Detroit: Become Human

Detroit: Become Human
Developer(s)	Quantic Dream
Publisher(s)	Sony Interactive Entertainment
Director(s)	David Cage
Producer(s)	Guillaume de Fondaumière
Writer(s)	David Cage
Platform(s)	PlayStation 4
Release	2018
Genre(s)	Action-adventure
Mode(s)	Single-player

Detroit: Become Human is an upcoming neo-noir thriller video game developed by Quantic Dream and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment for PlayStation 4 and is scheduled to be released in 2018. The plot revolves around three androids: Kara, who escapes the factory she was made in to explore her newfound sentience; Connor, whose job it is to hunt down deviant androids like Kara; and Markus, who devotes himself to releasing the androids from servitude. The characters may survive or perish depending on the choices that are made, which serve to shape the story as customised by the player.

Detroit: Become Human is derived from Quantic Dream's 2012 tech demo Kara. Valorie Curry returns to reprise the title role. To research the setting, the developers visited Detroit, Michigan. Quantic Dream built a new engine to complement the game and cast hundreds of actors from Los Angeles, London and Paris before commencing a year-and-a-half-long process of shooting and animation. The script took director David Cage more than two years to write.

Gameplay

Player character engaged in crisis negotiation with a range of dialogue choices that can either fail or accomplish the mission.

Detroit: Become Human is an action-adventure game played from a third-person view,^[1][2] which is subject to a set and controllable perspective.^[3] There are multiple playable characters in the game^[4] who can die as the story continues without them;^[5] as a result, there is no "game over" message following a character's death.^[6] The story will branch out depending on which choices are made.^[7] The player will be able to rewind to certain points in the story to reshape decisions in the event of regret.^[8] On occasion, the more information one collects within an allotted time,^[9] the greater the chance of success will be in deciding a course of action.^[10] Obtaining clues allows the player to reconstruct and replay the events that occurred,^[2] or avail them of set procedures like patrol routes; this can be done by highlighting and analysing the environment with augmented vision.^[11]

Characters

• Kara (Valorie Curry)^[12] is a newly created android with artificial consciousness who discovers how it is to live among humans and struggles to find her place in a world where androids are still not conscious and utilised as servants.^[13] Curry returned to portray Kara since her role in the tech demo.^[12]
• Connor (Bryan Dechart)^[9] is an advanced police model android tasked with hunting down androids that have mysteriously deviated from their programmed behaviours.^[5][7]
• Markus (Jesse Williams)^[14] is an android who takes it upon himself to free others like him from bondage.^[15]

Development

The game is based on the developer's 2012 PS3 tech demo Kara.^[16][17][18] Cage wanted to make the demo into a full game, despite not originally having planned to, because he was curious as to what would happen next.^[19][20] He took inspiration from Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity Is Near, which explains that the rate at which human intelligence develops pales in comparison to that of a machine. Therefore, Cage proposes that machines may one day have emotions.^[21] Androids were designed with reference to artificial organs, how their energy would be generated, and human eye movement. An android's abilities are determined by each of their given profession.^[22] Detroit was chosen as the setting to revitalise a city that had succumbed to economic decline after having made a historical contribution to American industry.^[23] The developers travelled to Detroit to conduct field research for the game,^[24] taking pictures, visiting abandoned buildings and meeting people.^[25]

In late 2013, Quantic Dream founder and CEO David Cage was in preproduction on Detroit: Become Human^[26] which he said would build upon what he had done in the past with Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls, "but in a very, very different way".^[27] Cage's unfinished script – comprising thousands of pages^[28] – was first relayed to the design team whilst the programmers created the graphics^[29] as well as a new game engine with advancements in features like rendering, dynamic lighting, shading and cameras.^[1] The casting process extended to Los Angeles, London and Paris in search for about 220 actors to portray 300 roles. The actors were scanned in 3D, whose models were subsequently made into characters. Shooting and animation followed, and after one year and six months, the performance capture was finished.^[29][30] In October 2016, Cage completed the screenplay after more than two years of writing. It was described as his most complex work.^[31] He used charts and diagrams while writing the choices, to see where they would end up.^[32]

Release

Detroit: Become Human was announced on 27 October 2015 at a Sony press conference during Paris Games Week.^[33] It appeared at the 2016 and 2017 Electronic Entertainment Expo, showing trailers of additional playable characters and gameplay.^[4][15] Following E3 2017, Cage confirmed that the game would be released in 2018.^[34]

Awards

Detroit: Become Human was nominated for the 2016 Best of E3 Game Critics Awards in the category of Best Original Game^[35] but lost out to Horizon Zero Dawn.^[36] At E3 2017, it won GameSpot's Best of E3 award^[37] and was nominated for IGN's Best PlayStation 4 Game^[38] and Best Adventure Game awards,^[39] Hardcore Gamer's Adventure Game award^[40] and Game Critics Awards' Best Original Game and Best Action/Adventure Game awards.^[41][42]

References

External links

• Archive of Quantic Dream's tech demo Kara