The game never goes into her background, her motivations, her skills as a reporter, or the toll of all the harrowing situations in which she finds herself. I think that the perception of Madison would have been very different without this first scene where you share intimacy."While it is true that this scene shows her vulnerability and fragility, it does little explain her "as a character." Besides being an insomniac and having an inexplicable crush on Ethan, the only thing the player learns about Madison is that she is a constant target for sex, violence, and the combination thereof. You saw her really fragile and vulnerable and naked, and this is out of the way now, and then you can really start to like her as a character. "I think it really helps to build a relationship with the character. David Cage explains this scene by saying: At this point, most players will have completed a shower scene that contains several lingering shots of Madison's nude body, including a few focused directly on her breasts. As Denis states, "While violence visits all the characters in the game, there is a sense that all the scenes involving Madison have a tinge of sexual assault threatened on top of everything else." The perpetual threat of sexual violence is established in Madison's first scene, in which a group of attackers enter her apartment. Our friend Denis Farr wrote a comprehensive piece over at The Borderhouse about the many thematic problems with Madison Paige, and I highly recommend reading it. Unfortunately, in the case of Madison Paige, story and gameplay techniques mix with long-standing gender tropes to transform her from a person into a prop. However, it is extremely difficult to create characters that can inspire empathy without simply using them as tools to manufacture emotion. This post contains spoilers for Heavy Rain.ĭavid Cage hoped Heavy Rain would show that video games could provide " adult experiences based on emotions that it's possible to make games that are not based on shooting, on driving, on jumping, on solving puzzles, or whatever." In attempting to accomplish this, Heavy Rain relies on an unusual mixture of nontraditional gameplay and a heavy emphasis on its characters.īecause the game's mechanics are contextual, the characters must be sufficiently nuanced in order to convey believable experiences.
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