Detroit: Become Human

Do androids dream of quantic sheep?

You can feel Detroit striving to be more than it ultimately turns out to be. We don’t mean for that to sound overly critical, but only to suggest that while fantastic progress has been made from Heavy Rain through Beyond and now Detroit: Become Human, it also doesn’t seem as if David Cage’s vision has been fully realised just yet, although it might be the closest he’s ever gotten.

What we will say to its absolute credit is that the subject matter of Detroit: Become Human suits Quantic Dream’s style down to a tee. Working in sci-fireally suits the studio’s approach to menus, character design, its cinematic flair with a camera, and even the nature of the controls. While the aim of these games has always been to bridge the gap between movie and game experience in as tight and clean a way as possible, the quicktime events, HUD elements and investigative twists sometimes felt like they put a barrier between us as players and the action. With androids as your leads that doesn’t feel as odd.

Detroit works with this really well as it establishes early on that it’s the programming the androids themselves that’s dictating where they can and can’t go in the game world (a simple twist on the invisible wall concept), that the different elements they see around them are part of how they view the world. And it’s interesting to see that change through the game too as they first break their strict programming (or not, as the case may be) and establish their own priorities. Then, suddenly, you choose not to walk down the alley, not because your programming says not to, but because the character has chosen a priority for themselves that they are tied to.