Unlike domestic development teams, some overseas game studios tend to prefer a "single" direction: they focus on a certain game field or category and maintain decades of investment.
Quantic dream is a typical example of this. Last week, its latest 3a masterpiece, Detroit: Becoming Human, was officially launched. The €30 million, billed as "the most expensive interactive film game ever made," was a great success in its first week of release. According to the latest week's UK game sales charts, Detroit: Becoming Human beat the "Dark Soul Remake" that was launched at the same time and the previously championed "God of War 4", becoming the 10th PS4 exclusive game in the UK to top the sales chart this year.
In terms of word-of-mouth, "Detroit: Called Human" has also received general praise. According to metacritic statistics, the game's media score is 81 points, and FamiTong even directly gives a platinum score of 38 points. From the perspective of user ratings, the average user score of 8.7 is obviously higher than the media expectations. It should be noted that another previously critical interactive movie game, Stranger Things: Eve of the Storm, has only a user rating of 7.4.
And this is also a new work that Quantic Dream has once again come up with after five years of dormancy. As a French independent studio that has always focused on interactive movie games, quantic dream's previous works such as "Extraordinary Twins" and "Rainstorm" have received good reputation and performance. And Detroit: Becoming Human is much higher than the previous games in both the development cycle and the investment. In the words of david cage, the game's writer and director, "We wanted to provide a whole new interactive movie gaming experience. It can be seen that the studio has a high degree of confidence in this work.
Make the movie more like a game: the game screen is comparable to the blockbuster movie, and the plot choice is more free
The ultra-high level of graphics expression has always been an advantage of interactive movie games, and this feature has been qualitatively improved in Detroit: Becoming Human. All the main characters in the game use a motion capture system, and the character's every move, even facial expressions, are performed by the actors themselves, and their level of refinement has been comparable to many cg movies, achieving a lifelike effect, which is the level of picture realism that could not be achieved by all previous interactive movie games. Obviously, the production cost of 30 million euros should not be underestimated.
The game's plot tells the story between bionic humans and humans in an alternate future world, and is somewhat similar to Wilsmith's classic film I, Robot. As a game with a main plot, it is very important whether the story is wonderful or not. "Detroit: Becoming a Human" adopts a multi-line narrative approach, with the experiences of three bionic humans as the main line, to reflect the contradictions and conflicts between bionic humans and humans.
Objectively speaking, the plot theme of the game is somewhat repetitive, but the ingenuity is that the development team makes good use of the unique advantages of the multi-perspective of the Internet language of "game", and comprehensively reflects the bionic people's thinking about the meaning of their own existence and the background of the conflict between the entire human being and the bionic person through the characters whose three stories are independent of each other but have a potential impact on their behavior.
The biggest highlight of Detroit: Becoming Human is the enhanced sense of substitution. The game uses an item interaction mechanism similar to Watchdog, where players can scan items to learn about the relevant information, or even directly restore the scenes that happened in the past. The process is very interesting, giving people the feeling of being a Sherlock Holmes detective, which greatly strengthens the sense of substitution.
The multi-protagonist mechanism also makes the choice of the game more free, and the personality and story tone of everyone in the game are no longer fixed design, and the player can completely respond according to their own ideas. In the case of a kidnapper incident, you can choose to negotiate a peaceful settlement, or you can directly subdue it violently, or you can even pretend to appease and then shoot the kidnappers. Because of the existence of multiple protagonists, the personality shaping of a single character has a more free space to play. During the game, players can even directly let any of the protagonists die early to continue the plot. This is a degree of freedom that was difficult to achieve in previous interactive movie games: after all, when the protagonist dies, the story cannot continue. The game's branch plot is very rich, and after the end of each chapter, the system will show you the complete story branch diagram of the chapter to motivate the player to collect all the plot.
Chengye live broadcast worry also live broadcast: behind the heat is the loss of enthusiasm
Much of the success of Detroit: Becoming Human is due in large part to the publicity of the game's streamers. On the day of the release on May 24, the game occupied the first place in the popularity of stand-alone game channels on platforms such as b station and switch. Douyu also conducted a 4-hour official evaluation for this purpose. On B, the highest number of views of the video related to the game has reached 2.4 million.
Interactive movie games have long been considered the most suitable game category for live streaming because of their unique gaming experience. As the name suggests, an interactive movie game is actually an interactive movie, and its main game content is focused on the picture and plot, and the experience of the sense of operation is almost negligible, which allows the audience to get an almost equivalent game experience as the anchor. In addition, due to the frequent choices required in the game, this has become the best way for the host and the audience to interact. Viewers often give suggestions according to their own opinions, which is equivalent to directly operating the game, and this deep interaction undoubtedly greatly improves the live broadcast effect.
But for the interactive movie itself, the popularity of game live broadcasting is not a happy thing. Unlike moba, arpg and other games that pay attention to operation, all the essence is often focused on the picture and plot. And live game streaming is public, which means that all players can fully enjoy the game by watching the live broadcast, along with the so-called "cloud players". More seriously, the experience of interactive movie games is irreversible, and there are few players who repeat the game.
From the current point of view, "Detroit: Becoming Human" Although the player topic is hot enough, whether this heat can be converted into sales remains to be examined. The popularity of game live broadcasting has made a considerable number of users experience a complete game plot, which is likely to lead to the sales of the later stage of the game can not keep up. This is also the reason why Konami previously banned anchors from broadcasting "Metal Gear Solid 5: Phantom Pain". As for the final performance of Detroit: Becoming Human, much of it may depend on whether the live audience is willing to buy new tickets for it.
Interactive movie games are successful, is interactive game movie possible?
Overall, Detroit: Becoming Human is indeed taking interactive movie games to a new level. Whether it's the motion capture technology that rivals real CG movies, or the game's unique multi-protagonist, multi-line narrative approach, it's a big step forward for existing interactive movie games.
Still, Detroit: Becoming Human has a hard time achieving great success. The main reason is that its production cost of up to 50 million euros (equivalent to about 370 million yuan) has made the expected sales of the game rise. From the pricing price of 198 yuan of national services, the sales of the game need to exceed at least 1.8 million sets to achieve profitability.
The fundamental reason for this is that the category of interactive movie games is too niche, and the size of the user group is difficult to expand. But if you think about it in a different way, and turn interactive movie games too much into interactive game movies, it may be a different landscape. The current film industry has become more and more focused on the sense of substitution in the past months, including the emergence of 3D, 4dmax and other forms. On the basis of VR equipment, manufacturers can completely introduce the idea of interactive movie games into the cinema, with the help of VR equipment, each player can make different choices in the movie, it can be said that everyone sees a unique movie, so as to present the audience with a more immersive viewing experience. This may be a viable solution for interactive movie games in the future.