All the feels

WHAT MAKES us human? Empathy? Morality? Love? All of those are put to the test in David Cage’s neo-noir thriller, Detroit: Become Human.

I felt everything from exhilaration to sorrow playing through this intense interactive drama, where every choice you make and every action you take has a consequence. Even death.

The bleak, not so distant future of 2038 sees a robot uprising thrust into your hands. Playing as three androids, it’s not hard to get emotionally invested in their intertwining tales, each powerful in their own way.

In one 10-hour run, you will feel the weight of Markus’ brutal decisions, as he fights for equality. Your adrenaline will spike as Connor — a mission-driven police prototype — reconstructs Platform: PlayStation 4 Rating: R16

Verdict: Exquisite interactive AI thriller an absolute must-play evidence and chases down “deviant” androids.

And your heart will wrench as you fail Kara, who only wants to save a little girl, with the choices you made for her.

None of this is certain: the way this action-packed story plays out is all up to you.

After each chapter, you’re given a flowchart breakdown to show you where you went and where you could have gone. Not only does this give a glimpse of the mind-blowing amount of options, outcomes and replayability Detroit has, but you also get to compare your choices to your friends and the rest of the world.

The scale and depth of Detroit is astounding. The graphics are exceptionally beautiful, from the great cityscapes to the stunning facial animation of its characters. The game is near flawless save for the occasionally awkward camera angle and finicky controls that make gameplay tricky, especially when you’re under the pump.

Nevertheless, Detroit: Become Human is truly exquisite, both visually and in its rich, multi-faceted narrative, and comes close to being a masterpiece.

Rachel Bache IT HAS three playable characters, multiple overlapping story arcs and requires players to make constant decisions.

So just how big is the video game Detroit: Become Human?

“There are over a thousand different combinations of ending,” warns Adam Williams, the game’s lead writer.

“You can lose any or all playable characters before the full extent of the story, giving you a whole new array of endings.”

This will be familiar news to anyone who has played David Cage’s previous titles Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls, slow-build games that lean heavily on interactive narratives.

But Detroit is different. For starters, it’s a bigger game, with a script that ran to 3000 pages and offers more interaction than ever before.

Then there’s the story, which focuses its attention on the nearfuture when artificially controlled droids are the norm.

You can play as one of three: Nurse Markus, cop Connor or housekeeper Kara in an intersecting story that revolves around a robot uprising.

Williams says the story is more about the players than what they put down on the page.

“Our job as writers was not to encode Detroit with a message for you to decipher, but to give you the tools to create your own story,” he says.

“Detroit is interested in posing questions rather than providing answers: how should humans relate to technology? Can a piece of technology ever become something more? If it does, what could it ever become?”

Williams, who comes from a linear TV background, says adapting to Cage’s everchanging story with multiple threads was hard to get used to.

“I’ve had to adapt to the fact that we’re not writing a story but rather allowing the player to write their own story,” he says.

“But that’s been hugely rewarding, because you’re actually collaborating with your audience and giving them an experience that is totally unique.

“It reflects them and what they think.” Chris Schulz