Detroit: Become Human.
According to Steam, I'm some 6.7 hours into Detroit: Become Human over on Steam, from Quantic Dream and David Cage. I do indeed have some thoughts on this game, so let me press X to Share! Share! Share!
So, this games takes place in 2038, within the city of Detroit. Androids are everywhere and are an important part of human life, as lots of humans own them. Pretty much, androids are the slaves of human, doing all of their tasks for them - take out the garbage; clean up messes; do the laundry; babysitting; etc etc. CyberLife is a huge corporation, which makes all of these androids. Of course, things start to go wrong, as it seems like some androids are turning on their masters, malfunctioning maybe, and/or getting minds of their own (in a sense).
Similar to say Fahrenheit AKA Indigo Prophecy, you'll be playing a few different roles as the player here. In this game in particular you'll be taking on the role of a few androids, in their lives & stories; and also often deciding the fate of androids & mankind. In one story of one android, you'll be investigating some murders with a human police officer (which is played by Clancy Brown). In another android's story, you'll decide the fate of a little girl and her abusive father and what to do with that situation...and then some other stuff beyond that. In the third story as another android, you're helping out a painter (which is played by Lance Henrikson) with his life & his family issues, which eventually start off another chain of events.
As usual per Quantic Dream's mixture of their cinematic-style of adventure games and interactive movies here, there's going to be a lot of the typical Quantic Dream stuff here. You will have QuickTime events, here and there. Almost everything you interact with, also like Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls, is contextual and you will use the mouse and KB and/or Right Analog stick on the gamepad to do the actual motions to open doors, pick-up objects, open windows, etc etc - which also feels more important than ever for even some of the mundane stuff here, as not only does it try to make the mundane important & immersive, but it's also making a point about the theme of androids being slaves to humans, more or less. You will also do investigating into murders when you play as the android police officer, investigating scenes to gather evidence and whatnot. Since you're an android cop in one of the stories, you'll need to scan bodies, areas, crime scenes, and things of that sort...and some human cops and whatnot might not be thrilled with that, if you do your job more efficiently than them.
Regardless of which android you play as, there's also some adventure-style puzzles or figuring on what object to move, where to move it, pixel hunt type of puzzles, and other stuff we've seen before in adventure games - but never ever really trying to break the ebb, flow, and pacing of the game and its story/narrative. There's even scenes where the androids you play as, can possibly overlap into others' storylines, making this feel even more epic, grander in scale, and also possibly even more important to the decision-making process that takes place in the game.
As if the above and all wasn't enough here: after each Chapter of the game, you are given a Flowchart. It shows you all the possible storyline threads and scenes you could have taken, throughout the game. The Flowchart is certainly extensive as can, which I'm sure is going to cause gamers that see every locked thread...and likely replay the game to maybe try and get some more of them; and/or maybe all of them, if they feel the urge to. I can certainly tell you: this might be one of the smartest things that Quantic Dream has done, as someone who doesn't often replay games b/c they often unfold the same too much or close to the same - but, it's possible that scenes and/or endings in this game could be very wildly different, based on what you decided in the game and/or if you failed or succeeded in certain instances. This Flowchart and how possibly wildly different things could play out, this could make it possible that it's very worthwhile to replay the game.
Just like in Heavy Rain, in many instances here in Detroit: BH, you can say fail a mission/scene - and then the game is still planned to actually keep going (with or without certain characters), as events will possibly unfold differently b/c of this failure than say if you succeeded. Not only this, but you can also compares your choices w/ the percentages of other players making these decisions (or not) on the Flowchart w/ other players on a Global Level & also your Steam-Friends' Level here, seeing the percentages on those two different instances.
While the writing isn't certain spectacular here - i.e. it suffers from the usual stilt, camp, cheese, and whatnot in the actual writing & dialogue that comes w/ David Cage & Quantic Dream's games - this might be actually the most fitting setting & time period for their levels of stilt, camp & cheese, given that we are dealing often with androids & a crazy sci-fi type of future here; it just seems more fitting than ever here in this particular game than anything else they've done before. Regardless, in this ambitious & crazy Quantic Dream project - stars like Lance Henriksen, Clancy Brown, Jesse Williams, and Minka Kelly here, for starters - seem to give really good performances here voice-wise...and their looks & likeness here, too.
Since I mentioned how these voice-actors look like their actual real selves and likenesses, onto graphics. They graphics: they look really good here & this game runs very well here on my PC. With it running at 1080p60fps easily here, maxed-out at Ultra overall settings & also even cranking to 1.50 resolution quality increase over 1080p. Not that it's really necessary to run at 60fps here, as this isn't a crazy fast-paced action game - as even locked at 30fps, it will extremely rarely dip even below 30fps on my rig (10700KF; 16 GB RAM; RTX 3070 with 8 GB of VRAM; W10 x64).
There's tons of details everywhere in the game-world and environments here in these scenes and stories, making it feel like this could be a very well be a very believable and "not too far in the distance" version of Detroit that you can really live in. So, as usual - yes, the immersion factor's very high here in another Quantic Dream game. And yes, there's even Lore and stuff to pick-up in the game-world that's also worth reading - often IPad-like tablet devices, where you can read the important news and (which often can be actually based off your decisions!) articles online. There's even TV's to watch with news and even some sporting events, which make it really feel like you could be watching these shows.
Regardless, so far, after some 6.7 hours - I'm hoping this game really keeps this up. While it ain't the greatest with the writing and all, it still is obvious to me that is a really good Quantic Dream style cinematic adventure game & interactive movie of sort. This maybe even Quantic's best, provided it doesn't pull a Fahrenheit (which fell apart in the last Act). I'm hoping it goes that way here with Detroit: BH, similar to that of Heavy Rain & Beyond: Two Souls - well, at least with the endings that I received in those two games - as those two in the final Act turned out very well & they really stuck the landing there at the very end.
