Detroit: Become Human - A Critique - Luke Stephens

Detroit become human is one of those games which I absolutely love but I can totally understand why some people hate it to begin with it's not really a video game it's more of an interactive movie so right then and there I understand why some people will not touch this thing with a ten-foot pole on the other side it's an interactive movie so it's not quite a movie but it's not a game and it lands in this weird middle space where it doesn't seem to fit well with either crowd however there are still people which find it incredibly interesting and engaging to be able to go through and make your own story and even more impressively go back and alter the story to see how the game was built and whether or not they actually accommodated for your decisions now while the game is mostly void of any sort of set gameplay mechanic other than QuickTime events this is where the gameplay actually lies in the experimentation and the exploration of the scenes and the stories not necessarily in just one playthrough but rather in the exploration of multiple playthroughs now this is part of the reason it's very difficult to talk about a game like Detroit become human in any sort of critical or an analytical sense because by definition in order to get out of this game what the designers put into it you have to sit down and play through a plethora of branching narrative options which no doubt are going to be different from the ones that your audience chose and played through that is if they play through the game at all and so in my eyes for a video such as this one there's a couple ways that we could tackle it we could either go through every single branching narrative option in the game and break it apart talk about it or we could actually look at the broader design elements that make up Detroit become human and try to break those apart understandably I have sided with the latter option if you want to see all of those branching narrative options I highly recommend for you to either go find another youtuber that has done it because some have begun the work on cataloging all of these branching choices or go through the game yourself and try to explore those options but you're not going to find that sort of analysis in this video rather we're gonna break apart what works and what doesn't work with in Detroit become human because there's a lot on either side of the aisle some people absolutely love the writing in this game thing it's a very punctual very effectual some people absolutely hate it find it cringe-worthy and utterly disdainful and naturally I tend to end up somewhere in the middle and that's exactly where I end up in this discussion and so we're gonna step through we're gonna look at both sides of the argument and we're gonna see where we land we're gonna talk about and break apart the gameplay or at least what little there is of it within detroit become human and look at how they chose to tackle the topic of game play with in detroit becoming human in contrast with what other games in the same genre have chosen to do games such as until dawn and even life is strange now at this point i think it's only fair that i stress I feel as though Detroit becoming human is a game which should be experienced for the first time with as little outside influence as possible so if you haven't played this game yet if you're on the fence if you're thinking maybe you should maybe you shouldn't I highly encourage you to do so if you like narrative driven titles however if you're looking for something with deep and meaningful gameplay this is certainly not the game for you after your first blind playthrough absolutely you can watch this video figure out all of the analysis and what you think of the story and how you process the game that you just played however that first run-through without any outside influence is where the game of really shines and so I suppose you should count this as your spoiler warning but with all that said let's jump right into it now this game of course was developed by Quantic Dream which is run and operated by David Cage who is the writer for not just Detroit become human but also games such as heavy rain and the critically conflicted title beyond two souls now David Cage is a highly polarizing figure people either love him or they hate him they appreciate what he tries to do in video games or they absolutely find it repugnant and I totally understand both sides of this argument you see David cage wall founder and CEO of Quantic Dream the founder of this company that develops video games he considers himself a writer first and foremost and you can see it in the games that he directs and writes the games are intended to be interactive movie type experiences it's supposed to be the evolution of the cinema and as I said earlier it either works for you or it simply doesn't there really is no middle ground and so when a game relies so heavily on its writing it's natural for people to expect very high quality writing as a result and they would expect that high quality writing to carry the rest of the game in spite of its lack of gameplay and this is precisely where people get conflicted because you see David cage doesn't just write stories about two people and interesting situations where there's conflict David cage tends to tackle much deeper and more difficult topics and he tends to do so rather clumsily to use some examples from Detroit become human after all it is the game we're discussing he tries to make references to slavery to parental abuse and child abuse and of course the Holocaust and I've got specific examples for each of course with regards to slavery the androids are enslaved and as you play through the game there's multiple moments where you even have the option to protest and to chant certain lines and you get to choose which lines are chanted and some of these are just so cringy it's hard to even believe that they were put into the game but