I have played Heavy Rain to fullest in gaining every single trophy. I managed to get all the Trophies two years ago, however the jouney to do so was not simple. Many have been complaining that during their process in gaining all the trophies, the game would end up freezing to the point in which it is almost impossible to continue a playthough.
At first my problem wasn't the game freezing, instead it was an unusually corruption in the file in which whenever I tap TRIANGLE repeatedly, cutscenes would lag and slow down. It was very annoying and frustrating to see a cinematic moment prompting you to tap TRIANGLE repeatedly. Doing so would slow down the scene. I'm actually surprised no one else encountered this problem I had, but then again I might not be alone. Even if you haven't had a problem in slow downs caused by tapping the TRIANGLE button, I still believe the caused is connected to the Freezing issues as well. But before I continue on to pointing out the connection, you can actually make sure you're not suffering the same problem I had with the Triangle button. Play the game, walk around, anything; you don't necessarily have to be in a cutscene or a QTE moment to notice the slow down. All you have to do is tap Triangle repeatley and if you notice the gameplay slowing down, you may have a chance of having a corrupt file. This was the only problem that occured on my file two years ago.
Just recently, I started a new file, change the diffulty to the easiest difficulty. Everything went well until midway through the game, but most commonly in the final old warehouse chapters which involved lots of role shifting between the characters (considering that your playthough in the old warehouse involves Madison dealing with Carter Blake, Ethan Saving Shaun, and Norman fighting Scott). Whenever it was time to shift into playing an new character, the game would freeze. For example, in my playthough of the warehouse, when the first segment of scott and norman ending, it'd freeze. I'd have to turn the PS3 off and the continue by chosing the "CONTINUE" option in the main menu just to continue where I had left off in the mission. That's when I notice the freezing would occur at points that have a checkpoint logo blinking. I continue the chapter from the checkpoint that froze. However, I did finally reach a point in the chapter where it became impossible to complete the playthough. The game would freeze after Madison tells Ethan that the "only that matters is that he saved his son". I never managed to find a way a to get past the freeze. Turning the PS3 off and choosing the continue option did not help anymore. I tried many ways to fight off the freezing by loading other chapter and reworking my way up to the warehouse chapters. Sadly there was no change.
One thing I did discover during my attempt to fix my file was that playing on the easiest difficutly did alter a few QTE button commands and removed a few. For example if you played the scene where Madsion uses her mortorcycle to get past Blake and to Ethan on the Hardest difficulty, you obviously have to follow the QTE button commands telling you to tilt the controller left or right. However, since my new file was on the easiest difficulty, no button commands popped up during that motorcycle sequence, instead the game plays the scene as just one straight cutscene that automatically lets you pass the commands without failing. Overall in the end the only way for me to continue the game free of the Freezing and Triangle glitch was to delete everything; the patch, DLC, Game Data Utility, and Save data utility.
To make things short and simple, I don't want to explain every single thing in detail. I downloaded and installed the DLC, installed that patch, and finally let the game install for my new clean file. Now before you actually start the game, the game will automatically prompt you to choose your own setting to play by right after the install completes.
When I did my new playthough, I never had any of the problems, some people though have said the still got problems even when the re-installed everything, and I know exactly why. If your suffering from one or the other or both the FREEZE and TRIANGLE file corruption, what causes it is the changing of the games difficulty. I notice that when I was trying to diagnose the source of corruption in my corrupt file. Changing the difficulty would make the game have problems loading between checkpoints. Heavy Rain's checkpoints would Loading and auto save at the same time. while the game does that, it has to be attached certain setting that match it difficulty. If you change the difficulty in the main menu or the on the game, the game will just glitch and crash eventually. I can't really be sure why it happens, but I am for sure that all this freezing and triangle tapping lag happens because of the changing of difficulty.
So if you know your only option is to restart the game by deleting everything and reinstalling the game, I suggest you stick to the difficulty you want to keep permanent after the install. Do not change them at all. Changing in the game or the menu, makes no difference at all, stick with what difficulty you want and DO NOT CHANGE ANYTHING AT ALL. I am for sure that this will prevent you with having problems.
I don't if option involving audio, language, or brightness involve the game freeze crash; all I know is that in my experience, the game has not had a problem ever since I avoided to change the difficulty options. I'm too afraid to find out if changing the sound options will contribute to freezing.
IF ANY OF YOU THINK WHAT I'VE DESCRIBED SO FAR IS ACCURATE in regards to your problems, I would suggest that this forum should be spread out until QUANTIC DREAM revisit another consideration to path this game again.
