Release Date: 25/05/2018
Played On: PS4
Available On: PS4
Time Played: 11h 15m
Progress: Completed Single Playthrough
Developer: Quantic Dream
Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment
The name David Cage comes with a fair amount of baggage these days, as he's cultivated quite a reputation for himself. Perhaps notably as the creator of some of the most divisive games in recent memory. Whether you love Quantic Dream's take on narrative cinematic video game story-telling or not, it's hard to deny the impact these games have made.
Over the years, I've heard many debates over whether or not Cage's games are strokes of genius, or complete nonsensical artistic wankery. It's hard to think of any other developer's body of work that divides opinion so strongly, other than those that are defined by their failure to deliver.
I suppose there's an inherent dissonance when games try to act like interactive movies instead of mechanical challenges. I've heard many of Cage's critics rip into the fact that games like Heavy Rain and Indigo Prophecy are hamstrung by their adherence to cinematic tropes. Even with the former arguably ushering in an iterative era where player choice and consequences matter, the game still gets bagged to this day.
However, as a fan of the unique ways that gaming can tell stories and explore narratives in niche and interesting ways, I've always enjoyed playing a Quantic Dream game. In fact, I replayed Heavy Rain again and again, until I was able to unlock every variant of every scene and every possible ending. When I played it for the first time, I had never experienced anything quite like Heavy Rain, but there have been many iterations since. I would even go so far as to argue that the success of Heavy Rain directly contributed to the following successes of other narrative games, such as Telltale's The Walking Dead. I remember when Heavy Rain was being promoted at E3 as the game that would provide real choices to the player that really mattered. I remember being enamoured with the possibilities of a complex branching narrative, all set within a high definition world with triple-A level graphics and production.
Of course, in hindsight we can pick apart Heavy Rain and reveal all its flaws. While decisions meant some characters might live or die, and others would reveal different scenes and outcomes, the overall path was fairly linear after all. However, it didn't matter at the time as this was my first introduction the possibilities of branching narrative games, and I was an immediate fan.
Then came the next title that would follow up Heavy Rain's initial success; Beyond: Two Souls. Earlier games had featured people like David Bowie in The Nomad Soul, but this one had a whole cast of big name actors and actresses. Most notably Willem Dafoe and Ellen Page who would bring the divide between gaming and cinematics even closer together.
Beyond: Two Souls turned out to be even more divisive than Heavy Rain, which is actually something I've never really understood. Maybe I'm listening to the wrong podcasts, but the general consensus seemed to be that the game was a complete mess and David Cage was out of his mind and had no idea what he was doing. Except, I really enjoyed myself with Beyond: Two Souls and I found the story interesting and the delivery compelling. Sure there were a few scenes and choices that seemed to be shoe-horned in for the sake of telling the story, but that's not really anything new in any form of story-telling.
Which kind of says a lot about the kind of stories that David Cage seems to want to tell, as it's undeniable that there are plot holes and debatable outcomes in just about every game. Heavy Rain has one of the biggest plot holes I've ever experienced, which is a direct result of the fact that it's a video game and you're playing a character who has more information about the story than you do.
The same could be said for Beyond, or the other games that Cage has worked on, but I always felt that defeated the purpose. Why are we holding these games up to higher scrutiny than others that fail much more at building a narrative and giving the player meaningful choices. I suppose it's because we always want to scrutinise writers who make big claims and promises, only to fall short of delivering on many occasions.
So when I say to you that Detroit: Become Human manages to get closer than any of its predecessors, it should mean something. Sure there are the same plot holes we've come to expect, but the scope of choice and narrative consequence has been dialled up to the point of occasional obfuscation. After all, when you're not sure what influenced an outcome, the idea that your choices made a difference is a lot easier to swallow.
The basic premise of Detroit: Become Human is that the world has developed android technology to a point where they have become a part of life. Robots exist to help humans in their everyday life by doing menial work and using their technological abilities to improve the lives of the people around them.
Eventually the artificial intelligence part of the androids starts to develop beyond its mechanical functions and the question of whether or not AI can be sentient enters the world. As we've seen in so many variations on the same story, there's a debate to be had over machines and consciousness, which is essentially where we enter the story in Detroit: Become Human.