nonetheless he puts them in there and they constantly draw parallels to the enslavement of the androids to the enslavement of blacks in the United States and other groups all throughout the world with regards to slavery as a topic I think it makes sense if we're talking about a group of androids that are being forced to work against their will whatever that will may take the form of whether it's a miss jointed program isn't functioning properly or if it's true freewill which is what it seems to be portrayed to you as the player it doesn't really matter it's still handled as a topic that naturally comes up and it's discussed by the characters specifically the Android characters within the game and I think that that's just fine there's no issue with talking about slavery slavery is slavery regardless of the color plastic that's on the Android talking about it now as for parental abuse this is of course a topic which was shown off in some of the gameplay demos and trailers that they showed off before release with regards to Cara's storyline and effectively what happens is there's a little girl with her abusive father the abusive father is of course abusive and Cara at some point does have the option to go rogue and basically break through this this barrier that's holding her back in what an Android is supposed to do and she can break through embrace her free will and fight the abusive father in order to save the daughter or based on your choices and what you do it's possible that Cara storyline ends right then and there without going any further as a result of the father beating the little girl until she seemingly dies now naturally when I saw this in the trailer I was a little stunned and shocked as was everybody it's not every day that you see a videogame handled topics such as parental abuse all the way to the extent of that child being beaten to the point of seeming or apparent death so when the game actually came out I decided to test this and see how far you could push it how far you could go if you actually could based on your actions get Alice the little girl to be irrevocably damaged or injured to the point where Cara's storyline ends or possibly even Keira is shut down as a result and it turns out it actually is possible you basically just have to roleplay as an Android sit there do absolutely nothing except following your instructions and then at the very end this little clip plays and that's that Cara's storyline ends and you go on playing as the other characters so I do have to hand it to Quantic Dream they did account for this choice and I think that it is a choice that many people are going to at least experiment with specifically the choice to roleplay as each character as an Android and as the character that they actually are not break through and try to enact their free will but to play exactly as they are or at least as they are presented which I find pretty cool and I know that some people are gonna be frustrated that Cara's storyline ends if you choose to do nothing but save Alice but that's just simply because the entire game is about these androids breaking through embracing their free will and doing contrary actions to what their human masters are telling them and starting a revolution and revolting and earning their own freedoms or failing in the process and frankly if you choose to roleplay each character as the goody two-shoes Android who's following orders there's nowhere for that story to go except for Connor story which is why his storyline can continue even if you choose to play it in that way I think it makes sense and especially when you consider the added cost of adding a totally different plotline and storyline for Cara based on her choices to remain a enslaved Android I just don't think that that's realistic or even cost-effective to embrace because the percentage of players that are going to make that decision to explore that path is so so small it's frankly not worth their time and I totally get that but naturally the topic of parental and child abuse is a topic which is a little bit shocking to say the least and so when people saw this they thought it was over the line they thought it wasn't something that should be in a video game it brought the the overall standard and quality of writing down but this is part of the reason David Cage is such a polarizing figure in the world of game and narrative writing and that's because he's trying to tackle these deep and dark topics at least presenting them to players so that they have of gaming narratives can continue because if we just tread water and continue pretending as though these darker subjects don't exist we're always going to be limited and you see that across the industry with all sorts of new games specifically narrative based games whether you're looking at the last was part two or Detroit become human tackling these deeper topics and I personally think it's very very good because it only drives us forward to explore uncharted territory and of course how could I not talk about the fact that the game seems to consistently indicate that the androids are not just like slaves but they're also like Jews in World War two Germany with constant drawbacks to the Holocaust and the rounding up of all of these innocent people to be decommissioned and exterminated in mass and it's it's a little bit cringy at times but take for instance this following sequence so in my first playthrough I was able to get through with Kara and Alice to the border we were able to get through without any real issue because we were able to sacrifice some other people that we had set up earlier in the story and so I didn't actually run into this until I started exploring the multiple narratives that you can encounter later on in the game after I finished my first playthrough so I just want to get that out of the way that I didn't even encounter this whole section until after I had already finished the title which is pretty cool however based on your