Detroit: Become Human
a game by | Quantic Dream SA |
Platform: | PC (2018) |
Editor Rating: | 9/10, based on 1 review |
User Rating: | 6.8/10 - 90 votes |
Rate this game: | |
See also: | Action Games, Action Adventure Games, Games Where Choices Matter, Stealth Action, Espionage Games, Narrative Games, Quest Games, Interactive Drama Games, Games Like Life is Strange, Games Like Until Dawn, Games Like Oxenfree, Games Like Heavy Rain |
In a season dominated by online multiplayer, battle royale and sports and shooter titles, Sony and PlayStation attempt a tear and try to give their players a wider choice, which can offer an exclusive and classic experience, albeit with an important look to the future of a medium that is facing the most critical evolution of its history.
An adventure with a fast-paced pace that does not decay at any time, from the beginning to the end is always going to be more, and that is surprisingly fun and very exciting , you can not let go of the command, you want to know what new situation will surprise you . All this while at the same time its history deals, more or less explicitly, with issues as complicated as deep that concern us all as human beings and that will make you reflect and rethink certain ideas .
This is due to its brilliant science fiction story context , a fairly near future, the year 2038 , in which the production of androids to serve humans has become popular and integrated into society , which has brought with it a multitude of advantages and advances but not a few inconveniences and social problems , such as the destruction of thousands of jobs, something that we are already seeing in our days with the automation of many jobs.
Becoming Human
What makes humans ... human? Is it a mere biological question? Supremacy over other species? The ability to feel emotions?
To make us reflect on this concept, Detroit Become Human catapults us into a not too distant future, where the androids created by Cyberlife and humans coexist peacefully, albeit not without consequences. The world designed by Cage is plagued by profound economic, social, cultural and ethical disturbances: sport, the world of work, the armed forces, international relations, even sex have been upset by the appearance of androids, intelligent, obedient machines, precise, superior and therefore more suited to man than countless tasks.
As Kara, Connor and Markus, the three protagonists androids, the story unfolds according to a twisted and intertwined diagram which, choice after choice, begins to reveal itself and to influence subsequent events, taking precise paths and excluding others clearly, often in based on the relationships developed with the other characters of the story.
Paraphrasing a way of saying, every action corresponds to an emotion, because most of the choices that the game puts us in front of it want to leverage on feelings, on the way of thinking, challenging each time their own certainties, priorities, their own dogmas , and it is no coincidence that with the advance of history the thumb could begin to waver when the time for a choice arrives.
Everything, but really all the power of Detroit is in its spirit: the plot can develop in different ways and despite having macro sections that follow certain tracks what counts in the end is not the destination but the journey; not only that of the three protagonists, but also and above all that of the player himself. Detroit is an interactive experience, a social experiment that has the ambition to bring players to a deep, intimate reflection, and this is demonstrated by the fact that superficial and hasty choices can eliminate important parts of the game or even whole chapters, which are many and very reputable, but they can also be drastically reduced with the death of one character or the other.
As in Heavy Rain, in fact, the protagonists can die and this does not pose any limit to the plot, which develops accordingly. Game over, as David Cage has accustomed us, does not exist, there is only the story that we decide to create among those possible.
Once again the doubt is always the same: are we really talking about a video game? Or is it a bivi interactive movie? The answer is convoluted but the gameplay certainly plays a central role: time marks every topical moment with anxious countdowns and the difficulty for experts makes all the choices, all the clashes, all the engaging and pathos-rich topical movements. There is not only the decision, we often also need to chain a series of rapid keys within a frantic sequence in order to be able to reach our goal, so we can say that interactivity is really taken to a level where it is functional and decisive to the experience you want to convey. From this point of view the leap forward is enormous and those who have suffered this aspect in the previous Quantic Dream titles are obliged to question themselves again.
Become Human has very simple controls, interacting with the environment with different movements of the right stick, using the rest of the buttons on QTE, and some of the features of DualShock 4, such as motion control or touch panel. These controls work perfectly and quite intuitively , and it shows that they have been working on the basis for many years
The use of graphic effects, with trembling keys in front of a difficult choice, the meta text in fonts, sizes and positions that amplify the effect on the player according to the moment, and the very successful trick of the led on the temple of androids that changes color according to the mood.
All this made extremely effective by a graphic rendering that probably has no precedent in the whole videogame genre: the rendering of the characters and their expressions is not only photorealistic but used with disarming results that have left us not a few times with an open mouth to admire for a few seconds the scene we were living, without counting a direction that has nothing to envy to the best films. The camera, designed in every single movement, drags the player and becomes an integral part of the gameplay, with strategic frame changes, ad hoc zoom in and zoom out and close up on details calculated with extreme care. Detroit has an absolute visual power, it clearly qualifies itself above and beyond what is seen in the videogame genre and it does not suffer in the least the CGI graphics, exploiting it even to its advantage. If Quantic Dream had accustomed us to the "Performance Capture" with Beyond, PS4 and current technologies get even better results, thanks to a dubbing that in the original language gives a completely different meaning, even if the Italian localization is one of the best among videogames.
The sound is also a pass, with up to three composers to perform the soundtrack, one for each main character, with melodies that hit the spot and accentuate the feelings in each scene, something very important in a game as cinematic as this.
But is Detroit Become Human perfect?
Unfortunately not, mainly for the same reason that makes it excellent: in many places the plot seems forced to put plot twist into play a bit out of tune in relation to the powerful message that this title wants to convey, with developments so interesting from the emotional side as forced by that of coherence. There are also several passages in which the player is forced to "turn a blind eye", in the face of obvious solutions or limits that the game avoids taking into consideration for the sake of the plot and the various finals, even these many, all interesting and all some even unexpected.
Overall - 9.0
Detroit Become Human is a game with ambitions equal to its quality, which has the courage to put the player in front of profound and thorny issues and the ambition to want to drive it through a reflection that can make him find answers to complex questions. It is set in a likely future but deals with extremely topical themes, with determination and without too many words; he is not afraid to show negative emotions, giving those who have the controller in their hands total power over the gaming experience and have no qualms about destroying the hard work with some merciless endings. It is not indulgent, and above all it is not foreign to renunciation, sacrifice and punishment.
Explaining the possibilities and the impact is difficult without spoilers, so ours can only be a judgment to be accepted on trust, in the hope that only a first game, to be done rigorously without reloading any rescue, can convince fans of the genre and even those who have always kept interactive drama at a distance. For our part, reconnecting to the initial discussion, we can only give credit to a single player title based on the plot that is expressed with such force in a world now dominated by competitive multiplayer.
Download Detroit: Become Human
System requirements:
- PC compatible
- Operating systems: Windows 10/Windows 8/Windows 7/2000/Vista/WinXP