Quantic Dream has become a studio which, for better or for
worse, is known specifically for creating a certain type of game, and Detroit:
Become Human is very much one of those games. It places its cinematic nature and
characters first and foremost, with the most important bits of gameplay taking
place from within its cutscenes, during which your responses and actions have
major impacts on and determine the narrative.
That isn’t to say that you don’t have the ability to control
your character through various environments and complete rudimentary quests in
between the story sequences, and Detroit: Become Human makes this aspect of
gameplay more enjoyable than it was in their previous efforts, especially the
oddly forgettable Beyond: Two Souls. As with other Quantic Dream games, I still
can’t help but wish at times that there was more to sink my teeth into from a
gameplay perspective; just a little bit more to explore, a way to pull off
interactive action sequences without relying on QTE prompts, and a way to
escape the nagging feeling that the story could have been much stronger had it
not been so determined by my choices.
All of that said, Detroit: Become Human can arguably be
called Quantic Dream’s best work to date, a game whose futuristic environments
are often beautifully realized, its characters easy to become attached to, and,
of course, the seemingly endless amount of decisions and dialogue choices that have
major effects on the progression of the story.
As far as the dialogue system is concerned, similarly to
Quantic’s past games, you have only a short amount of time to make major
decisions during cutscenes, and the studio does a great job of making many of
them morally ambiguous; too often these types of games boil down to thinly
disguised “good or evil” choices, with the gamer making a choice more because
they want their character to be a “good guy” or a “bad guy.” In Detroit: Become
Human, it’s very tough to tell which choices are which, and the many possible
outcomes of each choice have only a short time to run through your head before
time runs out on making your decision. The game isn’t afraid to provide
seemingly any type of story outcome, including the ability for any of your main
characters to be permanently killed off from a decision that goes badly. A
flowchart displays at the end of each chapter, showing the path you took
intermingled with the numerous other branching off points, revealing just how
many different directions the scene could have gone had you done something
differently, and giving you the ability to see the percentage of other players
who made the same choices as you did. I
can see why this feature has been Detroit: Become Human’s most controversial
aspect, as it does serve as a regular reminder that you’re playing, of course,
a video game, but I thought it was an incredible addition, as not only does it
show you just how many different paths a given scene could have taken, but it
provides an incentive to return to scenes after the fact, potentially improving
the game’s replay value for those interested in seeing the many different ways
a scene can go, and the effects the various outcomes can have on the rest of
the game.
Detroit: Become Human tells the story of three different
androids in a futuristic version of the city of Detroit, in a world where androids
play a major role in people’s lives, but live in servitude and are essentially
treated as second class citizens. This takes place against the backdrop of potential
world conflict, as the United States sits on the verge of WWIII with Russia as
the country begins making moves to take the Arctic. Detroit stars Kara, Connor,
and Markus as androids who co-exist in different parts of the city,
working/living alongside humans. The world’s entering a bit of a crisis, as an
increasing number of androids are beginning to malfunction; in other words,
beginning to develop human consciousness. The game cuts between the characters on
a chapter-by-chapter basis, with them having minimal, if any, interaction with
each other, but with each scenario blending well together, and all three given
strong narratives that propel the game forward. Any of them can live or die,
succeed or fail, or seemingly anything in between, based on your choices. It’s
here that Detroit demonstrates the largest leap forward for Quantic Dream; in
their previous games, and most evidently in Beyond, there was always the
feeling that your choices didn’t make a difference except on a mere surface level,
and here, from the beginning, that’s clearly not the case.
Ultimately, this is Detroit’s biggest accomplishment and yet
also its biggest weakness. Looking at the Quantic Dream formula, it’s hard to
think how the system can evolve much beyond what Detroit has accomplished. The
impact that you can have on the story at almost any given second is
astonishing, and some of the interactive action sequences, including a showstopping
chase through the city’s rooftops, are pretty awesome and inventive. The fear
of failure or an undesirable result is ever-present given the game’s ability to
present such outcomes, which adds a level of well-earned tension to many of its
scenes.
