When it came out in 2010 for Playstation 3, nobody would have thought of Heavy Rain as funny. David Cage’s title was a dense detective thriller based on movies like Seven or Zodiac. The murky case of a serial killer and the family tragedy at the center of the plot were the perfect ingredients to turn the experience into a gripping drama.
A bug as ridiculous as it was untimely
Of course, after years of development creating such a specific aesthetic and working on such a tense script, it would be funny if everything went wrong because of a bug. That’s exactly what happened. In the final act, with hairs standing on end and the rain pouring down, if you were lucky (if you can call it that), you could be one of the players who experienced a bug as ridiculous as it was untimely that is now part of the game’s history.
The so-called “Press X to Shaun” made Ethan start screaming at the top of his lungs at the player’s demand. The normal functioning of the game allowed us to do this at the beginning of the chapter, where in the desperate climax of the search for his kidnapped son, pressing the X button called out for Shaun hoping to hear a response. The problem, as many players quickly discovered, was if the button kept working even when you found the kid.
The funny thing was that it was a fairly complex bug that almost became its own mechanic. The audio track sounded louder or softer depending on the character’s proximity to the camera. Ethan gestured accordingly while shouting and even allowed us to interrupt his lines of dialogue, which he continued saying normally throughout the chapter if we avoided the temptation to press the button.
If you were the one affected, you better find it amusing and not get angry, because it stayed with you for the rest of the game. There are plenty of videos taking advantage of the bug to create very funny montages. In one of them Ethan shouts his son’s name when he already has him in his arms, and another waits until the villain’s death in the final battle to shout a final and vengeful “Shaun!”
Furthermore, the other kidnapped son of poor Ethan also became a meme, the way the protagonist shouted “Jason!” at the beginning of the game (which only had three voice recordings that repeated over and over) was comical. And there was also a glitch in that scene that made you find Jason ahead of time, with Ethan still shouting.
Despite ruining immersion entirely, affection has been gained for these bugs. The internet is full of tutorials to replicate the Shaun glitch and it was not removed for the PS4 remaster. Although completely outside the author’s intention, this curious error helped to cement the legacy of what is already one of the most beloved games of the seventh generation.
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