The game follows the spread of "deviant" behaviour in androids, which basically covers any robot that isn't doing what they're supposed to do. There have been a spate of violent altercations between androids and their human 'owners' and we're given a front seat to the events that follow.
Much like Heavy Rain, we take control of a few different characters, who often find themselves on opposing sides of the conflict. The first is Connor; a prototype droid who has been designed to solve criminal cases involving androids and support the regular police in their investigations. As Connor you're teamed up with a disgruntled detective who hates androids, but wants to get the case solved. It's kind of a typical odd-couple/buddy-cop dynamic that will surprise no-one to discover that they eventually either become pals or stay enemies.
Then there's the house keeper android named Kara, who is tasked with cooking and cleaning for a single father and his young daughter. Kara cooks and cleans and looks after the usual household chores you'd expect, but she's also witness to the drug use and physical abuse metered out by the father. Her protective domestic nature eventually leads to a confrontation where she goes against her owner's instructions and protects the little girl from her awful father.
Finally we play as Markus, who a mix between house keeper and companion for an aging artist named Carl, who is bound to his wheel chair (played by none other than the great Lance Henriksen nonetheless). Carl teaches Markus to think for himself and encourages him to engage with human traits like empathy and imagination. However, Markus is eventually framed for a crime he didn't commit and is turned deviant. Before too long he's rallied other deviants and started a revolution; advocating for the rights of sentient AI.
There's more to it of course, but I don't want to spoil everything. The point is that each of the three characters find themselves on an interconnected journey that's full of choice and consequence at every turn. It's textbook Quantic Dream/David Cage storytelling, just done with a much greater scope.
We're all used to the screens at the end of branching narrative games that show your choices and how they compared with other players, but Detroit goes a step further. Rather than a list of binary choices with percentages at the end of the chapter, this game shows the entire branching narrative with your own path highlighted.
It's a simple thing when you think about it, but seeing all the possibilities (especially in some of the later chapters) can be mind boggling. Of course they don't go as far as showing you how to hit every path, but knowing that there were multiple sequences that you missed because of your choices is a great way to drive the message home.
Perhaps David Cage has been waiting for technology to catch up with his vision in some ways, as the increase in narrative branches alone makes Detroit a head above the rest. There are many tiny variants along the way, but each chapter has at least one or two key sections that will be missed altogether. It really encourages multiple playthroughs, but I don't think I'll be revisiting Detroit for a while.
Part of my reluctance is because I like to leave a story where it stands and not try and edit it for different outcomes. Hence, I'm fine with the choices I made and I played the story in the way that I wanted to, so it all turned out in a certain way that felt appropriate to me. However, there are some parts that could do with a revisit, or a rewrite, as some choices can be a little ambiguous and start to show the plot holes of the past raising their head again.
For instance, when playing as Markus who is fighting for android independence, you are often given the choice to take action in a violent or non-violent way. Of course each option has its pros and cons, but I was playing Markus in a way that I feel he would have acted based on the way Carl was teaching him to have empathy and compassion for others.
So I went about playing Markus's story with a non-violent approach, as a way to live up to the lessons of my mentor. However there were multiple instances along the way that presented a choice that made no sense. I couldn't pick an option that suited the way I saw Markus's character and had to guess at which one would be best for me. This lead to unexpected outcomes and a harsh disconnect between the way I thought the game should be played, and how it let me play.
Although, this isn't unique to Detroit, as it's a common downside to every branching narrative in any game. The sad truth is that games haven't reached the point of true player choice, and I wonder if they ever will. At the end of the day, it would be near impossible to write and program an endless amount of variations on a story, but that's what would be needed for true player efficacy.
Thus, when I say that Detroit is limited by the fact that there are only a finite handful of available choices, it's simply because gaming itself remains an exercise in limitations. There will always be that choice in any branching narrative that doesn't fit the character each player is trying to be, simply because that kind of scope may never be attainable.
Having said that though, Detroit is still one of the most diverse and branching games we've seen from Quantic Dream. Although it's not the most advanced when it comes to gameplay and interactivity. In fact, this might be one of the least interactive games Cage has produced so far.
