If you like Hollywood science fiction blockbusters, like detective-themed American dramas, and have a certain interest in topics such as artificial intelligence, you can definitely get the top viewing experience in this game.
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<h1>A clear stream in the midst of chaos</h1>
There is no shortage of big games in the 2018 game circle, at the beginning of the year, "Monster Hunter: World" took the lead, breaking Capcom's shipment record as soon as it came on the field; on April 20, "Double Ghost Shooting", the new "God of War" and the Labo series NS that assumed the responsibility of Nintendo's new market layout were released at the same time, these two market positioning, game experience is completely different, but the same blockbuster works make many players embarrassed.
In the medium and long term, RockStar's sandbox masterpiece "Red Dead Redemption 2" is basically certain to be released this year, not to mention that Nintendo drew an NS version of the "Smash Bros. Brawl" cake early to stabilize the Switch console throughout 2018.
Compared to these blockbusters, Quantic Dream Studios' new work "Detroit: Become Human", which also received strong support from SIE, seems to be somewhat "unremarkable", and its form is still the company's "interactive film" for many years, and the storyline and camera language are the core content of the game.
Compared with "The Extraordinary Twins" 5 years ago, this game lacks the platform of Hollywood actresses such as Alan Peggy, and from the various information released before, the game's screen performance, basic system, and story theme, although the quality is not low, it seems to be less than the level of a first-class masterpiece.
Coser, a cyborg at the event site
If you did not participate in the "Detroit: Become a Human" demo meeting and producer interview held by SIE in Hong Kong on April 11, Xiaobian is likely to miss such an outstanding game with the above prejudices, and now you can pat your chest to assure everyone that if you like Hollywood science fiction blockbusters, like detective-themed American dramas, and have a certain interest in artificial intelligence and other topics, you can definitely get the top viewing experience in this game. With the official lifting of the non-disclosure agreement at 10 o'clock tonight, Xiaobian can finally blow this masterpiece with everyone.
<h1>What exactly is the story of Detroit: Becoming Human? </h1>
In 2038, with the rapid development of artificial intelligence and robotics science, Detroit in the United States has become the industrial capital of "bionic people (Android)". Tens or millions of intelligent bionic people with human appearance play the roles of nannies, builders, security guards, sales, etc. according to their own positioning and settings, and human beings can be liberated from some simple labor, and bionic people are increasingly becoming an indispensable part of real life.
On the other hand, the number of low-end workers who have lost their jobs due to the large-scale application of bionic people and intelligent technology is gradually increasing, they take to the streets to vent their dissatisfaction, and the whole society seems to be calm but behind it is a dark tide.
Although the positioning of bionic people in society is very clear from the beginning - they are nothing more advanced and expensive household appliances, people can choose in specialized stores like refrigerators and color TVs, each specific model reflects some or some specific functions when designed, although they also have strong learning ability and memory functions, but in theory it should be completely without "feelings", and will only mechanically carry out instructions issued by humans or prescribed by procedures.
At the beginning of the story, a very small number of bionic people began to have some strange behaviors. Some suddenly disappeared, some showed emotional thinking, and more worryingly, some even began to rebel against their masters, and there were all kinds of bionic human injuries and killings. As a result, rumors spread in society, and the government began to suspect that there was a problem with the programming of the bionic people, and people did not know whether they should continue to believe in the bionic people who lived with them day and night.
Players alternately control and play three bionic characters in the game: Kara, a self-aware bionic man who was originally set up as a domestic maid who awakens to protect a little girl who suffers domestic violence; Connor, a bionic detective who was specifically designed to help the police track down other bionic people who deviate from programming behavior while investigating the cause of their rampage; Markus, who was originally a personal assistant to a brilliant painter. Under the guidance of the master, he gradually awakened his self-awareness, and then devoted himself to liberating other bionic "slaves".
Carla
Marcus
Connor
Three related but different angles of adventure stories together constitute the main plot of the game, players will be accompanied by dozens of main supporting characters to explore the near future of Detroit, not only to spy on the real reasons behind all this chaos, but also involuntarily think about the difference between machines and humans, the future of artificial intelligence and other humanistic topics, and even encounter moral tests.
