A third of Heavy Rain players kept all characters alive

by Alexander Sliwinski on Dec 5th 2011 8:30PM

Heavy Rain developer Quantic Dream recently shared some player statistics with IGN about its 2010 interactive drama. Of the 3 million players who reportedly played the game, 74 percent completed the game. Of those, 33 percent of people must have gotten the "four heroes" trophy, surviving home invasions, sinister scenarios and angry junkyard mechanics to keep the game's quartet of protagonists alive and kicking.

Here's a good takeaway for game developers seeking to implement multiple endings for their games: only four percent of players have seen all Heavy Rain's endings and only three percent earned the game's platinum trophy.

However, 100 percent of future developers should "press X to Jason."

Source: IGN

Tags: Heavy-Rain, move, playstation, ps3, quantic-dream

Reader Comments (53)

I'm not ashamed to say I just barely made it through without getting anyone killed. Great experience but a little boring sometimes.

@InDurdenWeTrust

Whaaaaaaaaaaaat? Come now, every scene was really engaging!

I'm bored of pressing X to Jason ¬_¬

I'm going to start waggling the sixxaxis to Jason instead.

@Spunky Monkey 190906

Where's PedoJokerBear when you need him?

@Spunky Monkey 190906
You're confusing Jason with Milo.

@Shadowbender

Well it could have been worse, I could have waggled my...erm....move at him :/

Is it actually possible to get an ending where all four lead characters survive? Anyone who's beaten the game knows why that might be a little difficult.

@Behonkiss I believe there is exactly ONE ending where all characters survive. I believe (and I could be totally wrong) that it involves Ethan being the only one that finds Shaun's location.

By the way, this game is one of my favourites in a long time, and the top reason to own a PS3 for me.

@Behonkiss Yes, its possible. That's the ending that I got. The ending involves everyone getting to the warehouse. Each character though has a slightly different role once they get there. Its been a while since I played the game but from what I remember, the FBI dude fights some off top of a crane. Ethan fights the detective, and the reporter distracts the cops when they want to barge in and shoot Ethan.

@Behonkiss

Whoa there. I think one of us is confused. I believe they're talking the survival of the characters when dealt with dangerous scenarios, and disregarding the ending cutscene.

Or am I completely wrong? If so, then that's fan-flipping-tastic cool if all of them actually never die at all.

@Behonkiss

HUGE SPOILERS:

If all four characters survive and show up at the final scene, and Norman does well enough in the fight with the Origami Killer he'll both beat him and try to save him; the OK dies anyway, but it still counts as keeping him alive and you get the trophy.

@Boring K
I'm shocked that people feel it's that difficult to keep everyone alive. Everyone can be alive and just not be at the ending depending on your choices. The first time I played it everyone survived, they didnt all have their most optimal story situation but they survived... well except for the killer of course.

I hope Joystiq isnt advocating the dismissal of multiple paths... it'd be just like them to do some crap like that. The thing that Made HR so fun is wondering how many permutations of a scene can occur, fearing that every wrong move could be your last makes you want to try harder.

This is game is actually worth a second playthrough with the PS Move. I finished a scenario recently and was pretty impressed.

JAAAAAAAAASOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

@ErkB729

Fool! It's "JAYSUHN!", with an emphasis on the vowels!

In this case I am the three percent.

@Kadrom *33%

@bluefry

...bluefry, don't be so quick to correct him when it is you, who is wrong.

@bluefry

*unless he earned the platinum, like the article said.

@bluefry

Maybe he meant he got the platinum? I, too, am part of the three percent!

@(Unverified) @bluefry yes yes I got the platinum.

@Kadrom D'OH! My bad! :(

@Kadrom

That does feel prett neat, huh?
Now imagine, not only are we among the top 3% of Heavy Rain players, but when you factor in video game players in general, that's got to put us into some marginal .01% club!

@Kadrom Also one of the 3%, my first play had everyone survive.. except Shawn because I screwed up & didn't find him.. -_-

Yeah, except that there's a bug which allows Norman Jayden to die and still gives you the Four Heroes trophy. This is based on my personal experience of "Aw man, now I don't get the-wait, wtf?"

