Detroit: Become Human
10 hours ago
(This post was last modified: 9 hours ago by Sacred Jellybean.)
FUCK, this game is good. I was hooked immediately. At its very opening, it effectively draws in the player by dropping them into a high-stakes hostage negotiation. The player can investigate the aftermath of an attack to gather information before talking directly to the hostage-taker.
Androids, AI, sentience, free will, civil rights for robots... all of these are subjects that sci-fi has thoroughly explored, particularly recently, with the (very annoying) rise in AI hype. Hey, at least all those tech-bro dipshits finally shut up about NFTs. Detroit: Become Human is 8 years old, so to its credit, this is long before the most recent trend took off.
None of that matters, though: the developers at Quantic Dream are brilliant at story-telling. You can take any well-trodden subject and with enough talent, create a masterpiece. On paper, a lot of the scenarios the game puts you through are rather predictable: you're an android who has to decide whether to obey an unethical order (like ignoring your owner beating his daughter instead of intervening), or decide whether an android life is worth the same a human life. But the skill at which Quantic Dream develops these characters and introduces you to them is enough to keep them riveting. Even if, at their essence, the ideas here aren't new, it's gratifying to play a game that engages your heart/brain, not just hand/eye coordination.
One small criticism of the game is that it's rather "point-and-click". There isn't very much action. Most of the controls are just inputting buttons to inch the character along a predetermined track. However, there are different decisions the player can make to explore different branches. This is my first play-through, and I'm not certain how far along I am, so I can't say for sure how much variation you can really experience. I imagine the core chapters are the same, but there are slight differences, and decisions from earlier chapters influence later chapters.
Ideally, you would unlock completely different plots based on decisions you make, but I know how quickly that can scale up, so I'm sure the basic plot still be the same. I'm okay with that. My playthrough now is mostly a non-violent MLK approach to fighting for androids' rights. Next playthrough, I'm gonna go full on Black Panthers on these carbon-based fuckers. Also, fuck Connor, goddamn Uncle Tom, he's like a slave whipping other slaves in antebellum South. I feel good foiling him and stopping him from killing other androids (though part of that is my pacifistic nature, if you can believe I have one).
I haven't loved a game this much since Control. Swear to god, all I do when I play games nowadays is complain about how much they suck and "only an idiot would play this game" *plays it for another 20 hours*. It's rare that I come across a gem like this. It's especially a breath of cold water because it's on the heels of months of playing old, janky Nintendo Online games. Which are still fun, but man, they really make you appreciate the progress we've made.
Androids, AI, sentience, free will, civil rights for robots... all of these are subjects that sci-fi has thoroughly explored, particularly recently, with the (very annoying) rise in AI hype. Hey, at least all those tech-bro dipshits finally shut up about NFTs. Detroit: Become Human is 8 years old, so to its credit, this is long before the most recent trend took off.
None of that matters, though: the developers at Quantic Dream are brilliant at story-telling. You can take any well-trodden subject and with enough talent, create a masterpiece. On paper, a lot of the scenarios the game puts you through are rather predictable: you're an android who has to decide whether to obey an unethical order (like ignoring your owner beating his daughter instead of intervening), or decide whether an android life is worth the same a human life. But the skill at which Quantic Dream develops these characters and introduces you to them is enough to keep them riveting. Even if, at their essence, the ideas here aren't new, it's gratifying to play a game that engages your heart/brain, not just hand/eye coordination.
One small criticism of the game is that it's rather "point-and-click". There isn't very much action. Most of the controls are just inputting buttons to inch the character along a predetermined track. However, there are different decisions the player can make to explore different branches. This is my first play-through, and I'm not certain how far along I am, so I can't say for sure how much variation you can really experience. I imagine the core chapters are the same, but there are slight differences, and decisions from earlier chapters influence later chapters.
Ideally, you would unlock completely different plots based on decisions you make, but I know how quickly that can scale up, so I'm sure the basic plot still be the same. I'm okay with that. My playthrough now is mostly a non-violent MLK approach to fighting for androids' rights. Next playthrough, I'm gonna go full on Black Panthers on these carbon-based fuckers. Also, fuck Connor, goddamn Uncle Tom, he's like a slave whipping other slaves in antebellum South. I feel good foiling him and stopping him from killing other androids (though part of that is my pacifistic nature, if you can believe I have one).
I haven't loved a game this much since Control. Swear to god, all I do when I play games nowadays is complain about how much they suck and "only an idiot would play this game" *plays it for another 20 hours*. It's rare that I come across a gem like this. It's especially a breath of cold water because it's on the heels of months of playing old, janky Nintendo Online games. Which are still fun, but man, they really make you appreciate the progress we've made.