<h1>The one-and-a-half-hour prologue is rich and unfinished</h1>
Guillaume de Fondaumiere, the executive producer of this game, repeatedly emphasized at the experience meeting that this is the most ambitious, but also the most branching options and the most diverse ending since the establishment of Quantic Dream. The player's choice can truly change the fate of the three bionic people and the direction of the story, and the choice of some nodes may completely lead to different endings.
Some of them may cause the characters to die early, and some even involve some practical moral torture and thinking about social issues, so the process of playing the game for the player is also a process of examining their own hearts.
Flowchart after each Section is played
For this reason, the production team designed an intuitive storyline trigger list that will be shown to players after each small section of Section (which can be understood as a level), so that everyone can see what investigation events they missed and how many branches to choose from. So structurally speaking, the production team is obviously encouraging players to play multiple games, trigger more events, and see more possibilities for story development.
Taking the scene of the "hostage" who has previously released a complete demo image as an example, the player controls Connor to investigate as many as a dozen items and events after entering the scene, each link will have an impact on the success rate of the final rescue of the hostage, and only by taking the time to learn about the hijacker can you unlock more options when you finally confront him.
Of course, this is just a conventional idea, it is the duty of bringing in Connor's "detective" identity, and the player can of course directly start a dialogue with the hijacker with the lowest rescue probability, so as to unlock a new animation and story direction.
From the live experience, Quantic Dream's attitude to each branch story is equally professional, and you don't have to worry about the so-called "side" story and animation quality will be inferior to the main line, and every corner of the game is worth searching carefully.
The interaction between Connor and veteran detective Hank is also a highlight of the plot
In about an hour and a half of trial time, Xiaobian alternately controlled the development plot of three characters, basically played the fourth Session, from the specific operation point of view, there is actually no essential difference between each other, the general principle is to control the character to the characteristic location to trigger QTE operations, such as cleaning the room, tidying up the desk, etc., after achieving the stage goal, you can advance to the next stage of the plot.
The following is a general story of their experiences and characteristics in the early story (due to the limitations of the confidentiality agreement, many details can not be revealed for the time being, please forgive me).
1. Maid Carla
Carla, a house maid, was picked up from the store by her owner and appeared to have been damaged by a car accident. Originally a taxi driver, Tod, the owner, lost his job more than a decade ago due to advances in self-driving technology, divorced his wife, and now lives with his daughters Alice and Carla in a dilapidated house in an old industrial area.
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In the days without Carla, the dilapidated cabin has become a junkyard, and the player first needs to clean up the garbage in the house before trying to re-establish a friendship with Alice - her memories of working here have all been erased due to repairs, which is equivalent to a mobile phone reset, so many things need to be re-familiarized.
Todd, whose life was not going well
Long-term career and emotional unhappiness have caused Todd to become addicted to alcohol, and the whole person becomes irritable and rude, and if the player searches the room carefully, he can find other key items that cause him to be emotionally unstable. Not only is he cold to Carla as a cyborg, but he is sometimes even violent towards his daughter. In such an environment, Kara, who should have no emotions, gradually found that her mood had changed somewhat...
2. Personal assistant Marcus
Karl was a world-renowned Neo-Impressionist painter who achieved great success in his painting career, but also ignored the importance of family, and was always surrounded by some notorious celebrities, and his relationship with his son was deteriorating. A few years ago, he was paralyzed by an illness in the lower body, and the whole person fell into a severe depression and lived in isolation for several years.
It wasn't until one day that he received marcus, a personal assistant sent by a friend, and was meticulously cared for by him, that Carl gradually regained his confidence in life and picked up the paintbrush again.
But the weather-beaten Karl knew that his time was running out, and he began to consciously guide Marcus to think about what life was, what human beings were, and the future of bionic humans, and even handed him a paintbrush to let Marcus close his eyes and draw what he wanted.
In fact, this is also the question that developers most hope to provoke players to think about through this game, "what is the essence of human beings", and whether the continuous development of technology will change this essence.
3. Detective Connor
Bionic man research and development, production giant CyberLife company in the face of endless out-of-control problems specially developed a prototype of the body, players will follow Connor's footsteps to explore the truth of one bionic man out of control event after another, if from an emotional point of view, Connor is simply an accomplice to hunt for human beings of their own kind, but in the game environment, he is just faithfully executing the program embedded in the system.