choices you can end up being captured and taken to a recycling facility where they're rounding up all of the androids who have begun to rebel against the powers at be however naturally due to the unknowable nature of the Android uprising they can't be sure of who exactly has gone rogue and who hasn't and so they choose to simply round up every Android in the city of Detroit and start to decommission them and recycle them as a result now this is effectively a product recall there's nothing inherently wrong with this at least on the outset but what the game is trying to get you to buy into over the course of the entire title is that these characters are not just machine they actually are sentient or at least they have the ability to mimic through their artificial intelligence lifelike personalities and behaviors and at that point if they pass the Turing test are they actually human or should they be treated as such and that's sort of the pivotal topic and discussion point of this entire title and they need you to buy into it in order for this sequence to have any sort of weight once captured with Alice you have to enter this smaller area you're asked to take off all of your clothes and strip naked and turn off your skin so they become just regular Androids and then they walk in and they enter this sort of Corral filled with all of these other androids waiting to be turned off and reset effectively now this is a direct parallelism to what of course happened in the death camps back in World War two where people were taken into these rooms they were told they were going to take a shower and then they were asked to take off all of their clothes go into a central room at which point they were all poisoned all at the same time and disposed of now I actually think that this is a very interesting and intriguing simile to bring up and it's one I think that actually works very well based on the world and the setting and everything that happens throughout the game so I don't have an issue with the fact that the he'd set this up and wrote this into the game I don't actually think it works very well and if you've bought into these characters being sentient being worthy of human treatment this scene is utterly heart-wrenching when you have the option of either escaping so they do give you a way out or if you choose to simply face the music while you're exploring these branching narratives it is possible that Kara enters this space with Alice and they're decommissioned at the same time while holding hands and crying it's an utterly touching moment and it will break you down if you've bought into these characters not just being robots but actually being equivalent to people my only issue with this as with the issue with slavery discussions and with the parental abuse discussions is that David cage and the writers over at Quantic Dream seem to think that players are too stupid to get that these are the contrasts and similes being drawn unless they push you so far and make it so obvious it becomes a little too obvious and a little cringing for instance the news reporters in the game don't refer to these as recycling or recall centers which is what they are effectively in the world they are centers where cyber life has set up a simple process where dangerous and potentially dangerous androids can be collected turned off reset reprogrammed and re commissioned in order to avoid these androids from going rogue and causing all sorts of untold chaos it makes sense there's nothing wrong with what cyber life is doing in this structure and so naturally the news reporters should be stressing it because the reporters on the news have no reason to believe that these androids are human or to be treated as humans however they consistently refer to these areas as camps where these certain androids are being collected to be shut down and destroyed not simply turned off and reset destroyed and kill the language is very very hostile and it's done in that way so that the player gets oh this is bad they're going to be destroying the androids or killing them this is terrible and if the player is actually bought has actually bought into this world they already are buying in to the fact that that is bad if they're being reset if they're being shut down if they're being decommissioned what-have-you it's a bad situation and so to go to the extent of stressing yes these are not just recycling centers these are camps where these characters are where these androids rather are being collected and destroyed and killed and maimed what-have-you it's just too much it loses its potency because it pulls me out because I know that the characters in the world shouldn't be referring to these as camps they should be referring to them simply as recycling centers I know that it's a small pet peeve to have it's a simple word but it changes so so much and of course the game has tackled other topics which have drawn in a fair amount of criticism simply because they dared to do certain topics or reference certain things within the game within the game's narrative things such as Kara wanting to take Alice her young partner across the border of Canada in order to reach safety because Canada doesn't actually have the same Android laws which bind them to their owners as property and so she wants to naturally get across the border where they won't be persecuted in the same way now some people have taken that as a statement on both slavery and also a reference to American immigration policy and all of these very political hot-button issues and maybe I'm simple-minded but I don't see it that way I simply think it's an element of the story where of course the characters would be looking for some sort of escape and if they found that in going to another country in this case Canada because it's the closest to these characters it only makes sense it's a simple narrative tactic and I don't think it's anything more now the overarching question to all of this is whether or not these