Detroit: Become Human

Detroit: Become Human is an adventure game developed by Quantic Dream and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment for PlayStation 4, released worldwide on 25 May 2018. The plot revolves around three androids: Kara (Valorie Curry), who escapes the owner she was serving to explore her newfound sentience and protect a young girl; Connor (Bryan Dechart), whose job it is to hunt down sentient androids; and Markus (Jesse Williams), who devotes himself to releasing other androids from servitude. They may survive or perish depending on dialogue choices that shape the story.

Detroit: Become Human is based on Quantic Dream's 2012 technology demonstration Kara; Curry returned to reprise the title role. To research the setting, the developers visited Detroit, Michigan. The script took writer and director David Cage, who consulted artificial intelligence experts, over two years to complete. They built a new engine to complement the game and cast hundreds of actors before commencing the process of shooting and animation. Philip Sheppard, Nima Fakhrara, and John Paesano served as composers for Kara, Connor, and Markus, respectively.

Detroit: Become Human was met with generally favourable reviews from critics, who praised the setting, visuals, smaller moments in the story, main characters, their voice actors, the impact choices had on the narrative, and flowchart feature, but criticised the motion controls, mishandling of historical and thematic allegories, and aspects of the plot and characters. The game is Quantic Dream's most successful launch and has sold one million copies.

Gameplay

Detroit: Become Human is an adventure game played from a third-person view, which is subject to a set and controllable perspective. There are multiple playable characters who can die as the story continues without them; as a result, there is no "game over" message following a character's death. The right analogue stick on the DualShock controller is used to interact with objects and observe one's surroundings, the left is for movement, and R2 scans an environment for possible actions; the motion controls and touchpad are also employed. Via quick time events and dialogue decisions, the story will branch out depending on which choices are made. These can be viewed in a flowchart during and immediately after a given chapter; the player can rewind to certain points in the story to reshape decisions in the event of regret. Certain scenes feature countdowns, which force the player to think and act quickly. Levels abound with magazines for players to read. The playable characters are:

• Connor, a police investigator android tasked with hunting down androids that have deviated from their programmed behaviours.
• Kara, a housekeeper android who develops artificial consciousness and becomes responsible for a young girl's safety.
• Markus, a caretaker android who, after gaining consciousness, takes it upon himself to free others like him from bondage.

Obtaining clues by highlighting and analysing the environment with augmented vision allows Connor to reconstruct and replay events that occurred before. The more information Connor collects within an allotted time,the greater the chance of success will be in deciding a course of action. Markus has the power to grant androids free will and calculate the outcomes of certain acts.

Synopsis

Caretaker android Markus and his owner return home and alert the police of a suspected burglary. In confronting the perpetrator, Markus bypasses his programming, thereby becoming a deviant android with full autonomy, leading the police to shoot him at arrival. Markus awakes in a landfill of broken androids and, after escaping, discovers Jericho, a wrecked ship and safe haven for deviants. There, Markus rallies the others to fight for their rights. They perform several acts of civil disobedience, which catches the public's attention and gets more androids to join. This culminates with the FBI attacking Jericho. If he survives, Markus and the others set up a final march, resulting in either all of the deviants being killed or the president opening peace talks.

Police investigator android Connor is sent by the CyberLife corporation to assist Lieutenant Hank Anderson, an alcoholic who hates androids. In the course of their investigation into an outbreak of deviants, they either bond or fall apart, potentially resulting in Hank committing suicide. During his hunt for Markus' group, Connor starts to doubt himself, though he can stay firm in his beliefs. He eventually locates Jericho, where he can become a deviant himself. If he defects, Connor infiltrates CyberLife Tower and converts everyone there into deviants. If not, he attempts to snipe Markus during the final protest, but is stopped by a SWAT team or Hank. In the end, if peace is achieved, Connor can choose whether or not to shoot Markus during a speech.

Kara, a housekeeper android for Todd Williams and his daughter Alice, escapes with her after he attacks them and leaves Kara a deviant. The two travel across Detroit, intending to make it to Canada, which has no specific laws involving androids and where they will be safe. Kara and Alice befriend another android named Luther along the way, who joins them on their journey. They seek the aid of an android sympathiser, who points them to Jericho to obtain passports. They get caught up in the attack there, which may result in Luther, Kara, and Alice's deaths. Kara also learns that Alice is in fact an android, replacing the daughter taken away by Todd's wife. They can make it to Canada by bus or boat, survive a recycling centre, or in either case die trying.

