DETROIT: BECOME HUMAN
Does Quantic Dream of more than just hypothetical electric sheep?
We want to keep things as spoilerfree as possible for this hands-on preview as the variety of possible outcomes is one you’ll want to discover first-hand. However, this is going to require some fancy footwork on our part when even talking about the main menu in great detail could incur spoilers, so bear with us. But it’s obvious from just this first screen that Quantic Dream’s latest, cinematic narrative game has a lot on its mind. As we start playing, we see the ominous words “Remember, this is not just a story, this is our future.”
The future imagined here prominently features a thriving Detroit resuscitated by the advent of the android as its disposable workforce. The demand for androids as caregivers, housekeepers, and civil beautification workers is one manufacturer CyberLife seems only too keen to meet, quickly putting large portions of the flesh-and-blood population out of a job. Outmoded by automation, the unemployed take to the streets and make their anger towards androids abundantly clear. Playing as one of three android protagonists, it didn’t take long for us to run afoul of a group of protesters.
PUSHING YOUR BUTTONS
Let’s rewind a little bit. In this scene, as Markus, we’re tasked with collecting some items ordered
“ANDROIDS ARE DETROIT’S DISPOSABLE WORKFORCE.”
by our human owner. As we walk from point A to point B, we’re surrounded by a detailed envisioning of this future city. Children play in a park nearby, accompanied by ever-watchful android proxy parents. To our left, other androids rake the park’s leaves and maintain its greenery. Running past us, an unfaltering android tells their out-of-breath human running partner just how far they’ve come. We found ourselves desperately wanting to interact with this world, to discover these androids’ stories, but we’re prevented from getting close by translucent walls of red telling us that our objective did not lie this way. Having picked up the items and following the instructions given to us, we’re then told to take the bus back home, and that’s when we run into the human protesters.
As soon as we walk into their eyeline, their anger becomes laser-focused on us. We’re knocked to the ground and the only interaction we’re allowed is to follow the button prompts so that we can attempt to get up. We can’t fight back – we can’t even defend ourselves, as those weren’t the orders we were given by our owner. Eventually we’re able to get away from our attackers but the frustration of that scene stays with us… and is felt again especially keenly in a later scene with Kara. That early altercation in the streets of Detroit may seem par for the course in a cinematic, choice-driven game. Indeed, as the scene comes to a close we’re shown a flow chart of all of its possible outcomes and notice that this particular screen looks less like a true flow chart and bears a closer resemblance to a straight line. But just when you think you know exactly which cards Detroit has in its perfectly symmetrical hand, the game decides to reveal that at least one of them may not have been the Jack you were so sure it was.
BREAKING DAD
Playing through Kara’s infamous scene – shown at last year’s Paris Games Week – reveals any bad feeling you may have had about the domestic situation she appears to be in was absolutely spot-on. Kara’s owner, single father Todd, reveals the true depths of his instability, tearing off after his young daughter Alice in a violent rage. He orders us to stay put and not to get involved. But, of course, we can’t do that, Alice is clearly at risk. If you choose to ignore this direct order, you can smash your way through that frustrating, red wall gatekeeping your interactions and become a ‘deviant’ android.
What you’re able to do from there… well, we don’t want to spoil it, but the end screen for Kara’s scene presented us with something that looked much more like an elaborate spider web of choice and consequence than anything we’d seen so far in the game. Worried that this might mean you’ll miss out on significant events? We’re told that a checkpoint system will make it easier than ever to sink your teeth into the many branches of Detroit that are well worth experiencing for yourself.
Two of your protagonists’ eventual status as ‘deviants’ complicates matters as your third and final protagonist is an android which investigates the crimes of deviants and hunts the errant androids down. We’ll definitely choose to see how the tales of this trio intersect later this month.
“SMASH THE RED WALL GATEKEEPING YOUR INTERACTIONS AND BECOME A ‘DEVIANT’ ANDROID.”