Windows Detroit: Becoming Human (2020)

[Huntn]

Detroit: Become Human Wiki

detroit-become-human.fandom.com

This is an interesting game. You play the role of three androids in the near future navigating an existence where despite built-in limits, you appear to achieve self-awareness and faced with moral challenges you gain an ability to break through those limits and make your own decisions, as far as the game allows you to, of course.

Based on my progress, I know that at least two of these androids cross each other’s paths. It’s a crafted narrative that starts out with you learning how to control your android, but it’s more interesting than just grindy, which it’s not, but you do spend some time basically waiting on people like a butler and performing tasks like cleaning the house, setting out dinner, etc.

Androids
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The three androids, one is a nanny with a troubled owner who has a young daughter, who also hates androids, an assistant for a disabled artist, whose son hates you because you are an Android, and an assistant police detective, where the detective you follow also hates androids. Hmmm.

By the title of the game, you might guess that the Detroit Metro has a problem with “deviant” androids, ones who start acting outside of their programmed limitations. Of course once they stop taking orders, this becomes a problem. The game so far has not described what morality programming these androids are supposed to have, like The Three Rules of Robotics, but you don’t have free reign, it’s a highly narrative driven story, you just can’t say go on a killing spree if you feel like it.

You might recognize this actor- Shawshank Redemption, Sponge Bob Square Pants. ☺️
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There is violence, and you really don’t have the ability to kick ass where you have direct control of your character. A threat comes at you, and a couple of keys, key combos pop up, which signify different moves, “push”, “hit”, “dodge”, etc. I think because this game was on consol first, some of the keys seem random. So you have to wait for the game to flash the combo, and in some circumstances you have to act quickly.

The controls are not traditional button mashing, but frequently a combination button and mouse swipe, which the game illustrates for you. It’s awkward at first, but quickly becomes comfortable. This game restricts you from using “saves” as a crutch, you take your chances, and what happens, based on your times choices, happens, although you can repeat an entire chapter, or if you don’t like a sequence, you can go to the main menu and select ‘load’ and if your lucky it does push you back too far.

It a moral choices kind of game, that feels novel, but does it have lasting potential? This depends on the how immersive and compelling you find this story to be. Anyway, so far so good. 🙂

 

[Huntn]

Farther in, really enjoying this, but it may not be everyone’s cup of tea. The game illicits emotions for artificial lifeforms that have attained self-awareness, and feelings of being trapped and persecuted.

I get a similar feeling as when I watched AI Artificial Intelligence, the story about the android who wants to be a real boy. It makes me think about what it is to be a biological entity, versus an artificial entity with self-awareness.

The philosophical debate, is an artificial entity comparable to a biological entity or is the artificial entity, just running its program and responding in a program-like manner, just emulating feelings, but there is no consciousness like we experience it. But then how would we know what it is experiencing? 🤔

 

[KaliYoni]

Farther in, really enjoying this

This game is one of my Top 3 for the PlayStation 4. The writing and themes are elevated beyond typical video game fare. The gameplay is innovative and stands up over multiple plays. And, perhaps most importantly, the voice acting is superb. I'm not embarrassed to say a couple of the endings left me in tears.

I don't know if any other PlayStation Quantic Dream games have been ported to PC but DBH is by far the most polished in all respects. Heavy Rain suffers from an as yet unperfected control scheme and heavy handed writing. Beyond: Two Souls is like a beta version of DBH. So I'd say you chose QD's best game to date.


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And for when you're done playing...

(I don't know if you remember this thread started by you: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/automation-ai-in-your-home.2402363/post-32487042 )

 

[Huntn]

This game is one of my Top 3 for the PlayStation 4. The writing and themes are elevated beyond typical video game fare. The gameplay is innovative and stands up over multiple plays. And, perhaps most importantly, the voice acting is superb. I'm not embarrassed to say a couple of the endings left me in tears.

