SPOILER-FREE REVIEW
Gripping stories, meaningful choices and compelling lead characters make Detroit: Become Human an engaging adventure, even if it occasionally fails to meet its own goals.
The most interesting thing about Detroit: Become Human is that it feels more like an interactive film than a video game. People who’ve played other David Cage games will know the feeling; there’s a standard list of qualities both good and bad for such games. Thankfully, there’s more to Detroit than that standard list. Quantic Dream have succeeded in creating a realistic world with a rich history and populating it with compelling characters who have substantial and engaging character arcs. While there’s certainly still room to grow, this is easily their best work yet.
Set in the near future where androids have a ubiquitous presence in our daily lives, Detroit follows the journey of three androids: Kara, a housekeeper who gains sentience for the first time after saving a little girl from her abusive father; Markus, a carer who breaks free of his programming and becomes the leader of a revolution; and Connor, an enforcer working with the police to hunt down newly sentient androids. After years of skyrocketing unemployment, drug epidemics and societal disruption, the appearance of these sentient androids, known as deviants, threatens to throw Detroit into total chaos.
What’s immediately striking about Detroit is how much like a real place it feels, and how I still want to see more of it. This isn’t a science fiction utopia where crime has been eradicated and humans and their androids exist in total harmony. Rather, it echoes many current concerns over consumer culture and society’s increasing dependence on technology. In this world, androids are as omnipresent as smartphones are today, and they’re walking the streets without anyone so much as batting an eye. Thanks to them, people have been put out of work and they’re picketing outside the stores that sell androids off like merchandise, while a street musician plays guitar at a fountain nearby, with a sign advertising “human music”. It’s not an optimistic outlook, nor is it a full-blown dystopia. Rather, it’s projecting current trends forward, and the game’s world feels more realistic for having a rich history deeply rooted in current events.
The approach taken towards the somewhat controversial event that incites Kara’s journey is indicative of the developers’ approach to making this game. It aims to provoke emotion and often succeeds. Many choice-based games present the illusion of choice, with different paths to a single outcome. Detroit gives you many choices, and many different outcomes as well. The consequences of your actions aren’t always obvious and it’s clear that if I had made a few different choices, the game could have gone in a very different direction. When it comes to story choice, Detroit meets its lofty ambitions. Even on a third playthrough, I was uncovering scenes I had never come across before. End-of-chapter flowcharts compel you to go back, and give the game plenty of replay value.
A single courageous act kickstarts Kara’s journey from obedient servant to fiercely protective guardian for Alice, the little girl she rescues. Valorie Curry, who mo-capped and voiced Kara, has incredible range and gives her character formidable inner strength and determination. Hers is a journey of people looking for a better life as the world falls apart around them.
In stark contrast, Connor’s arc is a gritty detective story with plenty of action. Connor can reconstruct crime scenes in his mind, and this lets you do some gripping detective work. Bryan Dechart is fantastic as Connor, who’s firm in his belief that he’s a machine with a mission. His naivete means that he has an excellent foil in Clancy Brown’s grizzled detective Hank Anderson, who loathes androids with a passion. Together, they sell the extraordinary variation possible in that relationship with remarkable ease. You can play Connor as cold and determined, or work at winning Hank’s friendship and becoming partners in stopping crime.
Jesse Williams gives Markus surprising depth, with a rise to power accompanied by uncertainty and inner doubts. I appreciated that I was given the freedom to choose when it came to his arc, given that his actions have a ripple effect on Kara and Connor. It helps that the game is full of small moments that have little to no bearing on the main story but are included just to give the player an interesting choice to make. Variety is the spice of life, and sometimes these moments are where the game is at its strongest.
But despite that, all of the character arcs drift off into melodramatic territory or wind up resorting to tropes. Dialogue doesn’t always feel sharp and can be laden with awkward exposition, while the game’s attempts at historical allegory can be drastically unsubtle. The fact that androids have second-class citizen status is blatantly obvious, and even if the game had opted for subtlety, it still would have been perfectly clear. Still, the game creates enough goodwill with its compelling performances that you’re willing to forgive its slipups.
Detroit has standard Quantic Dream gameplay: third-person view, dialogue decisions and QTEs. Each action your characters make, whether it’s turning a door handle or picking up a gun feels tactile and substantial because of the game’s remarkable control scheme. Holding three buttons down at once even allows the game to communicate sensations such as weight. Complex combat sequences pile on the pressure, even if it isn’t easy to fail them. A great deal of work has gone into making the game feel interactive. It’s not without problems. Occasionally, my character would awkwardly collide off NPCs while trying to walk past them. The use of the controller touchpad was also a source of frustration, as was the camera, which occasionally wound up at awkward angles, requiring manual adjustment.
The game serves as a particularly excellent example of the 4K checkerboarding available on the PS4 Pro. Its environments are beautifully designed. City segments capture the feeling of a living, thriving city, from thriving business districts to back alleys. More intimate settings get the same care, transforming them into spaces inhabited by human beings. You’re tempted to stop in your tracks and gawk. This game’s character models are some of the best of this generation. Both android and human characters are incredibly detailed and expressive thanks to cutting-edge motion capture technology, and you can read them in the way you might a real-life person. Even more recent games struggle with eyes, which is something Detroit actually gets right.
Despite not always equalling its ambitions, Detroit is something special. The stories it tells are deeply engaging and emotional, presenting you with a branching story tree unlike any other. The controls connect you with your character in a substantial way, despite those niggling inconsistencies. All of that is coupled with beautiful environments that tell a story all on their own. While this game has its problems, its accomplished performances, unforgettable narrative and willingness to give players true choice successfully overcome.
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