Love his games or hate them, there is no denying that David Cage and his studio Quantic Dream are making extremely ambitious, story-driven games unlike anything else available in the medium. His latest project, Detroit: Become Human, paints a bleak picture of the future, where humanity has essentially become obsolete.
“In this world, technology made possible the creation of androids that look, speak, and move exactly like human beings,” Cage says in a Sony developer interview. “And they have replaced humans in most of their jobs.”
Androids have become a necessary part of daily life, acting in not only blue collar jobs, but also as nurses and teachers — can we be sure that they’ll tell American children that they’re not human? In this world, although they look like normal people, androids are still treated as machines.
“When the story starts, some of these androids start to have strange behaviors. They start to disappear without any reason or even start being aggressive towards humans,” Cage says. “It’s as if they were overwhelmed with their own emotions.”
Playing (at least part of) Detroit as an android should open up the door for new gameplay opportunities. “Connor,” the Eddie Redmayne lookalike introduced at E3, was created to analyze crime scenes, and the video shows that he’s capable of “reconstructing” a murder in a similar manner to Batman.
Cage says that the game’s script is “thousands and thousands of pages,” and it becomes “more and more complex” as you progress. While various branching paths and choices are staples of Quantic Dream’s work, we can only hope that the narrative will be reined in a little bit more than 2013’s Beyond: Two Souls.
Detroit: Become Human doesn’t have a release date yet, but will launch as a PlayStation 4 exclusive.