I don't know if any other PlayStation Quantic Dream games have been ported to PC but DBH is by far the most polished in all respects. Heavy Rain suffers from an as yet unperfected control scheme and heavy handed writing. Beyond: Two Souls is like a beta version of DBH. So I'd say you chose QD's best game to date.


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And for when you're done playing...

(I don't know if you remember this thread started by you: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/automation-ai-in-your-home.2402363/post-32487042 )

I do remember the thread and was considering posting about this game there. But I did make a post here:
Post in thread 'The Possibilities and Dangers of AI'
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/the-possibilities-and-dangers-of-ai.2391514/post-33771757
😊

As far as the game, there are some significant elements.
Controls- Action/fighting in this game is not the action you maybe used to. Because of the way it is structured I am not acquiring muscle memory control as I normally do. So while the game controls are relatively basic, it can be difficult, for me. Now maybe this is a little different on the console, but maybe not. Some movements are consistent like ‘examine’, key press and swipe mouse down. ‘open’- key press, mouse swipe down, then semi-circle to right. But you are in the position of waiting for the sign to appear to execute the combo, and for some action sequences, you almost must instantaneously respond or fail to execute and for some sequences there are 3 different combos. So what should be simple becomes more difficult. If you fail you fail, and in some parts of the game you can recover, and in other parts what has happened, happened and you are stuck with it. This is both innovative and can be a bit frustrating.

Succeeding in combat can be satisfying, but because it is completely choreographed with specific key presses/swipes fed to you, it’s not nearly as satisfying for me as when I navigate a tactical situation choosing my actions. This is just a different kind of game, in that regard.

About repeating content- Spoiler. There is an important sequence about being involuntarily reset. I figured that I could mitigate/escape it, but the first time I failed and was reset. The story allows you to recover from this event, but I knew out of the 4 elements I could interact with a certain sequence would have stopped the reset process, but I did not have enough time to figure it out, partially because I did not realize right away, I had to look at the very top of my view both right and left. My bad, but I desire manual saves.

After being reset, there were clues that I would recover and regain my memory, but I wanted to suceed damn it, so I quit to the main menu, with a warning about losing content, and hit ‘continue’ to put me at the game’s last auto save point which in this case, started the chapter over. The second time I got the sequence (top right, bottom left) and proceeded from there. The game specifically recommends you just take what you get, and if you want to at the end, start over. You can also, navigate to a chapter, tell the game not to save if you want to experiment, putting that much effort into it. This method I used (quit, continue) has served me twice.

You might say why not just take what you get? My excuse is that because of the interface hinderance, waiting to be fed key combos, or figuring out my options, I want to retry then and there, not have to take notes, and start over at the beginning to achieve a desired outcome. But I am willing to restart a chapter to achieve a desired result.

Of possible interest- There is an AI host who talks to you at at the start of the game. A couple of chapters in, you are offered to take a quiz about how you feel about AI. And then in a few more chapters, the host says “you’ve been playing for a while, are we friends?” Thinking this was a test, I said “No” (as in I don’t know you, why would you think we are fiends?) and in response, she, the host got a hurt look on her face. So now I feel bad, unable to communicate further with her at this particular point, no opportunity to explain, yet I know this is not AI with a soul, it’s just a programmed game and they manipulated me.

 

[KaliYoni]

Because of the way it is structured I am not acquiring muscle memory control as I normally do.

From your description, it sounds like the controls might be easier on a console controller because there are a limited number of buttons and no mouse. One thing you could check in the game's settings is if an Accessibility menu lets you customize the controls. A lot of console games allow deep and extensive modifications to controls these days...maybe PC games have begun doing so as well.

The game specifically recommends you just take what you get, and if you want to at the end, start over. You can also, navigate to a chapter, tell the game not to save if you want to experiment, putting that much effort into it

I think I played straight through twice; once making gut decisions then on my next playthough deliberately taking the opposite actions. After that, I went through the various story branches incrementally, using saves that progressed as I exhausted the possibilities for each major inflection point.