Developed by Quantic Dream and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment, Detroit: Become Human evolved out of Quantic Dream’s tech demo called Kara and features the stories of three androids, the aforementioned Kara in addition to Markus and Connor, and is a narrative-heavy game with multiple endings depending on the player’s in-game choices.
How to Download Detroit: Become Human
To download Detroit: Become Human you need to click on the Download button at the end of the review and visit PlayStation Store. Before committing to downloading you should see the trailer and play the free demo. Sadly, the game is not available on PC.
The Game Review
Quantic Dream developed a new engine for Detroit: Become Human and employed a voice cast featuring actors from Los Angeles, London, and even Paris to give the game an international vibe.
The game features clean, crisp graphics that bubble with neons and shimmer with moody lighting. It is set in a futuristic version of Detroit metropolitan area and explores questions of individuality and choice in a world filled with android servants that become aware of their nature but question their existence nonetheless.
The narrative revolves around the three named androids and the various ways their plots tie together in the end. The game tackles a range of historical themes and an understanding of them may broaden the game’s appeal.
Detroit: Become Human is an adventure game told from a third-person perspective. One interesting thing that players may find jarring is that the game does not stop once a character dies – it simply continues with another avatar.
This emphasizes the importance of the choices the player makes in the game.
The controls allow you various ways to interact with the landscape, from showing you objects that can be interacted with to movement and dialogue. There is even the integration, albeit in a cumbersome fashion, of touch controls.
To keep track of your progress, as well as outline the choices you’ve made in your current playthrough, Detroit: Become Human shows you a plot flowchart that neatly summarizes what has occurred, including the choices you made to get there.
The game also features a kind of detective element that rewards quick investigation and discovery. It also features mild puzzle solving elements. Again, it is almost impossible for players to fail, given the myriad of choices, but acting quickly or performing well opens up new choices.
The game is really adaptive to the player’s style with every playthrough, making replay value for the sake of the narrative a salient benefit for gamers.
Writer and director David Cage, behind the games Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls, penned much of the script for Detroit: Become Human and it shows in the narrative’s rich plot and immersive world building.
A game that definitely explores the philosophical nature of its subject matter as well as the speculative subtext of science fiction in general, Detroit: Become Human is at times a cyberpunk thriller and at other times a traditional science fiction tale, weaving in elements of noir detective themes and soap opera.
Exploring the central philosophical question of the ship of Theseus – that is, does an object remain the same if all of its constituent parts are replaced, as in a wooden ship, the object remains the same or is a new, different object – and the resolution of this question underlines a lot of the various outcomes the character androids experience.