points are still effectively made despite all of this cringy writing and all of the road bumps that we hit on the road now that I say that out loud that sounded a little repetitive I mean where else would you hit road bumps like in the pool that doesn't make any sense now the question is also whether or not there is actually a point being made here because there is a way of reading Detroit become humans narrative as simply talking about Androids being treated as slaves in the 1800's in the United States and also as poor immigrants and then also as Jews in Nazi Germany and they're drawing all of these similar similes and all of these contrasting examples and so the question is of course is that the point of the game are they trying to draw a point out of that contrast or is the overarching point of the game actually just to talk about androids and the Turing test being able to reach the point of being in distinguish indistinguishable from regular people from actual humans and at that point have they actually earned the right to be treated as humans if we can't actually distinguish a difference and at that point at what point rather do they earn human treatment and human respect if they honestly believe that they do have emotions that they do have rights that they do have free will at that point do they just in the same way that a human that utterly and completely believes that they have rights and that they have free will even if they may not in a particular instance they likely also have earned the right to human respect and dignity and so it's an interesting discussion if you frame it in that way but I don't think many people will the reality is that Detroit become human is a massive massive story it's more in line with a 2 or 3 season run of your average TV show than it is with a single film or a regular video game that you would play just once because of all of these branching dialogue sequences because of all of this extra context that they can give you the script for Detroit become human according to several reports was roughly thirty to forty thousand pages that is utterly insane now over the course of 30 to 40 thousand pages you can fit a fair amount of detail and a lot of different ideas and naturally they're going to explore most of them and so really with the game such as Detroit become human it's going to tackle not just one topic such as parental abuse or a topic such as wealth inequality or slavery or mistreatment of a small party simply because they can take the blame for the majority it's going to tackle all of those it's going to discuss all of those and try to make you think about all of those and because we're talking about anywhere from a 10 to 30 hour run-through depending on how many of those branching narratives you explore you're going to encounter most of those and you're going to think about most of those and so while I think it's natural to look for a singular point of a big story such as this one I don't think they're necessarily is I think simply we're following the story of three different characters and if it leads you to thinking about any major topic so be it now all of these ideas would mean absolutely nothing if they weren't properly implemented into the form of a video game which is something that Quantic Dream has been struggling with for quite some time games like heavy rain and beyond two souls were certainly interesting and intriguing however they didn't do anything to really engage the player in a unique way all they did was give you an interesting story with a bunch of button props to keep you engaged and interested so that you have to continue holding the controller and paying attention if you didn't want to fail and this is easily the largest criticism of the game such as Detroit become human simply that the game play only consists of holding the controller and trying to retain focus over the course of a 10 to 20 hour run I can totally understand why people find this frustrating and annoying however I feel as though it's a necessary sacrifice in order to get this engaged and this into a story and it's characters at first it is a little weird and drawing to the system to have to manipulate a joystick in a certain pattern in order to open a door however it is something that these developers have found keeps the player engaged and after an hour or so of doing it you do become engaged and it becomes second nature to the point where you feel as though you actually are implementing the actions and the will of this character on screen it may seem weird but it does actually work if they replace this with simply press X to open the door which they have experimented with in the past it wouldn't be anywhere near as engaging it would be a quick tap and then you'd continue watching the cutscene whereas if you have to put even a miniscule amount of thought into the movement that they're asking you to perform it then becomes a movement and an action that you enacted as opposed to you allowed if that makes sense now there's some other common limitations to games such as Detroit become human and they usually take the form of technological hurdles that need to be overcome which in the case of Detroit become human isn't really a major concern because they've overcome most of the graphical issues that they encountered the only ones that they really seem to still be limited by are the number of actually animated characters on screen at a given moment you don't usually see it but in larger crowd scene it's very very noticeable that only a small number are actually animated and a overwhelming majority are simply static objects sitting on screen and this engine seems to do very very well close up but once again it does very badly once you pull the camera back which is why most of the shots you're going to see are very very tight so with regards to technological limitations not really concern anymore and it certainly won't be moving forward however writing does tend to be a major issue