If you just talk about Quantic Dream, a game company from France, maybe many players don't know much, but when you mention their games: "Extraordinary Twins" and "Rainstorm", you will know what kind of game company they are. Yes, QD is a "quirky" company that focuses only on interactive cinematic games, and each of their works has been recognized by many players. Today I want to introduce you to their work, the current peak of interactive cinematic games: Detroit: Incarnate as a Human.
First, the future world of the overhead
The story of "Detroit: Becoming a Human" is set in the near future where artificial intelligence is already highly developed.
Advanced bionic people are put into various fields of human life, replacing humans to engage in various jobs, from abstract art fields, to the most basic housework, and even special industries, there are corresponding models of bionic people available for use. This has brought unprecedented wealth and development opportunities to the future world, but at the same time, it has also made the normal operation of human society more and more inseparable from these "machines".
Because of the abuse of bionic people, the unemployment rate in the United States has reached a terrible 30%, and the general 10% is very serious, and the state of 30% can be imagined. Social problems emerge in an endless stream, under the prosperous bubble is a crisis that may erupt at any time, human beings hate bionic people, and bionic people themselves are gradually changing...
Second, the conflict between bionic humans and human beings
In the game's original story, the bionic man, who was originally designed not to attack humans, killed the owner and took the hostage, from which we know that the bionic man is awakening, and a social war cannot be avoided.
In this game of narrator and bionic man, the three characters played by the player are not human, but all bionic people, and the three characters have their own plot lines under the common framework. At first they all follow a pre-programmed program, but as an event unfolds, the three protagonists begin to have an independent consciousness, which is the desire for protection, empathy, or simply a desire for freedom.
Each protagonist has a unique narrative style and story theme, with Carla's story warming, Connor's story full of twists and turns, and Marcus's story of passionate blood. Stealth, chase, fight, investigate, interrogate, negotiate... The various styles of scenes intersect and influence each other, which not only provides players with a sufficiently diverse experience, but also makes the story more imposing, and even has a bit of epic feeling.
In the later bionic protagonists, the player sees things that are basically the same as the human category, and choosing the player to play the bionic human rather than the human setting makes it easier to feel their changes in order to substitute themselves into this conflict.
Third, the fate of bionic people is determined by you
Common ways to operate interactive movie games are QTE and Instant Pick. In "Detroit: Incarnate as a Human", quantic dream is crammed into a large number of interactive actions, and each action of the character except walking basically requires the player to perform corresponding operations, including but not limited to key combinations, sliding touchpads, turning or swinging the controller, the game is always imitating the action mode in reality, trying to improve the player's sense of substitution.
The selection branches in the game can also be called shanghai volume, unlike the dialogue or action choices in the general game, some of these choices are no longer just to change the surface of the dialogue presentation, but will change the essence of the plot. You can pause the game at any time in the flowchart to see what significant consequences your choices have, which may have an immediate effect in a short period of time or may have a profound impact on subsequent story development.
Detroit: Becoming Human is a new milestone in the history of interactive cinema, with a grand story, tight rhythm, flattering settings, and a variety of styles. The large accumulation of the number of branch plots has also given it a qualitative breakthrough in script flexibility and has revealed new possibilities for interactive film games at the gameplay level.