Click to watch a video of Connor's interrogation in Detroit: Becoming Human
Connor's related plot is the most suspenseful, relatively speaking, the most exciting, the most operational part of the game, his activities are often related to various cases committed by bionic people, such as the "hostage hijacking incident" in the prologue and the cyborg killing incident that he later investigates after encountering the old detective Hank, the player needs to fully investigate every detail in the scene, restore the truth of the case through Connor's unique function, and finally find the suspect.
Connor always carried out his tasks as sharply and efficiently
With the relatively soothing plot of the other two characters, the part that enters Connor will surely mobilize the player's emotions and enthusiasm quickly.
<h1>Some of the details of this game are expressed</h1>
The entire game includes about 74,000 animations of different lengths, most of which require simple QTE operations to trigger, such as turning the half-circle stick, shaking the controller, etc., and then some of the more critical plot cutscenes.
Special praise is the flexible use of the touch panel on the PS4 controller of this game, such as when the control character interacts with the electronic magazine similar to the tablet in the game, the system will prompt the player to slide his finger on the trackpad to control the page turning, the character action in the game and the player's realistic operation are highly unified, the experience is very smooth and real, Xiaobian himself likes this design very much.
Authenticity is the highest pursuit of the production team, Quantic Dream introduced in the live broadcast of the research and development record, in order to design a near-future environment that people can feel reached, they specially set the time of the story in 2038, and also specially went to Detroit to carry out a series of styles, which closely combined the architectural style, traffic design, clothing characteristics and the sci-fi background of the game in reality, which is the origin of the unique texture of this work.
Before starting the trial, Guillaume de Fondaumiere emphasized that everyone can enjoy this more than one hour of trial play, because they only make up a small part of the entire game experience, equivalent to the "introduction" of the entire work. According to the developer's tests, the first time to complete the level is generally about 10 to 12 hours, and if you want to fully experience all the branch plots and small animations in the game, it will take at least 25 to 30 hours. In the case of an interactive movie, such game time is indeed worthy of the goal of "the most ambitious".
The power of PS4 gives the game an unusually realistic environment and vivid human face mapping performance, and Quantic Dream has especially worked face capture. A total of more than 250 motion capture actors were used to collect physical data on facial expressions, body dynamics, etc., and the production process of this part alone took nearly 3 years. In order to make the characters really come alive, the production team also specially developed an eyeball dynamic system, so that the eyeballs can also follow the dynamic synchronization of the body.
From the actual picture performance, the number of debris in the scene, material details are not the top level in the industry today, belonging to the normal play of the first party of SIE, but all the parts involving character actions and expressions present a convincing, incredible sense of reality, and don't forget that this is the effect achieved in the overall environment of 30FPS, so Quantic Dream is very aware of its own advantages and the focus of the game, so it has been effectively allocated in resources. The result is impressive.
<h1>Maybe many people are not used to this form, but it is indeed a good game</h1>
In addition to excellent graphics, games like the new God of War features that provide intense interactive operations. Players generally sit up straight in front of the TV, tightly grip the handle and meet various enemies, and harvest the thrill of battle. Detroit: Becoming Human is the kind of game where people can relax and sink deep into the couch and savor it like watching a movie or a series.
Although there are interactive parts in this process, and the specific QTE operation types and scenes have made significant progress compared with "Rainstorm" and "Extraordinary Twins", including various small surprises created by using touchpads, but both the amount of operation and the urgency belong to the lowest level in all games, and all the interesting parts are concentrated in the picture and plot.
From beginning to end, this work has been working hard to practice the category label of "interactive movie", using the latest picture technology to combine their experience in this field for more than ten years, eliminating those complicated systems and operations that are not related to the plot experience, so that the 3D model presents the dynamic performance of real actors. Technical excellence combined with a bold, in-depth storyline allows people to experience the smoothness and professionalism similar to Hollywood blockbusters.
Executive producer Guillaume de Fondaumiere poses with Xiao Yi
Scheduled to be released on May 25, 2018, the Chinese and English editions are divided into two editions, the General edition and the Collector's Edition, the Regular Edition is HK$398 and the Collector's Edition is HK$468, which has more art collections, digital soundtracks and dynamic themes than the Regular Edition. In addition to the physical version, of course, there is also a digital version, which is also divided into a normal version and a digital deluxe version, and the price and content contained are the same as the physical version, and players can choose and purchase according to their own needs.