There are times when a mere name can change your opinion about a game. With Detroit: Become Human, a game that looked very interesting in its gameplay demo’s premise, the name was David Cage. As soon as it takes to say the name, my interest in the game became very murky.
David De Gruttola, BKA David Cage, is the founder of Quantic Dream, the studio behind polarizing titles such as Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy, Heavy Rain, and Beyond: Two Souls. He is known for his affinity for providing “emotional” experiences in video games. Often, those experiences involve little actual gameplay and plenty of quick-time events (QTEs). For people who love his aforementioned games, the experiences are amazing and thought-provoking. To me, they feel more like interactive movies with pretentions than games. If past experience serve me right, Detroit: Become Human will be more of the same. It looks gorgeous and interesting as hell, though, and the presentation is very engaging.
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The E3 2016 demo for Detroit: Become Human played out like a detective drama on steroids. The protagonist is Connor an android who specialized in hostage negotiation. Connor enters a scene where a rogue android servant has grabbed a little girl and is standing on a ledge, threatening to throw her off it. The way Connor handles the situation is dependent on choices the player makes for Connor. Those choices can be influenced by evidence Connor investigates before confronting the rogue android. As the player makes choices, the dialog tree grows, with each choice opening up more possibilities.
The demo showed several possibilities coming to fruition. In the first, the rogue android jumped off the ledge with the girl before Connor could save her. Later possibilities include Connor saving the girl by throwing off the ledge, sacrificing himself by throwing himself into the other android and both of them falling off the ledge, and talking the android into letting the girl go, opening the rogue up to sniper fire. The amount of branching paths shown was mind-boggling, and the possibilities hinted at were dizzying.
The storytelling potential in Detroit: Become Human is staggering. The execution, however, is what worries me. Quantic Dream games are notoriously light on gameplay and heavy on watching. A game like this can weigh heavy on the soul and pull all kinds of feels; I just have to point to Telltale’s excellent The Walking Dead series as an example of minimum gameplay and maximum emotion. But accepting a full-price AAA title becoming little more than a slideshow is pretty rough to do. The story had better be absolutely mind-boggling to justify such a move. David Cage and Quantic Dream have the talent to pull it off; we would have to see more to determine if they did.
There is no release date for Detroit: Become Human. PlayStation 4 owners will indeed have a change to see more prior to its retail debut.
