It must be stated that though we were secretly rooting for Shelby by the time we had realised that he is the Origami Killer, we of course didnt want Shaun the youngest son of protagonist Ethan to perish in the watery tomb Shelby had trapped him in. Rather, we just wanted to see Scott either show signs of reform in prison or just not perish in the Old Warehouse/at the hands of Lauren. The games 17-distinct endings mean that Scott must either die or escape punishment entirely with Shaun tragically dying - both of which leave a bitter taste. Our sympathy for the Origami killer is two-fold. Firstly, prior to our discovery that Scott is the criminal, we had spent lengthy sections of the game playing as him and felt like wed developed a bond. Though this bond with the private detective is strained somewhat after that dramatic flashback where the penny finally drops that the killer was Scott all along, it is still hard to eradicate this attachment to him indeed, to this point in the game, Shelby was our favoured character of those you control. However, our strange desire to see Scott get away with his many horrific crimes or at least to survive is primarily because of our knowledge of what traumatic events caused the sanity of Scott to crumble. In a flashback we see a young Scott begging his drunken father to save his older brother who is trapped in a large pipe rapidly filling with water. Scotts dad (or Scotty as he is then known) refuses to believe his son and goes back to his liquor. Shelby may have become a killer of children himself but its impossible to forget the face of that little boy who just wanted his dad to come and save his brother. The intense cynicism about fathers not being all they can be is obviously what motivates the crimes of the Origami Killer, and it is a testament to the masterful ability of developers Quantic Dream to weave a complex narrative that we are able to sympathise with a killer to this extent.
Hailing from South East London, Sam Heard is an aspiring writer and recent graduate from the University of Warwick. Sam's favourite things include energy drinks, late nights spent watching the UFC with his girlfriend and annihilating his friends at FIFA.
