Detroit: Become Human

The game is a technological marvel but although David Cage’s storytelling has an ideal pace and the way the story branches out depending on your choices is praiseworthy, his writing is childishly naïve. His vision of Detroit is unconvincing from the ground up and all his characters are merely crude, threadbare archetypes, which made it impossible for me to suspend disbelief. What’s more, the game touches a sensitive problem of discrimination but doesn’t have the courage to take any stand, leaving us with a lukewarm tale about robots, told with clichés and truisms. [07/2018, p.42]

Held together by beautifully chromed nuts and bolts, closer inspection reveals questionable lines of code - Detroit fails to be more than the sum of its parts. [July 2018, p.83]

Detroit: Become Human tells a dramatic story about androids seeking to find their own way of living with and among humans. Yes, it’s a well-worn sci-fi trope, but the characters in Detroit are compelling enough to make it feel interesting again. There are some issues with controls at times and some story beats that miss the mark, but if you’re looking for a impressive story that can be played out in a multitude of ways, dig into “Detroit.”

Detroit: Become Human is an impressive game. The production value is huge, the characters are very realistic and the game offers amazing scenes. However, it does not all add up to one complete experience, as the story seems too big to be told in just this game.

Ultimately even its breath-taking cinematic conclusion isn’t enough to stop Detroit Become Human feeling like at best a flawed classic and at worst a frustratingly restrictive experience. Despite that, there is definitely a story worth experiencing here, and if you can endure the game’s more tedious aspects, Detroit’s branching endings will undoubtedly be spark countless chapter replays and heated conversations for years to come.

Detroit: Become Human is complicated. It’s a technological marvel with great performances and an entertaining narrative at its core. Kara, Connor and Markus are all given enough room to breathe as characters that you feel connected to all of them. I cared about where their stories would end...Unfortunately, Quantic Dream oversteps its boundaries and muddles the water with thematic elements that feel awkwardly handled.

Detroit: Become Human is still marred by some of the issues that plague previous Quantic Dream games. Rough, ham-fisted writing and story pacing that's thrown off at times by the playable sections. I'm also pretty sure that most folks are going to get one of the more unsatisfying endings their first time around. But I like the characters, which more than I could say for the last two games. And when I finished the game, I wanted to jump back in and try out some other choices. Quantic Dream is getting better, even if Detroit: Become Human not on par with some of the better visual novels out there.

Detroit Become Human is a beautiful yet deformed puzzle. The individual parts look pretty, but once you try and piece it together, it all falls apart.

Detroit is well worth playing, but it struggles to strike the right balance between giving you freedom of choice and reminding you that it's all a game in the end. Cage and Quantic Dream are getting closer to nailing this style of game, but it's obvious that there's still room to grow.

Detroit: Become Human is vintage Quantic Dream, delivering a multifaceted choose-your-own-adventure that’s both ambitious and somewhat of an acquired taste. It’s clear that remarkable attention has been poured into the title's vision of the near-future, which makes it harder to suspend disbelief over some of its smaller narrative oversights. The game huffs-and-puffs, but never really brings anything new to its core theme of androids awakening to human emotions – and yet despite its relative familiarity, it’s an impressively replayable interactive story with a frightening number of variables of which there’s nothing else quite like.

Detroit: Become Human, like most Quantic Dream games, is filled with muddled symbolism and a spark of hope amidst its most interesting universe yet.

There’s value in narrative, if you don’t mind sloppy exposition, telegraphed characters and incentives as well as explosive quick time events that sit at odds with arbitrary quick time events, that sit even further at odds with ‘page-turner’ quick time events. When you get towards the game’s crescendo, which admittedly is handled excellently between the three main robot characters, and deal with ‘action’ sequences that take you out of your nanna or grandpa QTE slumber, the game feels interesting, but it’s smoke and mirrors. Acting, visuals and a relatively well-conceived future Detroit are the carrots on string here. The problem is our robot horse needs QTEs as well to get going and without enough blue blood, bled by actual gamers, it’s a hard task and road to Maple Syrup ahead.

Detroit wants so badly to be an interactive Hollywood blockbuster, but its amazing visuals and cinematic presentation can't make up for some really lame writing, weird performances and an overall lack of grace. But in spite of that, it can be a fun interactive B-movie.

Detroit: Become Human is evidence that breathtaking production isn't effective camouflage for anemic dialogue and abysmal writing. By co-opting famous racial prejudices and projecting all of them onto society's assimilation of androids, Detroit spoils its power to create convincing drama. The sense of agency and control over its story remains exciting, but archetypal plotting and cosmetic platitudes leave Detroit without much to say about anything.

Despite a strong connection between the choice-oriented gameplay and the script’s themes of free will and liberation, DBH’s exploration of these themes is ankle deep.

A technical marvel with cinematic appeal, Detroit is another game brought low by ham-fisted writing. [July 2018, p.75]

Its quality can vary as much as its storylines. Detroit’s main issue is that it is a game that is desperate to have something to say, but doesn’t know how to say it. Detroit is too heavy-handed and maladroit to get much past ‘discrimination and genocide is bad’.

Like quality junk food, the game was not exactly fulfilling but it was a bingeable experience.

Detroit: Become Human is better than Beyond: Two Souls, but it won’t be the game that turns the skeptics around. The dialogue is poorly written and it’s hard to feel anything for the characters. It’s a story that is easy to be drawn into, but also one that doesn’t have that much to say at all.

A considerable improvement on Quantic Dreams’ previous work, and while the storytelling is still flawed its tale of abused androids feels very human.

For all the very human flaws in its script, it ends up somewhere in the uncanny valley of narrative games: it looks the part, but behind that glistening exterior, something vital is undeniably missing [Aug 2018, p.96]

There's definitely some joy to be had from Detroit, particularly if themes of artificial intelligence and sentience intrigue you. But there are other games and movies that do more with them (Soma, for example). For a game that relies so heavily on its narrative to carry it, Detroit: Become Human fails to excel.

The game believes it's a sci-fi version of Eyes on the Prize, when really it's closer to a sci-fi Kendall Jenner Pepsi commercial.