The downside is of course that it’s very difficult to
provide such freedom without it impacting the story. I was ultimately happy
with and proud of the ending that I was able to achieve, but at the same time,
having a character, one who I’d grown attached to over the course of the game,
killed off for something as accidental as failing a QTE, and therefore causing
me to miss out on the entire conclusion to the character’s story arc, just wasn’t
fun. If this had happened during a movie, it would be so anti-climactic that
the crowd would’ve booed the scene. To be fair, such a dire outcome isn’t
commonplace, but it did happen to me and as a result it really hurt the story that
was told to me. It serves as the clearest example of the game’s most impressive
feature also in the end hurting my experience with it, through no real fault of
its own; it did what it was supposed to do, and it’s hard to fault it for that.
I’m a fan of the deadly consequences lurking within Detroit: Become Human,
though I’d say for future games I’d be happier if Quantic Dream made the permanent
death of a main character a bit harder to achieve than it can be here.
As with most other of these cinematic types of games, the
exploration progresses in a linear fashion, with you limited to small areas
dictated by the story. Though the enclosed nature of each environment (such as
a single city street or a house’s living room) does occasionally feel
constricting, Detroit makes the environments a lot of fun to fully explore,
with clues that you find and observations that you make giving you additional
(often beneficial) choices during the upcoming cutscenes. In that sense, diving
into all that each little environment has to offer almost feels like this
game’s version of sidequests, (ones with an immediate payoff, to boot) and the
bustling futuristic urban environments you find yourself in look fantastic and
give you a great opportunity to experience and explore Detroit’s world
firsthand. I did wish there was a bit more of this, and the lack of a “run”
button is unfortunate, but the game otherwise controls well as you explore, and
these sections add quite well to the rest of the experience.
The music is really the only aspect of Detroit’s
presentation that I wasn’t thrilled with. Similar to Heavy Rain, the soundtrack
here consists mostly of subdued, melancholy piano tunes and other downbeat
music throughout. It isn’t bad, and at many times it sounds pretty and does
elicit some emotion, but as with Heavy Rain, I just find this type of
soundtrack to be depressing, and especially given Detroit’s sci-fi, futuristic
elements, I wish they’d have come up with something different. The voice acting
though in general is great, providing the characters with a natural, down to
earth feel, and for characters who are androids, that’s definitely an
accomplishment.
Detroit: Become Human was a game that managed to impress me.
I’ve had a bit of a declining interest in games from Quantic Dream in recent
years, having enjoyed Indigo Prophecy, and finding Heavy Rain to be equally
compelling but a good deal less satisfying. Beyond: Two Souls had its moments,
but was a game I hadn’t even bothered to review and find myself hard-pressed to
remember much of anything about. I’d had
my doubts that Detroit would click with me, especially with my gaming tastes
having shifted in a much more exploration-driven and gameplay-focused direction
following The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild last year. But I have to say,
this game really takes the Quantic Dream formula and evolves it in a major way.
The amount of control you have over the narrative and the fate of your
characters at almost any given moment feels unprecedented, illustrated between
chapters by a great flow chart system that fully and effortlessly communicates
this all to you from minute one. The environments you get to explore when not
watching cinematics remain limited in their scope, but offer a huge amount of
objects and clues to interact with, things to take note of, and atmosphere to
take in. Detroit: Become Human isn’t perfect, and the amount of freedom it
offers you to shape the story can really take its toll on the story itself,
should things not go the way you intended them, especially if it’s due to a
simple mistake or to not understanding what the game’s asking of you. I do
wonder whether there’s really anywhere for Quantic Dream to go from here, and
hope, as I’ve done for years, that one day they attempt to deliver another open
world, Omikron style of adventure. Until then, though, Detroit: Become Human
is, I think it’s safe to say, their best work yet, and though the limitations
that come with such a guided, cinematic experience do hold it back, it does
manage to excel within those parameters and deliver a compelling,
thought-provoking adventure.
Detroit: Become Human is available exclusively on the PS4.
3.5/5
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