Both Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls were covered in quick time events and contextual inputs meant to mimic realistic motions. Detroit: Become Human maintains this system and plays just as you would expect, but it felt a little light on the input side of life. Even after engaging the option to make the gameplay more difficult with more important quick time events and contextual combinations, it felt easy and forgiving.
Despite this though, I feel like we're just getting more used to the kind of interactivity we can expect from Quantic Dream. While Fahrenheit used weird Simon Says inputs and The Nomad Soul tried to go for some kind of odd puppetry interface, Beyond: Two Souls and Detroit: Become Human use the same interface that was introduced in Heavy Rain. Thus, I'm not sure if it's a case of familiarity or simplicity that made the controls in Detroit seem a little soft, but either way the next game will need to update the system to keep things interesting moving forward.
Ultimately, you'll spend most of your time in Detroit looking around for interactable objects and people to talk to. Thankfully each of the androids has the ability to pause time and look around for highlighted objects in the world. It's a neat marriage between a game mechanic that helps the player, and an authentic system that the androids would have access to.
It's incredibly useful during investigation scenes with Connor, where you're tasked with finding evidence and reconstructing crime scenes. However, much like Batman's 'detective mode' in the Arkham series, it's easy to spend too much time looking for yellow highlights instead of appreciating the beautiful world you're playing in.
Without a doubt the world you're in is beautiful and really shows off some impressive facial animations and technical power. It might not be a benchmark game like Crysis or The Witcher 3, but I often find that the best aesthetics are the ones you fail to notice, so a lot of credit must go to the animators and artists that put this game together.
At the end of the day though, this is a Quantic Dream game and if you've played Heavy Rain or Beyond: Two Souls, you know what you're in for. There isn't a lot of iteration on the delivery of the narrative, even if the story and setting have changed. There are still the same systems and the same branching choices that we've encountered before, except that are more of them and they're much more interesting.
Toward the end of Detroit, it really begins to feel like your choices are coming to fruition, which is perhaps the greatest change from the previous games. Especially with Beyond: Two Souls, it often felt like your choices only mattered within the chapter you were playing. If you got angry at the birthday party, it would change the party, but it didn't seem to matter in the grand scheme of things. Thankfully though, in Detroit there are a few choices that have an impact much later on in the game, as evident by unlocked pathways on the end of chapter graphics showing all available paths.
So while it might be easy to write off Detroit: Become Human as yet another mad creation from the mind that brought you the plot holes in Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls, there's a lot more on offer here if you're the kind of player who's interested. If you've played the other games, you already know if you're going to like this one or not, but if you haven't then this is probably the most diverse narrative you can experience at this moment in gaming.
There are more choices than I've seen in other games, and their consequences have more of an impact than most. The characters are interesting and come together in unexpected ways, and even though the story is one we've seen before, Cage's unique style goes a long way to making it fresh again.
One of the biggest criticisms I've heard about Detroit, is that it tells an obvious story about slavery. The androids have to travel on the back of the bus, and they're second-class citizens with no rights. I've heard many American commenters talk about how 'on the nose' and 'heavy handed' the game's story can be, but as a non-American, I didn't really pick up on it that much.
Perhaps because we haven't had as much of a heavy history focused on slavery, it's different for non-American audiences. After all, Quantic Dream are a European company, so perhaps the story is received differently in different locations. However, I would argue that the story is clearly doing something right if it pushes these buttons and instigates this kind of discussion.
Is this a perfect game? Absolutely not. There's a lot of loose thread that can be picked at in any Quantic Dream game, but I have to applaud their sense of identity. The company themselves have been involved in controversial business practices, which might also cloud the waters a little, but at the end of the day it's hard to deny that these games are a force of their own.
There aren't many studios that identify themselves as strongly as Quantic Dream does with David Cage's direction. The mix between cinema and gaming may never find a comfortable balance, but I will always enjoy trying out the latest attempt to make it work.
For a fan of narrative games that offer choice and consequence, Detroit: Become Human is a hard one to pass up. Just make sure you know what you're getting into before the plot holes suck you in and lose you forever.