Wet snow is falling outside, and heavy snowflakes are silently dropping on a window glass and flowing down. Leaden clouds as if agreed completely covered the sky and nothing will save me now from feeling full empathy for Heavy Rain heroes. With a shivering hand I insert the disk into playstation so as to declare in 10 hours: “It’s pure art!” For these 10 hours of sitting in front of the screen without a break I’ve been witnessing, perhaps, the most emotional, thrilling and adult story for the video game of all time. Some scenes make your heart cry, from others you feel your heart pounding madly in your chest. A number of moments leave such a depressing impression that the rest of the day you sit in deep contemplation. In other words, the game generates natural emotions not using unfair methods, such as mysticism, science fiction or non-stop hack and slash. This is a great story of how a little life turns into a nightmare. And the reason why it pierces the soul must be in its frightening truthfulness and its closeness to everyone.

Like in any decent detective thriller, music has not the least role in creating a full-fledged emotional game canvas. Writing soundtracks for works sort of Heavy Rain only seems to be easy. In fact, it’s incredibly hard to create dark, juicy, sensual and very-very sad music since the level of composer’s experience must be at least not lower than the one which director sets. Moreover the music should strain the nerves so violently as a scriptwriter does. In case of Heavy Rain, the game raised the bar so high that it required a very cool and consistent composer. Fortunately, Quantic Dream had noticed him already during the work on Fahrenheit. Normand Corbeil, not a young man already, was unfairly left languishing in the shadow of Angelo Badalamenti, while Maestro wrote a music score for Fahrenheit based on a couple of leitmotifs. And now his time has come! All the songs for "Heavy Rain" were written personally by Corbeil without any outside help. What is noticeable, I must say.

In each track you can feel his personal experience, a shade of melancholy and a part of the composer’s soul. In Ethan Mars' Main Theme, which is the leitmotif of the entire soundtrack, a sad flute blends in with a violin solo and ends with a sincere piano part, perfectly conveying the nature of the character. Lauren Winter's Main Theme is an ode to noir cinema of the 40s. It’s a calm orchestral suite, evoking in the listener something similar to a feeling of pleasant reverie. A harp, woven into the wind canvas, seems to be lulling the player in sleep. Scott Shelby got gloomy composition, saturated with asthma and rain. It kinda smells like an old coat and a battered Ford from the 50s. The melody is intentionally stylized to fit the post-war cinematography so as to emphasize the atmosphere, which the fat detective creates. Well, as for Madison Page, her personal track is overflowing with inner grief that constantly breaks out. Maybe because it almost entirely consists exclusively of strings?

Corbeil doesn’t restrict himself when it comes to aleatorics in action tracks, which Garry Schyman has already used before in a fairly similar context. However it’s this music of action that is the weakest part of the album. At times it’s too pretentious and extremely stamped. Though it fits the game perfectly, I must say.



To separate music from the game in this very case is like trying to make your opinion about Ferrari only by its engine not paying attention to a car body. In other words it’s a great stupidity. Cause absolutely all the elements of Heavy Rain are designed to work as perfectly fine Swiss clockwork. We must also add that most of the truly beautiful and outstanding tracks never got into the album. It’s the game music to which everything that is written above applies to a greater extent and not the scanty release by greedy people from Sony. But even not the most interesting songs on this album earn it solid eight points. Pure emotion and genuine empathy – these are the things that make Heavy Rain music just as it is.