Development

Detroit: Become Human had a development budget of €30 million. The game is based on Quantic Dream's 2012 PlayStation 3 technology demonstration Kara, which received strong reactions and an award at the LA Shorts Fest. It starred Valorie Curry, who would later reprise the title role. Writer and director David Cage wanted to make the demo into a full game, despite not originally having planned to, because he was curious as to what would happen next. He took inspiration from Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity Is Near, which explains that the rate at which human intelligence develops pales in comparison to that of a machine. Therefore, Cage proposes that machines may one day have emotions.Androids were designed with reference to artificial organs, how their energy would be generated, and human eye movement. An android's abilities were determined by each of their given profession. Experts in artificial intelligence were consulted to discern which technological advancements were the most feasible. Detroit was chosen as the setting to revitalise a city that had succumbed to economic decline after a historical contribution to American industry. The developers travelled to Detroit to conduct field research, taking pictures, visiting abandoned buildings, and meeting people.

In late 2013, Cage was in preproduction on Detroit: Become Human, which he said would build upon his work on Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls. Cage's script – between 2,000 and 3,000 pages – was first relayed to the design team while programmers created the graphics as well as a new game engine with advancements in features like rendering, dynamic lighting, shading, bokeh, and physical cameras. Quantic Dream improved their game engine's depth of field after Mark Cerny, lead architect of PlayStation 4, came to evaluate it. In October 2016, the screenplay was completed after more than two years. Writer Adam Williams was hired to help finish and flesh out the story. Cage used charts and diagrams to see where the choices would end up; penning "five or six thousand pages of notes", he likened the story to a Rubik's Cube.Two scenes were cancelled for how violence was portrayed. The casting extended to Los Angeles, London, and Paris in search for more than 250 actors to portray 513 roles. The actors were scanned in 3D, whose models were then made into characters. Shooting and animation followed, and on 8 September 2017, the performance capture was finished after 324 days. Detroit: Become Human was worked on by the 180 staff members at Quantic Dream and also outsourced to the Philippines, China, Vietnam, and India. The game has 35,000 camera shots, 74,000 unique animations, and 5.1 million lines of code.

The characters Connor and Markus are played by Bryan Dechart and Jesse Williams, respectively. Clancy Brown, Lance Henriksen, and Minka Kelly portray supporting characters Lieutenant Hank Anderson, Carl Manfred, and North, respectively. There are three different composers, one for each playable character: Philip Sheppard for Kara, Nima Fakhrara for Connor, and John Paesano for Markus. Sheppard's cello sequence in Kara's theme was inspired by the flames of a log fire, whereas the motif layered over it came from the two syllables in her name. Fakhrara created custom instruments and used vintage synthesizers in order that the sound could represent the robotic nature of Connor. Paesano's music was made with the idea that it would be "like a church hymn", personifying Markus' transformation into a leader. Sheppard recorded at Abbey Road Studios with the English Session Orchestra; Paesano was at Synchron Stage Vienna with the Synchron Stage Orchestra. Director of photography Aymeric Montouchet used "thick grain and shaky long lens" with shallow depth of field for Kara, "small, tight grain" and a blue palette for Connor, and orange and white colours for Markus. The game was released to manufacturing on 23 April 2018, after four years of production.

Release

Detroit: Become Human was announced on 27 October 2015 at a Sony press conference during Paris Games Week. It appeared at E3 2016 and E3 2017, showing trailers of additional playable characters and gameplay. Following E3 2017, Cage confirmed that the game would be released in 2018, later specified as the first or second quarter therein. The game was released on 25 May 2018 for PlayStation 4. If pre-ordered, Detroit: Become Human would come with a dynamic theme and digital soundtrack, while the digital deluxe edition included a copy of Heavy Rain, a digital art book, digital soundtrack, two dynamic themes, and ten avatars. The soundtrack was available for streaming on 22 June 2018.

After the 2017 Paris Games Week, a new trailer was criticised for its portrayal of child abuse, specifically a scene in which a 10-year-old girl is attacked by her father. Dechart defended the trailer, saying the story "elicits empathy". A demo of the first scene, "The Hostage", was made available on the PlayStation Store on 24 April 2018, accompanied by an Amazon Alexa skill that guides the player through the demo. The game was promoted in Japan with the live action short film, Tokyo: Become Human. This was followed by a launch trailer and two animated English-language shorts introducing Elijah Kamski, the creator of the androids, and Chloe, the first android to pass the Turing test.

