Detroit: Become Human (PS4)

Anyone who has played a game from developer Quantic Dream knows what to expect. An interactive experience that is not quite a game yet not a movie, but something in between. Quantic Dream has put themself on the forefront of interactive storytelling with games like Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls. Their latest, game Detroit: Become Human, which deals with AI and consciousness, is no exception. 

As we all know, it's impossible to predict the future. What Detroit: Become Human does however, is to explore one possible future. A future where androids are a part of our world and what could happen if they ever gain consciousness.

In the game you play three different characters and decide their choices. Connor is a highly advanced prototype working as an investigator for the police, Markus is a caretaker android caring for an old painter and Kara is a housekeeper and babysitter android working for violent father.

Playing the game as an android immediately evokes sympathy for these man made creations. Although they basically look and behave exactly like humans, they are treated as slaves and with a lot of contempt from people whose jobs they now undertake. Reading the magazines that you find scattered across the game you can learn a lot about the world that these people and androids now share.

Everything is basically fine until these three androids are put in situations where they start having doubts about what they are and what they are programmed to do. They gain consciousness. You can argue if this is consciousness that they are experiencing or just a bug in their system. But since we don't even know what consciousness is, we just know that we ourselves are conscious, even artificial consciousness can feel real. This is the story of the game.

The game uses a branching narrative and the choices you make changes the story. You can even follow you progress and see what kind of choices you made and how it could have ended differently. Characters can live or die depending on the path you take. I liked Connor's story the best and I feel I got the best possibly ending for his story. Another character's story did not end as happily. But that is the name of the game when you play these kinds of stories and it's also what makes them so enticing.

In the game you interact with the environment, choose different dialog options and execute button commands when prompted, so called quick time events. There are different difficulty options which I think mostly impacts these quick time events. I played on the casual difficulty and even that required quite fast reactions to get it right.

Detroit: Become Human is a well made game with a good story and I can definitely recommend it. It is not that long but it holds up for more than one play through. I paid 20 euros for it and could have paid 30 without feeling that I'd overpaid.