You remember those books. The Fighting Fantasy series and so on. Where you read page one and then, at the bottom, you were offered three or four choices of things to do. Each choice told you to turn to a different page, where the results of that choice were made clear by reading the page and then more choices etc., more page turning, more reading.
Detroit Become Human is the digital equivalent of this. In fact, there are already game versions of the Fighting Fantasy series books available to play. The difference with the latter from their book origin is that they altered the format slightly, bringing in more gameplay options, combat etc. DBH, by contrast gives you nothing but those original books, made into digital.
Oh, but it is very pretty. Very, very pretty. Plenty of mo-cap and gorgeous environments to look at. Actors that do their jobs very well and get you invested in the characters.
So what is the fly in this ointment?
Put simply, the story is a little stale, and handled here somewhat clunkily. It isn't anything you won't have seen before, and done better, in pretty much any scifi film or show involving androids finding their sentience. In fact, DBH borrows extensively from films like Blade Runner, I Robot, Johnny Mnemonic and shows like Almost Human. The rather blatant parallels to apartheid and slavery are not well managed here. Instead, the story chooses to bludgeon you about the head with the issues, rather then employ any guile or subtlety. Throw in a dash of domestic abuse and the omnipresent theme that "Humans Bad, Robots Good" and you have a recipe for a story that revels in its ineptitude.
But, you say, I play games for fun. Is it fun? Is it satisfying? What about the actual gameplay?
Well, there isn't any real gameplay to speak of. You get to pick dialogue choices during the scenes that lead to more choices and so on. Occasionally, you get to engage in what I'll call "Satan's QTE's" but that is it. Picking choices and QTE events. That is your gameplay.
Well...QTE isn't so bad, you might say. But you'd be wrong. I've yet to encounter anyone that truly enjoys this form of "gameplay", which came about purely to enable cinematic action sequences. Most people would rather play through such encounters with whatever game systems are available. The problem with DBH is that it doesn't have any game systems other than the choices and the cinematics.
That might still have been fine, but for the utterly boneheaded decision to use every conceivable controller button/stick and movement to design these QTE's. I'm serious. Enter one of these QTE sections and you'll be not just pressing square, triangle, circle and X. No, you'll be doing that, plus pressing triggers, wiggling the twin sticks around, swiping the touch pad and waving the entire controller about. It's just too much and, unlike normal QTE's, where if you screw it up, you just replay the QTE, here a failure can remove one of the characters from the game, or screw up the story you were hoping to see irreparably. It is just nonsense.
So...not good on gameplay, and not a stellar story. How come it has such a high rating?
It's down to the characters, which are simplistic, to be honest, but likeable and the graphics. That, plus there are numerous story branches that allow for a certain amount of replay value. You can miss great swathes of story if you make the wrong choices. In fact, if you want to get the most out of the thing, a second or even third playthrough is almost mandatory. However, the rather lacklustre story will likely have sapped your enthusiasm by the end of your first run. You can go back and just replay individual chapters, but this is likely to be about as much fun as watching all those deleted scenes on a bluray disc.
SUMMARY: Looks beautiful and is reasonably engaging, but is more interactive story, than game. Wide as an ocean, but shallow as a puddle. May suit those who love QTE and a lack of gameplay with their games. Watch a playthrough on Youtube. It's cheaper.
Detroit Become Human is the digital equivalent of this. In fact, there are already game versions of the Fighting Fantasy series books available to play. The difference with the latter from their book origin is that they altered the format slightly, bringing in more gameplay options, combat etc. DBH, by contrast gives you nothing but those original books, made into digital.
Oh, but it is very pretty. Very, very pretty. Plenty of mo-cap and gorgeous environments to look at. Actors that do their jobs very well and get you invested in the characters.
So what is the fly in this ointment?
Put simply, the story is a little stale, and handled here somewhat clunkily. It isn't anything you won't have seen before, and done better, in pretty much any scifi film or show involving androids finding their sentience. In fact, DBH borrows extensively from films like Blade Runner, I Robot, Johnny Mnemonic and shows like Almost Human. The rather blatant parallels to apartheid and slavery are not well managed here. Instead, the story chooses to bludgeon you about the head with the issues, rather then employ any guile or subtlety. Throw in a dash of domestic abuse and the omnipresent theme that "Humans Bad, Robots Good" and you have a recipe for a story that revels in its ineptitude.
But, you say, I play games for fun. Is it fun? Is it satisfying? What about the actual gameplay?
Well, there isn't any real gameplay to speak of. You get to pick dialogue choices during the scenes that lead to more choices and so on. Occasionally, you get to engage in what I'll call "Satan's QTE's" but that is it. Picking choices and QTE events. That is your gameplay.
Well...QTE isn't so bad, you might say. But you'd be wrong. I've yet to encounter anyone that truly enjoys this form of "gameplay", which came about purely to enable cinematic action sequences. Most people would rather play through such encounters with whatever game systems are available. The problem with DBH is that it doesn't have any game systems other than the choices and the cinematics.
That might still have been fine, but for the utterly boneheaded decision to use every conceivable controller button/stick and movement to design these QTE's. I'm serious. Enter one of these QTE sections and you'll be not just pressing square, triangle, circle and X. No, you'll be doing that, plus pressing triggers, wiggling the twin sticks around, swiping the touch pad and waving the entire controller about. It's just too much and, unlike normal QTE's, where if you screw it up, you just replay the QTE, here a failure can remove one of the characters from the game, or screw up the story you were hoping to see irreparably. It is just nonsense.
So...not good on gameplay, and not a stellar story. How come it has such a high rating?
It's down to the characters, which are simplistic, to be honest, but likeable and the graphics. That, plus there are numerous story branches that allow for a certain amount of replay value. You can miss great swathes of story if you make the wrong choices. In fact, if you want to get the most out of the thing, a second or even third playthrough is almost mandatory. However, the rather lacklustre story will likely have sapped your enthusiasm by the end of your first run. You can go back and just replay individual chapters, but this is likely to be about as much fun as watching all those deleted scenes on a bluray disc.
SUMMARY: Looks beautiful and is reasonably engaging, but is more interactive story, than game. Wide as an ocean, but shallow as a puddle. May suit those who love QTE and a lack of gameplay with their games. Watch a playthrough on Youtube. It's cheaper.