Heavy Rain: Cutting Room Floor/Transcript

This is the transcript of Heavy Rain: Cutting Room Floor, the 2011 video about the development of Heavy Rain.

Transcript
(An ESRB logo appears, followed by the PlayStation logo and a spoiler warning. An Origami Murder Bird appears on a white background, and black ink runs down to reveal the phrases "THE MAKING OF HEAVY RAIN" and "THE SECRETS OF THE SCENARIO.")

(Video footage with the subtitle "Scott kills his mother" plays.)

Narrator: In the original version of the game, Shelby entered Ann Sheppard's hospital room just after Madison. He hugged her in his arms, and then smothered her with a pillow. We decided to exclude this very violent scene: a man who venerates the concept of the father to such a degree - and by extension, the concept of the family - cannot kill his mother like that, and although we learn that Ann's son never visits her, it may have been too radical to envisage Shelby getting rid of his own mother, who is senile to boot, therefore incapable of remembering he is there. By merely looking at his mother without talking to her, he again becomes the little boy who is desperately seeking a father worthy of the name in a world that has disappointed him.

(Video footage with the subtitle "Ethan's Blackouts" plays.)

Initially, the idea was that when Ethan had his blackouts, he would find himself in a sort of nightmare, lost in the ruins of a house underwater. Ethan would swim without really knowing where to go, just following the corridors until he came upon the body of the child: the victim of the Origami Killer. He would then wake up, as in the final version, in Carnaby Square, with an origami figure in his hand.

The first blackout takes place after Ethan puts his son Shaun to bed. Once Shaun is asleep, Ethan goes back downstairs, but when he reaches the bottom of the stairs, he sees water on the floor at the front door. He turns around, and sees water coming down the stairs behind him. The water continues to rise. Looking out the windows, we realize that the water outside is already higher than the house. Ethan runs toward the front door of the house. When he gets there, the door literally explodes, and an enormous quantity of water submerges Ethan.

The second blackout, which is much more spectacular, happens when Ethan loses Shaun in the park. The camera started to tremble more and more, and a tsunami suddenly submerged that whole part of the city. Then we found Ethan underwater, as in the previous blackout - two similar elements for a paranormal explanation.

Shelby was present at the time of Ethan's accident and a special bond was forged between them. From then on, Ethan accessed Shelby's mind whenever he killed children, corresponding to the times when Ethan found himself in the house underwater, filled with Shelby's memories. The water is the metaphorical representation of the killer's mind. During his blackouts, Ethan goes to Carnaby Square, the place where Shelby's brother died, and he makes an origami figure at the same time as the killer makes one to leave in the hands of the victim.

These scenes were not retained in the end because they made the story too complex and introduced a paranormal element that added nothing to the story. We decided to remove them a few months before the end of development, particularly in order to speed up the start of the game, re-center the narration, and anchor the story in reality.

(Video footage with the subtitle "Shaun goes to school" plays.)

This scene shows us Ethan getting out of bed in the morning. He goes to wake up Shaun to take him to school. The scene is redundant because of the "Father and Son" scene. However, this part of the game was not without interest: it placed the player in the role of a responsible father, looking after his son and himself. As he passes near the letter box, Ethan notices the Origami Killer's letter that informs him that his son will soon disappear. Of course, it is a touching scene, but too close to the "Father and Son" and the birthday scene to have any real existence of its own. We therefore decided to include the letter in the "Father and Son" scene, and to get rid of this scene.

(Video footage with the subtitle "Madison Paige" plays.)

Madison is the most enigmatic character in the game. We know very little about her, an insomniac journalist investigating the Origami Killer. In one of the first versions of the game design, Madison went to her newspaper office several times. At The American Tribune, she could conduct research to find possible suspects, speak with her boss, and write articles after her missions. In the same way, Madison's apartment was different in the beginning: it was in the process of being redecorated. One of the player's first tasks was to repaint and change the layout of the apartment in order to personalize it. This was an interesting characterization process for a character who still remains quite mysterious. We never learn in the game why Madison suffers from insomnia. In reality it stems from her past: as a journalist, she was a war correspondent during the armed conflict in Iraq.

(The PlayStation 3 logo appears, followed by the Sony logo and a copyright notice.)