Intro

Detroit: Become Human is an action-adventure game played from a third-person view, which is subject to a set and controllable perspective. This game is built around an open, near-future interactive story were players take on the role of three androids who rebel in a world where robots are near slaves but are persecuted by much of the general population. 

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Detroit: Become Human was released in 2018 by the company Quantic Dream who were founded in May 1997, Quantic Dream have so far developed five popular video games: The Nomad Soul (1999), Fahrenheit (2005), Heavy Rain (2010), Beyond: Two Souls (2013), and Detroit: Become Human (2018) that ended up being their most successful launch, and the company's best selling game selling 6.5 million copies worldwide as of July 2021. In 2017, Detroit: Become Human was nominated for multiple awards like "Best PlayStation 4 Game" and "Best Adventure Game" at IGN's Best of E3 Awards, and for "Adventure Game" at Hardcore Gamer's Best of E3 Awards. 

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So building up to Detroit's release in 2018 there were many Technical innovations happening

From 2000’s to 2010’s, various technologies were also advancing at a fast rate, smartphones were becoming smaller and more powerful, software and graphics were improving, contracts with data were becoming more affordable for the everyday user, and gradually mobile gaming on smartphones and tablets replaced portable consoles. Casual gaming grew as a market segment, and the number of gamers from China and other regions not previously associated with the industry increased.

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The first cloud gaming services emerged in 2009. These services allowed players to play games where the processing power was performed on a computer system at a hosted location. This eliminated the need for a costly console or dedicated gaming computer for players. Cloud gaming became more refined in the 2010s as total network capacity around the world increased with higher bandwidths made available to consumers, in addition to new technologies to try to overcome the latency issue.

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Around 2010 multiplatform started to become a thing, it became technically feasible to allow for cross-platform play between different platforms. However it was contested heavily by the likes of Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo who had concerns and wanted to maintain a family friendly environment for their online services. Fortnite Battle Royale by Epic Games, which debuted in 2017, was a key factor in the growth of cross-platform play. In the first few months after its introduction, Fortnite quickly acquired popularity, and Epic was able to demonstrate how simple it was to incorporate cross-platform play between the Xbox, Windows, and mobile platforms.

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New revenue models for video games started to appear in the early 2010’s as publishers looked for ways to gain additional revenue for games beyond the first sale of the game. Creating ways to earn in game currency allowing you to exchange for different content or upgrades plus allowing real life money to make purchases including loot boxes and when opened would contain a variety of items, randomly selected. However, since real-world money could be used to buy them, this attracted the attention of international governments and policy leaders who were concerned that loot boxes were too close to gambling.

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As Virtual Reality technology has advanced over the last 10 years, there have been several attempts to make VR Gaming headsets mainstream, however due to high cost and not the best looking designs, plus not so many games being available its in my opinion still just a nice device to have. There are options available from mainstream brands such as HTC, PlayStation and even Facebook bought the company who created the Oculus Rift VR headset.

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Having used a VR headset I can see the attraction and really enjoyed the experience, but to make it so everyone “must” have one, the price should be reduced, and all the new games that are launched should have some form of Virtual Experience.

Augmented Reality (AR) is an interesting one and will be interesting to see how far this gets developed for many different industries, not just gaming. When Pokémon Go was released in 2016, it blended location-based games with augmented reality, and the genre took off. Players would seek for and try to capture a virtual Pokémon utilising augmented reality on top of their device's camera by using their mobile smartphone to direct them to its location.

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Detroit Become Human sits within the time when technology was advancing fast not just in the gaming industry but in multiple industries. AI/VR/AR Robotics are all growing and becoming more powerful and being able to construct a sci-fi game with amazing visual movie-type effects, and storytelling, combined with real-world issues meant this game had everything giving the player a choice and free will in all decisions right or wrong.

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Go into Detroit gameplay....

The issue with many adventure-style games is that, in terms of the resolution, they are frequently fairly binary. Either you choose the right path or the wrong one, the game will reach its preset conclusion regardless of your actions.

 

Detroit Become Human has the feel of a movie and is heavily user-driven, with choices having a significant impact on how the plot develops, how people can die, or how a player can fail. When you are aware that your decisions will affect how the game develops in the future, they can be both emotionally challenging and thought-provoking.

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The game belongs to the interactive movie/action-adventure game genre, that had steadily begun to gain popularity as a result of other noteworthy releases like Quantic Dreams Beyond: two Soles, which had been released in 2013 on Playstation and in 2019 on PC. The game's creator and director, David Cage, stated that game development studios should offer "interactive storytelling" that can be enjoyed by all players, including those who aren't gamers, and the title reportedly sold 2.8 million copies by July 2018.

Due to that success, Quantic Dreams doubled their investment in motion capture technology and after 4 years of development Detroit Become Human became their most successful launch selling 3.2 million copies.

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David Cage also quoted to Gamesindustry.biz that “Detroit: Become Human impressed with its technical beauty and embrace of something audiences have craved for years: a feeling that their choices matter”. The point he wanted to make was to come away from the standard Game Over or You Win type endings.

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Cage also spoke about the city's history with racial issues, a concept which is mirrored in the relationships between certain humans and androids in the game as it creates a gateway into player feedback by hedging into human motions such as values and ethics.

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David also spoke about the decision to use Detroit as the city for the game. In an interview with Gamespot, he described it as a “city trying to be reborn again” after going through hard times. The developers travelled to Detroit to take extensive photographs, meet the people who live there, and visit abandoned buildings. 

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Going into the release of Detroit Become Human, Quantic Dream had a number of years to gather their audience feedback from its predecessor called Beyond: Two Souls so could work on ironing out the issues to ensure they deliver a great new experience with Detroit.

 

Game reviews were mixed. Some good and some bad.

The good was generally around a beautiful environmental design and character animation, but there was quite a lot of bad such as

• The areas were too small with not enough exploration. 

• Disjointed story that barely holds together

• No sensation of being able to significantly alter the storyline

• Absolutely no suspense or anything that even remotely resembles true drama

• Characters that can't hold together coherent motivations

• Gameplay mostly boils down to "find the dot to continue the story"

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Conclusion

Almost every action in Detroit Become Human has a consequence in this game and it’s at the choice of the player. A hostage situation might go bad if you make the wrong moves as Connor, while the fate of many androids rests on Markus' decisions.

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This amazing interactive game, emphasises empathy, rage, and remorse through interactive storytelling.