Reception

Detroit: Become Human received "generally favorable reviews", according to review aggregator Metacritic. Destructoid's Chris Carter said that, despite tiring of Quantic Dream's penchant for detective stories, he enjoyed its execution and Connor's "calm demeanor and android origin". Carter praised the setting, calling it "believable" and "captivating", while also noting that the "smaller moments" were among its strengths. Michael Goroff of Electronic Gaming Monthly favoured the fact that the playable characters were androids because their second-class citizenship status created an "effective viewpoint". The controls and quick-time events were also subject to approval. Goroff lauded the "incredibly satisfying and sometimes unexpected" impact of the collective decisions and declared this the game's "biggest accomplishment". Writing for Game Informer, Kimberley Wallace agreed with Carter's assessment of the "little moments" and said the character development was "fun to watch", well-handled, and the "highlight of the game". She appreciated how the branching narratives affected the latter parts and complimented Quantic Dream for the "impressive" achievement. Paul Tamburro at Game Revolution wrote that Detroit: Become Human boasted a "compelling world ... enriched by fantastic performances and state-of-the-art motion-capturing". He commended Curry, Dechart, and Williams for their "engrossing performances" and said the game was among "the most well-acted" around. He also felt the choices "drastically" changed the story.

Peter Brown of GameSpot welcomed the variety of cycling between characters for ensuring player engagement. The game's "most dreadful and horrific scenes" made a considerable impression on Brown, some of which he found to be "truly unforgettable". Additionally, he remarked that the visuals were beautiful and "captivating to behold". GamesRadar+'s Andy Hartup praised Quantic Dream for making "an interactive story capable of provoking genuine, honest, and varied emotions". He thought the consequences of the decisions were "utterly delightful", albeit rarely, and saw the setting as "beautiful". Hartup liked the character models, calling them "the most remarkable you’ll see in gaming", and favoured the eyes in particular. On the decision-making aspects, he proclaimed Detroit: Become Human "the new gold standard ... for meaningful choice in gaming". Lucy O'Brien at IGN wrote that the game "manages to be a frequently moving melodrama that bends to your choices with meaningful results". She also praised the acting of Curry, Dechart, and Williams, observing different benefits to each character. O'Brien appraised the general plot as "big, ambitious fun" and the environments as "beautifully detailed". Like Goroff, Wallace, Tamburro, and Hartup, O'Brien found the "branching paths to be multiple and deep", while also complimenting the flowcharts, a feature Colm Ahern of VideoGamer.com singled out as one of the game's few redeeming qualities.

Conversely, Carter criticised the game's "surface level exploration" of the Ship of Theseus, questioning the director's subtlety. He blamed the weakness of Kara's story on Cage's writing, called the portrayal of domestic and substance abusers "cartoonish", and complained about occasional "wooden acting". Goroff's only annoyance with the controls concerned its motion-sensitive feature, especially disparaging its use in quick-time events. Wallace thought Markus' story was the worst of the three, citing "predictable speeches" and "black-and-white decisions" as the primary problems. She suggested that the narrative suffered "heavy-handed" attempts at historical parallels, and noted, as Carter did, that its representation of abuse seemed "exploitive due to the over-the-top antics". She felt the use of the motion controls and touchpad was "unintuitive" and wanted more variety from the gameplay. Tamburro faulted the opening act for its "slow" and "dull" interactions, the quick-time events for their abundance, and occasional story paths for being "highly questionable". Brown viewed Markus as "remarkably lacking in nuance" and the allegories to actual history as "on-the-nose" and "distracting". He commented that the flowchart exposition was "ultimately detrimental" to player immersion and wished there was a way of disabling it. Hartup disliked the moments in which themes were either "fumble[d]" or "pushed too far". O'Brien observed multiple plotholes and found a considerable amount of "clumsy" exposition and dialogue. Ahern wrote in his verdict, "Detroit: Become Human wants to move you ... The thing is, it really doesn't ... when the narrative is as cringey and ham-fisted as it is you won't want to play through it multiple times".

Sales

Detroit: Become Human reached fifth place on the UK chart after two days of release and, in one week, made first place in overall sales, as with console sales alone; though fewer than Beyond: Two Souls and Heavy Rain in that region, Cage and executive producer Guillaume de Fondaumière claimed it was the studio's most successful launch yet. The NPD Group later confirmed it had a sales growth in excess of twenty percent over Heavy Rain. Detroit: Become Human was the third best-selling video game overall, generating the third-most revenue in the US, and sold the most out of any title on the PlayStation Store in May 2018, having been available for six days.

It released in Japan with 39,548 units (which rose to 56,480 after two weeks), second to Dark Souls: Remastered. In the UK, the second week also saw it become the second best-selling video game (behind FIFA 18). The game sold one million copies after the first two weeks. For the week ending 10 June, its physical sales fell to fourth place in the United Kingdom. Its Japanese sales hit 74,458 copies on 17 June, but dropped from the country's console chart one week later, when the game was placed ninth on the UK individual formats chart.