in contrast in addition to the performances of the characters on screen these are interactive movies effectively and so the performance of the actors on screen has to be utterly stellar because this isn't simply a video game this is a interactive movie you expect far far more from the performances and for the most part the major characters the title characters within detroit become human like Kara Connor and Marcus all do a phenomenal job and rarely have a moment when you are a little iffy about their performance or how they delivered a line I can't really think of any broad or specific examples of each of these characters having issues other than the fact that Marcus tends to play it fairly dry but once again their Android so you can get away with that what I can say and I'll just throw this out there I'm sure many of you noticed it too the casting of the president in this game is absolutely atrocious I'm convinced this woman is also an Android that's been replaced and and put in power by cyber light like this woman speaks in such a weird way I can't help but think she's either a traitor or she's consistently having a stroke while giving these speeches I'm not even joking like I'm gonna play a couple clips for you right here just because it's so annoying to me I can barely handle it and I have to share my misery with you and so listen to this and I guarantee you you'll be convinced this woman has some sort of major disability at dawn today November 11th 2038 Android camp number five in Detroit was attacked by thousands of deviants our armed forces put up a brave fight but given the extreme violence of the attack they were forced to retreat after suffering heavy losses fighting is breaking out all over the country to combat the Android rebellion in the coming hours I will address the Senate and convene an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council humanity is about to fight the most important battle in history one that will lead to our victory or to our extinction god bless you and God bless the United States of America is it just me it seems like something's weird I may be I'm a bad person maybe there is something weird but they never touch on it so I feel as though I'm it's warranted and I'm justified in bringing it up she just talks in a very weird and sort of up-speak way she talks like the CEO of YouTube and it's absolutely atrocious I cannot believe this woman got past the callback period I'm surprised she even got a callback much less got the role now the other side of writing with regards to games like this that makes it a common hurdle that has to be overcome is simply the staff required as I said earlier the script for this game according to a couple conflicting reports was anywhere from 30 to 40,000 pages long that takes a lot of manpower to push out especially on time and on a budget and so it's very impressive that the writing staff was able to do it for Detroit become human but it's not something that they necessarily had the manpower to do to this extent previously which is once again why a game like Detroit booze able to take it up to another level and the third and one of the most important factors and limitations of games like this is the fun factor what makes players want to continue playing the game it has to be the writing it has to be the story and the characters because lord knows the gameplay is not going to be so addictive that people keep coming back because they love moving the joystick in that weird way in the last hurdle and the one that I would argue is Detroit becomes humans biggest hurdle that at times they stumble over if not completely trip on it is a lack of direction and this once again goes back to David cage the games writer and lead specifically when we're talking about a story and this game completely relies on its story you have to have some level of constraint in order to keep it within these barriers to guide the experience along to where you want it to go branching narratives are great but if you have consideration for every single action that can be performed by the character in the game you're going to inevitably run into certain instances where it doesn't jive with the story you're trying to tell and as a result you have to reinstitute and re-install a certain level of constraint in order to get the experience back on track to the point that you're trying to make in general Detroit becoming human is not terrible about this and in general they tend to be able to constrain themselves to the topic at hand and keep it where it needs to be however there are several occasions throughout the course of the game where you're going to be asking what the hell is going on or what that had to do with anything simply because the writers didn't know if they should stop there or if they should keep pressing and keep pushing however once again and not to make excuses for it but with a thirty to forty thousand page script it's understandable why these elements might still remain and need to be ironed out it's simply an artifact of the rest of the work going on around the good parts of the game and with these constraints in mind usually these types of games are written in one of two ways or in a combination of the two and there's no sordid name for these it's simply an idea of design that you get when you read the interviews from the designers of these types of titles and it tends to break down into what I will call stumble writing and what I will also call more of a projected writing style and I'm gonna explain what I mean by both stumble riding would simply be when you're writing a scene out you for instance set three characters in a particular space and you have certain things that need to be brought up and you have an idea of how it needs to fit into the overall story but you're writing linearly so you're writing from beginning to end and you're gonna see where it takes you and as you explore the scene the moments and the dialogue that you encounter as