Hello, Mr. Game developer, I recently got around to buying your game, Heavy Rain. It was alright, I guess. I thought it was great for a while. I was intrigued by the story and characters. Interactive Storytelling is an interesting genre, but it's far from perfect, and you got it wrong. You see, my friend got this ending where everybody was happy and everything turned out alright. I got the ending where the kid dies and Ethan commits suicide. This is not how to end a game.

In the spiritual predecessor to Heavy Rain, called Indigo Prophecy, this was also a problem. You do not punish a player with an unsatisfying end for "playing wrong." A book does not kill all the main characters if you read it too fast and misread some words. Movies don't change if you eat taquitos while watching it. Sure, a game is interactive, and the whole genre hinges on choices, but in the end there should be an end that satisfies me. I should be able to find the killer even if I screwed up your Quick Time event. My child should not die if I press square instead of triangle. My child should die if I chose to ignore it, not if I chose to save it but screwed up your finger-twister nonsense.

Multiple endings are a horrible idea anyway. So far, I've only played one game where you could end it in multiple ways that I actually enjoyed the ending, that is the masterpiece of Fallout: New Vegas. Fallout's story ended the way you wanted it too, because YOU chose the ending, the game did not choose it for you. If you helped Yes-Man but accidently got killed in a gun fight, did the game just END? No, no it didn't. So please, developers, do not force endings upon me. Do not give me the "bad" ending for not finding enough collectable trophies. Do not give my character I've grown to love an undeserving end thoroughly because I chose the door to the left, not knowing what was behind. In the end, I want to feel as if I got what I deserved, even if I do die, or get a sad ending, I want to have earned it.

So please, Developers, make more Fallout:NV DLC. Wait, what was my point again?


Sincerely,
A Lone Pig