fan (in this interview, he says the game is inspired in part by Kubrick), this cannot be a coincidence that two semi-imagined characters in similar roles look so similar.

Now, there's also a similarity between "2001: A Space Odyssey"'s Louis XVI room at the very end of the film and Ethan Mars' fifth trial room. Skip all the way to 6:18 on this video if you want to see the final trial room, which I'll try not to spoil too badly here. Anyway, the room is completely unlike any of the other trials, being instead completely pristine and white. And if you compare the rooms side-by-side between "2001" and "Heavy Rain" it's just impossible not to see a similarity in their architecture and furniture.

The typical theory as to why the room at the end of "2001" has Louis XVI architecture is that the protagonist Bowman is trapped in an alien zoo that has tried to build their best idea of a human habitat. So why does "Heavy Rain" use the same sort of thing? Without spoiling it, I can't even begin to guess, and I'm not sure myself, anyway. Interesting, though.

Movies vs. Video Games: By the Genre

This post will discuss which medium has the expressive advantage in each common genre, movies or video games? I'm going to go by the genre, with possible other matchups in later posts.

Horror: Adv. to Video Games
In my opinion, video games have a slight advantage from the interactive nature of games. There is horror in asking "Why the hell are you goin' in there?" to characters in movies, but there is perhaps more horror when you know that you have to go in there, and you probably won't like what you find. Also, game cutscenes can use movie techniques to control where the camera can see if that's better. Oh, and in games you CAN actually die, while movies pretty much have to keep at least the main character alive.

Comedy: Adv. to Movies
Comedic timing is theoretically impossible during regular gameplay in a video game. Games can still use jokes and have funny cutscenes, but the expression is somewhat limited. The only redeeming factor is the extra hours of entertainment games give you and branching storypaths that can make a second time through better.

Action: Adv. to Video Games
Would you rather watch some badass cop on the edge shoot an explosive barrel between two terrorists that blows them up and directly into the dump next door, or would you rather be that badass cop? I think games win that one.

Documentary: Push
Right now, movies definitely win in the documentary category. However, games could make a better point by actually making a simulation of their situation and allowing players to simulate to better understand what's going on, sort of like Darfur is Dying.

Romance: Er... Movies
I'm just going to let movies have this one, both for balance and because I don't think Japanese dating sims really count.

Clearly, this blog has a bias, but I think I argue the points.