you're writing it there's certain moments and decisions that can be made and at that point you add in the decision the action and the consequence for that action or you at least take note of it so that the consequence for that action can be taken and granted later on perhaps in another scene the second example projected writing would be for instance when you know that a character has to end up in a certain spot in order for another event to take place for another consequence to take place that you want to have happen and so this is where thinking head comes into play and at that point as you're writing through the scene you can set up certain roadblocks or certain constraints in order to guide the player towards that event since you're projecting what needs to happen a game such as until dawn seemingly was written entirely with stumble writing as the driving technique because there's never a moment where it seems as though there was this overarching plan or purpose to action it's simply oh you took a left instead of a right and then you took the risky route instead of the safe route and as a result the character dies we cut the scene and you move on now we have to factor in that this character died in this scene so we have to carry on each character's story individually from here on out it's fairly simple it's relatively cheap to do you don't need a huge writing staff to do it and it's quick which is why a game like until dawn which had a smaller budget and a smaller team working on it would embrace a technique such as stumble writing as I would call it however a game such as Detroit become human is capable of doing such a good job of balancing the two not just because they have a larger staff but seemingly because they are more experienced in the development of titles such as these and really this is where biggest praise of Detroit become human comes out because it is utterly fascinating how many consequences they took account of for instance when I'm standing in this space as Connor with Hank and we're just sitting there what you're supposed to be doing in the scene is exploring the crime scene looking around finding clues to hunt down an Android and then if you find him in the actual game you chase him down and there's this whole big moment where you save Hanks like or you judge and you run away and it's just this big moment and they plan for all of these steps and it's very impactful later on in the game because you have to have a certain relationship with Hank in order to encounter certain other options and events to encounter those consequences once again we see the projected writing where they're taking into consideration many of the actions you're taking in the moment future and down the road but the amazing thing is is that if you simply leave the character here get up and go do your own thing after a few minutes Hanks gonna start to get exacerbated he's gonna start to get frustrated and then eventually he's gonna say this there's nothing else to see here let's get out of this [ __ ] before I die of an asthma attack we're missing something well next time think faster Sherlock come on I've had enough of his dump move [ __ ] now when a viewer on the discord server told me that this was a thing that you could actually encounter I personally didn't really believe it I will admit that I did not trust this viewer I thought they were pulling my leg and so I decided to try it for myself and after sitting in the space sure enough that seemed played and my mind was utterly blown because all of a sudden a whole new world of opportunity opened up as a result of this realization that they had accounted for me simply standing and doing nothing of not even trying to complete the scene in the way that they expected you to and once you realize that they accounted for that in this scene it's possible that they accounted for that choice however dull and uninspired it may be in other scenes and that could impact the story in all sorts of different ways if Connor simply stops investigating if you simply sit on the controller and don't do anything it's possible that they accounted for every single scene that that could happen and it possible that they also encountered that and accounted for it in each of Kara scenes or or Marcus's scenes and once you realize that that level of attention to detail has been opened up and embraced it opens a whole new world of possibilities and all you want to do is go back and continue exploring which once again is really the core of this games gameplay loop is making you amazed at how many things they took into consideration and accounted for and want to explore that narrative further and this is where we get to the heart of the game itself which is how you choose to play it and how you choose to make the decisions that you're going to be asked to decide in the these moments that you'll encounter throughout the story and in my eyes there's three core ways that you can approach it on the one hand you can role play underneath each character in a particular way so over a stands for Cara you can set out to play as the protective mother figure and you'll do anything to save Alice no matter what and as a result you're going to be making certain decisions in order to protect her to the best of your ability another possible way would be to react to each situation as organically as possible and in the way that you would if you were this given Android which at least as far as I can tell is how most people tend to play most people don't sit down and decide I'm gonna play the game in this fashion with the characters approaching each problem as they would usually they're just making the decisions that pop in their head in the moment and so it seems to me this is the most common the third option is something that you're going to be doing a lot in your replays of each scene which is that you're gonna try to steer the story towards a desired end so for instance in the example I just gave when we're