Alternate Reality: Instant history

1:00 PM on 07.19.2010   |   Shodan

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_{[For her monthly musing, Shodan takes another approach I didn't even consider, and ponders the 'reality' of the cast of Heavy Rain, and how we know nothing about their actual backgrounds. Against Heavy Rain's realistic backdrop, the characters seem like they've been pulled out of nowhere and brought forward into real life, and that's something Shodan is envious of.  -- JRo]}

I turned 25 last month. Had I any friends, I'm sure I'd have copped a lot of the unfunny quarter-of-a-century jibes, but what can I say? I'm an introvert, worse so when I've got my Serious Gamer Face on; I'm not the type that greatly desires a social life. I watched this momentous landmark in my life come and go like the latest burst of bad, eighties-inspired fashion. The importance of this date did not descend upon me until I started playing Heavy Raina week later. I hated the characters. Sure, I empathised with many of them, even grew to love them with their scars and flaws. But I still hated them, in the same sort of way we all hate celebrities. 

Hit the jump to find out why.

You see, for the past decade and a half, I have lived as a very privileged child. Living overseas, my dad's company paid for his rent and his kids' education, so I grew up in what was considered the 'posh' part of town and was sent to the very best international school in the country, where I hobnobbed with other teenagers from - according to my old high school's promotional material - over sixty different countries. Money not spent on rent or education freed up funds that went instead towards padding a life already considered quite luxuriant by middle-class standards.

I went clubbing till dawn, sometimes up to five times a week; my cupboards were filled with strange and colourful Asian fashions, and my family traveled often, everywhere from Istanbul to Bangkok to New York. After the completion of my final, brutal year of high school, I didn't embark on a marketing or business degree as many of my friends did. I simply played games. I moved to Melbourne after a few years, and played more games in a one-bedroom apartment that my dad's company continued to pay the rent for, and eventually I applied for a local university's games degree. In other words, I continue to play games now and call it "studying" instead.

Though I didn't realise it at first, turning 25 changed everything.

My 25th birthday was when the sponsored lifestyle ended. It was the date by which, according to my father's company, I should have been supported through life long enough to be able to make my own contribution. They're right, of course; in addition to funding my entire high school education, I was given another seven years on top of that to pursue whatever branch of tertiary education I desired. Luxuriating in the idleness of gaming every day felt like the natural thing to do at the time. Unfortunately, my birthday woke a smattering of Gen Y-esque existentialism in me. I had become so engrossed in my amazing life that I had failed to realise its use-by date. Horror of all horrors: I am now forced to get a job. I have never been so shit-scared of anything in my life.

Besides the brief time I spent in the Bad Part of Town, bagging groceries for a shitty supermarket, I have no job experience. The years I spent gaming almost exclusively were enjoyable, but somehow, I don't think my World of Warcraft hard-mode progression is going to look that impressive on a resume. "One day," people tell me, "you'll have the life and/or job you dream of! You just need to do a little work." Looks like I've got a nasty, years-long slog before me through the perils of customer service or telemarketing, something, anything that'll dredge up enough of a pitiful income for me to finish my laughable Bachelor of Arts in Games with. And even if I do manage get to the stage of calling myself a university graduate, I fear that by then I would be too accustomed to whatever entry-level workplace takes me on to seek more satisfying employment.

_{Oh boy, it sure is difficult to sleep in this amazing apartment that I apparently didn't even have to work for!}

This is, in a way, why playing Heavy Rain can be a somewhat thorny experience for me. It would seem that the main cast, a handful of intensely interesting individuals whose lives collide and spill into one another's like a strange, eloquent car crash, were simply summoned into existence by their omniscient game developer, with their personalities, wisecracks, and - most relevantly - their professions already fully-formed.

How on earth did the intriguingly small-nosed Madison Paige afford that wicked cool, converted factory of an apartment (or the nose job)? Just how far up the food chain of print media does a newspaper reporter have to work herself in order to bring in such an income? To my dismay, the game imparted no clues as to how I could obtain such an apartment or fortune myself. Jayden? Hated him too. Oh, don't get me wrong, there's nothing about a pitiable drug addiction and that strident Boston accent that doesn't soften the heart, but I was mainly jealous he got to play with those sweet sunglasses all the time. That's certainly something I'm not going to experience with my foray into the minimum-wage workforce. If these ARI glasses - and Mr. Norman Jayden too, I suppose - did exist in the real world, I'm estimating Jayden would've had to endure around a decade of studying criminal psychology, as well as another half-decade climbing the FBI's corporate ladder, before he was offered a full-time position in playing with these glasses all day long. But conveniently, Heavy Rain, being a game, does not force you to suffer this yawnsome, life-devouring toil of attaining the appropriate qualifications for such a specific career path. Why, not even Jayden himself has to experience it.

_{Yeah, I get paid to wear these rad sunglasses. What do YOU do for a living?} 

These characters are sleek, smoothly-sculpted vessels, filled with a predetermined personality and then suddenly catapulted into the world with all the experience of a thirty year-old from day one -- born with an instant history. Obviously, that's how you tell stories, and that's what differentiates real life from the happy imagination land of games; here in the real world, we have to live through every single day, damn it, and a lot of us will likely never experience anything as action-packed or tense as a quick-time event. But as I play through Heavy Rain, staving off the terrifying process of attempting to get employed, I become depressingly aware that I'm probably never going to become a computer game character, immune to such mortal things as boredom or hunger. If only I could have a little of that instant history myself.