Having finished one of the multiple possible endings to Heavy Rain, I understand it as a digital storytelling device. It's a good one, and best if you restrain the gamer to not being able to correct their mistakes. Like the best choose your own adventure, if you read through the choices you make and stick with them, then you will receive a unique experience.
But it's not perfect.
Heavy Rain needed the possibility of the killer to change based off your decisions (or collection of decisions). This would have given digital storytelling the one thing it needs more than immersion diversity.
To often, video games are compared to other media, movies, books, television. The direct comparison has video games crying they are distinct because of their immersion and interactivity, and that is true, but in the quest for an art piece, the developers forgot that (or decided) that they wanted to follow a book storyline, rather thin innovate at a core level. Yes a book has the same ending despite how many times you read it, and you accept that because you love the material, but that shouldn't be a universall truth with digital storytelling, or games at all.
Alot of this comes at a time where, I don't know what to think about L.A.Noire, Rockstars upcoming release. I support Rockstar, and am usually entertained by their offerings, but I game where I have to read peoples faces to tell if they are lying, better give me the ability to Batman them off a roof (read hang by the ankle), or at least to shoot someone I think is a threat.
Because for some reason, Heavy Rain didn't.
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