investigating the scene and I was going through the scene again I was trying to steer it towards a specific ending and I was doing that through certain choices another more broad example would be within this particular sequence where Connor is chasing Cara and if I am playing the game and I side more with Cara and I sympathize more with Cara as opposed to Connor because he still totally bought into the fact that he's an Android I'm going to try to sabotage his capture of Cara for the sake of steering the story towards the direction I want it where Alice and Carrick get away and Connor is left having to pick up the scraps the scene is actually a very good example of it because it's not something that I ever expected chronic dream to put in the game this moment where you're forced to put two of these characters head-to-head and make a choice they actually do it several times in the story depending on which branches you get with regards to Connor approaching Marcus and having the option to either kill Marcus or to embrace him and and embrace his more human side or if it's in this particular instance where Connor and Cara are forced to make these decisions together it's very fascinating because it forces you to step out of just one character's view and embrace the moment as a whole which I actually find very very interesting and I'm not sure if it works very very well to be honest but what I am sure of is that it does get you thinking in a different way which is important in a game like this to shake it up every once in a while and to be honest I really don't know which one of these three paths if there is one is best I think that most players are going to play in some sort of combination of the three for instance in the moment where Cara and Connor are in this hot pursuit I chose to play more in the first example where I role played as each character I set my own respective prejudices aside and preferences aside and I chose to play Cara's scenes and moments in that broader scene as Kara would and then I chose to play Connor sequences as close to what Connor would do as possible so I didn't try to sabotage anything I tried to play it as honestly as possible and I feel as though that's the way most people are going to approach those types of instances and this is the really cool thing about Detroit becoming human is that they've embraced each of these three play styles and made that the focus they haven't shied away from it or tried to push you towards playing it in one of these three ways they allow you to play it with these working in sequence and it works beautifully well I I have to applaud them for this and so at its core Detroit become human it's not just a game which handles large subjects Albee it a little clunky at times but it handles these subjects with context and with a sort of delicacy that is very very rare in games of this type normally you're forced to play through in a certain style such as in life is strange where you're going to be playing through the story the way that the developer wants you to and they're going to give you the illusion of freedom and they tried to hide away from it but the most clear example I can give of Detroit become human being straight up with how many branching choices and narrative consequences you can encounter is with the flowchart at the end of every scene that you play you're going to encounter turd the flowchart which is where Quantic Dream's shows you how many different choices you could have made and how many branching options there are they don't hide this behind the screen so you have to map it out yourself they show you first and foremost to show that there are not just like three options and then you choose and they all end up ending the same way there are many ways that this can go and as a result it's utterly fascinating because you start exploring that tree you start trying to find ways to get the chart to fill out it actually feeds the player instead of making them discouraged and not want to go back and explore different sequences because they're afraid there won't actually be any difference but in addition to all of this they also handle smaller topics and attention to detail very very well even certain instances and discussions and topics that you wouldn't necessarily think are at the forefront of the game's writing they have been taken into consideration and if you take a moment to think about them it can lead to some really interesting conclusions for instance Kamsky who is the former head of cyber life though basically the inventor of these androids he is somebody that you encounter in the story with Connor and Hank at a certain moment when you're looking for information and you can start to interrogate him but he forces Connor to prove his either obedience to humanity or his rebellion against humanity as Kamsky orders him to shoot another Android in the head the player has the option to either shoot the Android in the head much to the chagrin of Hank or to say no and follow what Hank is suggesting even if it is in resistance to what Kamsky is asking you to do it's a small moment but it's very indicative of CAM skeeze character in the fact that he's pushing an Android to rebel especially when you take into consideration a few of the smaller facts that you will only encounter if you're really paying attention you see Kamsky gifted Marcus the leader of the rebellion to Carl the painter possibly to ensure that he would be nurtured and taken care of however this was not for all happy-go-lucky reasons you see something is very unique about Marcus in the sense that he's able to convert other Androids pretty much instantly to the cause and he is very very talented in getting and rallying all of these other Androids together perhaps it's just a fluke and perhaps it's just a coincidence of the story that Marcus is capable of leading all of these different robots however if you read into it a little bit further you'll see that Kamsky perhaps designed