Detroit: Become Human - Quantic Dream, Do robots dream of Heavy Rain?

Saw stream. Proceeded to lmao. Fun to watch at least.

Cage seems to be the internet’s punching bag, but the Eurogamer review was enough to make me curious so I tried the demo. I liked it, I’ll probably pick this up on sale. Too much else ahead of it to drop what I’m playing and get it right now, but it looks too interesting to not try it eventually. Seems like the kind of game I could be fascinated by even if the writing is as hamfisted as the critics say.

Melodrama definitely seems to be something that warps around into so bad it’s good amusing territory.

It definitely seems like with the accusations being leveled at the working conditions at Quantic Dreams, fairly or not, reviewers have out the knives for Detroit and are happy to turn a jaundiced eye at Cage’s work.

I’ve said this before and i’ll say it again, Cage’s writing is that of a guy who thought the 90’s Bad Boys was the pinnacle of cinema. He seems to aim for something like “summer blockbuster melodrama”. He certainly has no problem with stereotypical roles for men and women that might feel appropriate circa 1990 but have not aged well.

He also seems to LCD a lot of his writing and most of his stuff is so on the nose it’s like getting punched. His games still tend to have a suprisingly high diversity of end states and branching narratives, and for that they’re still interesting. Even when it’s Manic Pixie Girls meeting Mystical Native Americans and ride horses together wearing cowboy hats.

Is this more overwrought Cage crap?

I don’t think I’ve played any of his other games to answer from personal experience. The reviews I’ve skimmed lead me to believe that it’s his best work yet, but that someone who asks “Is this more overwrought Cage crap?” is still going to hate it. I don’t mean that as some sort of passive-aggressive jab at your hostility, just that it sounds like even at his best so far, it’s not going to change the minds of people who don’t like his writing.

To me, David Cage games occupy a similar space as the Fast & Furious franchise: I acknowledge that they are not necessarily good, and that most of the criticisms levied against them are valid, but that doesn’t end up diminishing my enjoyment.

I’m not sure where I’d rank this so far with Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls, but I’m really enjoying my time with it so far.

This game has the best main menu ever.

True Statement.
Cage has some interesting ideas in here…and I think it is probably the best title Quantic has done (for me anyway). That being said… yeah some of the meladrama is just silly, and one of the stories is so not connected with the other two it just makes no sense that they live int he same space. It doesn’t contribute very much at all to the rest of the story line. I think the worst sin it commits is the disconnected story line is the one that is suppose to be the gotcha… and it just falls pretty flat for several reasons. Trying not to give away a lot here since story is basically the whole game…

Another nice feature (besides the main menu) is the timeline flowchart you see after completing a chapter. You can compare your decisions to the rest of the world. It’s similar to how a Telltale game works except these are detailed flowcharts of every decision you can make and every clue you find (but you often can’t see the text inside the boxes until you discover them in the game). The game lets you go back and replay chapters and try out different paths.

I may have to go back and replay a few chapters on Casual difficulty level because I got sloppy with the QTE’s. I hate it when a major decision has been made for me because I was 20ms off from hitting the right button.

I feel like I’m getting pretty close to the end on this and–not to my surprise at all–I’m enjoying this a lot. It’s melodramatic, and the writing can be pretty cheesy, but that doesn’t really bother me at all.

The flowchart is very handy and a fantastic addition for this type of game. I’m pretty sure I’ll go back through afterwards and see if I can fill out everything.

In the interest of disclosure, I guess, I’ll repeat that I am not playing this game, just watching streams. But I’m enjoying what I see despite, or he’ll maybe because of, the melodrama. It’s a pretty bald-faced retelling of the Underground Railroad story but it works. The android protagonists seem interesting, and their individual stories keep me involved. Plus come on, can’t go wrong with Clancy Brown.

I haven’t played a David Cage game since Indigo Prophecy and I hated that game. Maybe I’ve done him a disservice ignoring all the other games he’s made.

Oh, yeah, I think Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls and Detroit: Become Human are miles beyond Indigo Prophecy in just about every measure. Though I do find IP enjoyable in a way for just how bonkers bananas it gets in the last act.

The menu andriod is still stuck in the uncanny valley. The upper lip is all wrong. A human actor saying those lines, recorded as video, wouldn’t have that problem.

Androids should be in the uncanny valley, surely.

Don’t have a PS4 so I can’t play this, but I really enjoyed Christopher Odd’s playthrough of it. It is indeed a bit like a movie, although part of the fun of watching it that way is Odd’s charmingly goofy reactions of course.

But what struck me about it it was that the combat actually looks like it might be fun - I dunno, just watching it, it feels “human sized” and the animations are so good and flow together so well, with what seem like some kind of branching, conditional logic going on. It does seem like an excellent way of doing immersive, sim-like melee.

Writing is mostly facepalm-inducingly cliched, with Markus’ story being especially cringeworthy - though the other two storylines have some good moments (the buddy cop thing is done quite well - there’s a YT vid that shows what happens if you let Conor die a lot, and the cop’s cumulative reactions are hilarious and very well done). But mainly, as with most things about robotics that aren’t done by people who have read a lot of serious s-f that’s explored the issues in an informed way, the way the writers look at robotics and “emotion” is just silly. (Same sort of syndrome as movies generally - like, if you’ve ever been to a real nightclub in your life, you understand that there’s never been a nightclub in any movie that’s actually like a real nightclub, that kind of thing. Or like how, if you know a topic and the media report on it, you can never take them seriously ever again.)

For example, we’re told that androids’ human-like aspects, like breathing, tears, etc., are just cosmetic, but the storyline often depends on those types of things being integral to the story in a way that makes them seem no different from how they’d be with humans. IOW the writers missed a trick in not showing androids (e.g. on their own, when humans aren’t around) as truly alien and lacking emotions in the way we understand them, and building a tricksy story that exploits that - yet still having them be sentient and worthy of consideration as such.

Few hours in, so far this is so much more entertaining than Beyond, amazing.

The writing is still quite a bit forced at times, but it is bearable. The graphics is pure eyecandy though and I like the “gameplay”. Just did the Markus on a junkyard bit.

I played the entire game, and enjoyed it.

I tried Beyond and did not liked it. Detroit is much more advanced, so much that make Beyond two souls feel primitive.

How does it compare to Heavy Rain? … in HR were some bits I liked, and a lot of story stuff that would not make it into any third rated tv show …

I found Beyond just really bland, I had to force myself to play it. It was way too boring way too often. In Detroit so far I was not bored for a second, even if the cringe is present at times.

Honestly I do not remember Heavy Rain in much detail, other than that I liked it less than Fahrenheit (yes, it goes to shit in second half, but the first was awesome) and more than Beyond. Detroit definitely has some very “on the nose” writing, as do all Cage games (though I didn’t play Omikron). Still, I am enjoying it a ton, it is a pretty believable vision of the future and you can really see the money and talent on display.