I platinumed Heavy Rain just cause it was so easy. I rented the game and was able to get it done within the week. Definite one of the easier platinums I have.

@TitaniuIVI

My easiest was terminator salvation, I rented that pile of crap. Horrible game, 5 hours to platinum. Wasted of a rental.

I wish more companies would do this. There's nothing worse than being proud of your hard-won 1000/1000 in Bayonetta only to read some neckbeard on the internet say "LOL everyone has that one, (insert homophobic slur of your choice)". That's not exactly the metric I'm going for.

It somewhat undermines the potential of achievements if you don't know exactly how you stand with everyone else out there.

I'm interested in hearing that 74% of players have finished this game.

Isn't the average rate like 10% for most games per that Game Informer/CNN article back in the summer?

@SpikePoint 74% completion? Makes perfect sense to me. I'm sure Nielsen has a similar metric for people that have managed to sit through the Matrix trilogy.

@SpikePoint
The problem with the math on game completions is that they fail to measure the market situation at the time of their release. While I've completed HR twice, there are numerous games that I own that havent been completed at all or are on the back burner until other games can be finished. The lack of completion doesnt mean the lack of interest, it can also mean severely divided attention due to a flood of other games.

Wasn't that hard to sustain their life, at least for me. One-third?...Huh. Very weird.

I've only done one playthrough, and I remember letting one character die without restarting the sequence.

Well except for that Taxidermist DLC. Tried to see every possible outcome on that one. Even the bad ones were pretty good. At least the voices told me so.

Heavy Rain was the only time I've ever played through a game with my fiance and it was a disaster. She was totally into the story, so that made me invest more in it, but the part where we'd switch off between each section? Man.

Let's just say by the end of my game everyone was dead and I still have no clue what the hell happened.

@TehPeanut
Man. I would feel kinda weird having my wife see me playing parts of that game. She would stop in sometimes, at first amazed by the realistic graphics, but then creeped out by the uncanny valley.
Anyway, there were times when I was playing as Madison Paige that I had to get up and shut my door for a bit. Specifically when she confronts the club owner. Knowhatimsayin?

@TehPeanut

lol

Well, to be fair, only about 25% of the characters were even interesting. And by that I mean the FBI agent, of course.

Just played through HR a few weeks ago; I made it all the way to the way to the end sequence with all four characters, then blew things pretty badly and got two of them killed. Needless to say, as soon as the credits ended I reloaded the last chapter and "saved" everyone.

I lost the cop guy right near the end, couldn't figure out WTF the game wanted me to do until it was way too late.

I platinum'd this game.

norman took a sledgehammer to the head and he still survived at the end...

@Kage25

did you ever see panic room? that guy takes a sledge hammer to the face. fall two or three stories and then gets up and starts running around.

Wait... if only about 75% finished the game in the first place, and out of those people only 33% kept everyone alive...
It should be 25% of the Heavy Rain players kept everyone alive, not 33%...

@DevilSei For the jolly good fun of arguing semantics:

Have you read a book when you quit after three chapters? Have you seen a film when you slept through the middle?

Personally, I'd argue that no, you haven't. So, have you truly played a game when you haven't "beaten" it? That, I honestly have no opinion on, though I suppose I'd be more inclined to say yes than no just out of habit.

Good times!

@DevilSei
The fact that 75% of people actually finished the game is also high compared to other games.

I messed up near the end, and the detective died.

I have a lot of complaints about Heavy Rain, but I can't deny that I enjoyed it way more than I thought I would, and it had me on the edge of my seat a lot of the time.

@CaramelZappa I agree, it had some plot holes but the mechanic of autosaving a lot and only having one save file made the game much more intense and you felt you really had to get things right the first time.

I beat it with 3/4 of the charectors alive, I might go back and try it again but I cant put up with the HORRIBLE controls, seriously, who uses the RT to move. The devs were on drugs when they decided to do this.

This statistic is kinda meaningless, they're going by how many people got this trophy. To get the platinum trophy you had to play ALL endings, so this is also including people who did multiple endings. So say there's 7 different endings, you could have 33% doing each!