this entire thing from the start you see it's possible that Kamsky gifted Marcus to Carl in order to ensure that Marcus would be well taken care of until the moment that he chose to go rogue and start a revolution against humanity he designed ra9 and the rebellion at its core was set to push humanity to further evolve into this Android phase which Kamsky in multiple instances is shown to be very sympathetic towards he believes that cyber life exists in order to further humanity however there's two ways of reading it either cyber life exists to further humanity with androids in the service of humans or to further humanity in the sense that androids are the progression and evolution of humanity you see what happens if you fail in the revolution Marcus is shut down and/or killed earlier in the story and Kamsky is brought back into cyber life as the ex post facto CEO of the company in order to re-establish order and to get everything back to normal and back to the way it should be and you can actually encounter a cutscene where he's interviewed by a reporter on all of these very topics and he says the androids are the servants of man and that will be the way it is going forward however to me it seems much more likely that Kamsky is reintroducing himself to the company so that he can re-establish and re sort of install a new ra9 into the fold so that the revolution can take place once again it seems only natural that Kamsky being the character Kamsky is is trying to further human the only way that he sees possible and he's willing to make the sacrifice as necessary but the great thing is is that there's also another way of reading Kamsky where you can see that he may or may not simply be a very rich man who's a little bit crazy and is very very egocentric and proud of his inventions in the form of androids to the point where he says that he always leaves the back door where he always is in control he knows what's up and he knows what he's doing with them and they are his servants and nothing more he's simply going back to cyber life in order to get more money but there's no need to read it that way and it's at least in my eyes far more interesting if you read it as Kamsky instituting and causing the revolution from the very beginning from the moment that he gifted marcos to his owner establishing and starting and tipping over the first domino in this long series of dominoes that depending on your choices as the player can potentially lead to a full revolution and rebellion against humanity by the androids and really to be honest I think that this frankly has to be the case even though it's not explicitly stated because if we're just being real for a second there is no way that the the androids could rebel in this form unless that back door as Kamsky described it was actually installed and left there for the androids to go back in and rebel unless the program was written in such a way where it could rewrite itself but that gets really convoluted and crazy and so it's just simpler if we accept that Kamsky orchestrated this whole thing from the very very beginning especially because it can't possibly be a coincidence that Kamsky just simply sent Karl this Android which would inevitably be called ra9 would be called the savior of the androids bla bla bla but even if all of that is utter horse crap and it's not true and it's just reading too much into these characters in these scenes the fact that it can still be justified in it that it's something that's interesting to think about I think speaks wonders about what this game is actually capable of because they spend so much time and effort and energy discussing these topics discussing these characters you actually get to the point where you start to think in their world and try to figure out what exactly is going on and at its core that's all the game is trying to do and the fact that it achieves in that for me makes it totally successful yes there's moments of cringe yes there's moments where I wish they could improve it and polish this up or take this line out and maybe that they cut the ending that's optional where you have the character sing I'm not joking there is an ending where every Android in the rebellion starts like singing a song and then they stand their rifles down and the president forgives that like it's it's very cringy there's a lot of moments like that and I wish those were cut out and polished out but at least for me on my first playthru when I played through it as I wanted to exploring the story as I did I had a blast and once I started exploring the branching narratives and I started really thinking about what was going on the Kamsky storylines and all of that I absolutely became enamoured and I was more and more impressed by what this game accomplishes the more I delved into it is Detroit become human going to be for everybody absolutely not in fact it may or may not be for a very small subset of gamers as they are but David cage is well aware of this and that is why on multiple occasions he's actually quoted as saying quote development studios like Quantic Dream have an obligation to provide interactive storytelling that can be played by everyone including non gamers and quote Detroit become human is a experience that is not just geared towards people who play a lot of video game settings it's an experience that's meant to attract and appeal to people who simply find interactive storytelling fascinating and interesting and in that fact it utterly succeeds and so while it may not be the perfect game it is a game that I can recommend and that I'm very happy I played and while I think that Quantic Dream has a lot of work still to do in order to perfect this formula I cannot wait for what they have next [Music]

Channel: Luke Stephens

Views: 126,911

Keywords: Luke Stephens, Detroit: Become Human, Detroit Become Human, Critique, Analysis

Id: 3PDlk1o3FJA

Length: 50min 11sec (3011 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 11 2018