I got annoyed because 1) jumping out a two story window shouldn't kill you and 2) It didn't look like it was that high off the ground.

| 1 | 2 | Most Recent | Next 50 Comments

Heavy Rain

A third of Heavy Rain players kept all characters alive

Reader Comments (53)

Posted: Dec 5th 2011 8:37PM InDurdenWeTrust said

Posted: Dec 5th 2011 9:24PM Shadowbender said

Posted: Dec 5th 2011 8:39PM Spunky Monkey 190906 said

Posted: Dec 5th 2011 9:30PM Shadowbender said

Posted: Dec 5th 2011 9:44PM Solar Jetman said

Posted: Dec 5th 2011 10:13PM Spunky Monkey 190906 said

Posted: Dec 5th 2011 8:40PM Behonkiss said

Posted: Dec 5th 2011 8:50PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Dec 5th 2011 9:03PM adityaksharma said

Posted: Dec 5th 2011 9:34PM Shadowbender said

Posted: Dec 5th 2011 11:10PM Boring K said

Posted: Dec 6th 2011 3:13AM PN04 said

Posted: Dec 5th 2011 8:42PM foxhound said

Posted: Dec 5th 2011 8:43PM ErkB729 said

Posted: Dec 5th 2011 9:36PM Shadowbender said

Posted: Dec 5th 2011 8:46PM Kadrom said

Posted: Dec 5th 2011 8:57PM bluefry said

Posted: Dec 5th 2011 9:22PM DarkTwisted said

Posted: Dec 5th 2011 9:22PM Colin said

Posted: Dec 5th 2011 9:23PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Dec 5th 2011 10:07PM Kadrom said

Posted: Dec 5th 2011 10:21PM bluefry said

Posted: Dec 6th 2011 1:48PM JonahStein said

Posted: Dec 6th 2011 8:15PM Mazrael said

Posted: Dec 5th 2011 8:46PM theWillard said

Posted: Dec 5th 2011 8:49PM TitaniuIVI said

Posted: Dec 5th 2011 8:59PM Faenix said

Posted: Dec 5th 2011 9:01PM RickGhastly said

Posted: Dec 5th 2011 9:02PM SpikePoint said

Posted: Dec 5th 2011 9:19PM onan said

Posted: Dec 6th 2011 3:18AM PN04 said

Posted: Dec 5th 2011 9:29PM Shadowbender said

Posted: Dec 5th 2011 9:48PM Solar Jetman said

Posted: Dec 5th 2011 10:19PM TehPeanut said

Posted: Dec 6th 2011 1:45PM JonahStein said

Posted: Dec 6th 2011 3:28PM kentuckyfried said

Posted: Dec 5th 2011 11:01PM A Sandwich said

Posted: Dec 5th 2011 11:02PM Boring K said

Posted: Dec 5th 2011 11:03PM tylerh1701 said

Posted: Dec 5th 2011 11:14PM themisanthrope said

Posted: Dec 5th 2011 11:50PM Kage25 said

Posted: Dec 6th 2011 11:39AM eat it said

Posted: Dec 6th 2011 1:00AM DevilSei said

Posted: Dec 6th 2011 8:03AM Oddgirl said

Posted: Dec 6th 2011 6:06PM KinseySS said

Posted: Dec 6th 2011 6:08AM CaramelZappa said

Posted: Dec 6th 2011 11:30AM Cranky Penguin said

Posted: Dec 6th 2011 9:25AM darcwolf said

Posted: Dec 6th 2011 10:30AM Dizazter said

Posted: Dec 6th 2011 11:05AM ttcfcl said

Heavy Rain Info

Description

MSRP

Release Date

Genre

Developer

Publisher

Rating

Breaking News

WB conjures up Harry Potter for Kinect this fall

Featured Stories

Weekly Webcomic Wrapup is a stranger in a strange land

Silver Lining: I Am Alive's unfeeling world

Game Of Thrones and the paradoxes of adaptation

Engadget

TUAW

Massively

WoW