Bionic humans, robots, artificial intelligence and other themes have gradually become popular in television and film media since the last century, and some movies about these bionic people or artificial intelligence, such as Blade Runner, Terminator, ai Artificial Intelligence, and Westworld, have enlightened generations of audiences.
Of course, this kind of genre is not uncommon in the game. Quantic dream, a French game developer who has brought us Rainstorm and The Incredible Twins, has recently presented players with another work about the emergence of bionic people in large numbers of societies and their conflicts with humans – Detroit: Becoming Human (hereinafter referred to as "Detroit").
As a work about bionic people, this work will undoubtedly be compared with the science fiction movie "Blade Runner 2049" released last year. After all, the stories of both are based on the present and the near future, and the bionic people have become an important part of human society, they do things that humans will not do, but they are also "persecuted" by humans, believing that these bionic people have taken away human jobs and made them degenerate.
Of course, unlike Blade Runner 2049, which uses the audience as an observer to consider the contradictions between bionics and human society, Detroit allows players to play the bionic people in the game, allowing players to experience the contradictions between the two from the perspective of bionic people.
As a successor to Rainstorm and The Amazing Twins, Detroit inherits quantic dream's usual interactive movie model, where the game largely makes players feel like they're watching a movie, but at the same time playing a game.
My college professor once said that he thought "Rainstorm" was not fun because it was too much like a movie, so why don't we watch the movie directly? In fact, however, when you get into the quantic dream's work, you'll find that while these games look cinematic, they're not cinematic to some extent — because they offer angles and options that movies can't offer.
Let the player decide the route and ending after the movie, just like the butterfly effect, your every choice will not only affect the different actions of the characters, but also affect the direction of the story, and ultimately affect whether the characters die, and even the appearance of multiple endings, which seems to be a unique experience that the film media cannot bring us.
Detroit is a game that revolves around 3 bionic humans Connor, Markus, and Kara, and although it's 3 characters, it doesn't unfold in the same way as Resident Evil 2's somewhat independent Lyon or Claire line. In Detroit, the story of the 3 bionic men takes place in a "staggered" way that favors movies and American dramas.
For example, the player will start with Connor's story, then switch the camera to kara after an event is over; after kara's action, markus will appear and start his story; then the story will return to kara's perspective... This irregularity alternates repeatedly.
The actions of the 3 bionic humans seem to be unrelated, but to some extent, they are interrelated. Because everyone's actions will have a certain impact on the next role, just like the butterfly effect, each step needs to be carefully chosen before making a decision. <b>Because your actions and choices affect not only one character, but also other characters, as well as all possible sub-plots. </b>
The basic gameplay of the game, inherited from "Rainstorm" and "Extraordinary Twins", when the player controls a certain character, he needs to explore as much as possible in the current scene and open up limited possibilities. For example, in the scene where Kara returns home, when cleaning up the house for the owner Todd, a pistol can be found somewhere through exploration; after learning of the existence of the pistol, the story will open a possible branch - when Kara breaks through the limitations of the bionic man and decides to protect his little master Alice, finding the gun and not finding the gun will produce the following different routes:
1. Take a gun to face Todd and protect Alice (Todd may die);
2. Lock the door to block Todd and escape with Alice through the window (Todd may not die).
There will also be different routes for taking a gun to face Todd, such as Kara killing Todd during an argument with Todd, or Alice getting the gun and shooting her father when she sees that Todd is about to "kill" Kara.
Although the ending of these routes is generally Kara escaping with Alice, killing, not killing, and who kills Todd will affect the plot of the game. If todd had not been killed, todd might have reappeared in later scenes, affecting not only Kara and Alice, but even the future actions of other characters.
Regarding this plot, the trailer released at Paris Game Week last year showed a lot of content.
Before detroit, there were already several games on the market that also used interactive film elements. In addition to "Rainstorm" and "The Extraordinary Twins", which are also from quantic dream, "Until Dawn", released in 2015, and the recently critically acclaimed "Escape", also use a lot of interactive film elements.
As a later work, Detroit has made some improvements in the system compared to its predecessors, in addition to the advantages of the plot (after all, it is a completely different type of story). For example, in a game, even if a playable character dies, it will not lead to the end of the game, because their death will not affect the direction of the story. Even if some characters die, the actions of other characters will continue, but in some scenes, the death of the characters will affect the direction of some branches.
In addition, there are many routes for players to choose in the game, and a little carelessness in making a wrong choice will enter some plots that players do not want to enter. But the fact that it happened in Detroit doesn't mean you need to replay it. According to the producers of "Detroit", this time the production team thoughtfully added a new system that allows players to directly return to the selection points of certain storylines, reshaping the choices they thought were not satisfied with before, resulting in different routes.
This is definitely a very useful system for players who don't have enough time to complete the whole route quickly (the producer said that if the choice is not reshaped at all, the single process time is about 10-12 hours, and the completion time of all routes and options is about 25-30 hours).
In addition, after completing each scene in the game, the system will provide a process tree for that scene, through which the player can know exactly what he missed without investigation (unsolved survey choices will be shown in gray), and the player can also see how many different routes can be triggered in this scene, so as to choose whether to reshape the scene to unlock more plot scenes with different routes.
The game also allows the difficulty to be changed halfway, the producer said that the lower difficulty can ensure that the player's choice will not be so easy to lead to the death of the game character, for players with selection difficulties or hope that most of the characters are alive, low difficulty is absolutely necessary, and low difficulty will not affect the acquisition of trophies, so you may wish to try.
As stated at the beginning of this article, the contradiction between bionic humans, robots and artificial intelligence is not the first day to be presented to the audience, before "Detroit", we have already felt the sadness of bionic people from many film and television works and their vision of becoming human, and even a higher race than humans. But in these film and television works, as the audience, we are invariably just, and can only be, an observer of the event, to watch the occurrence, process and resolution of the event, and cannot participate in making any choices.
But Detroit gives us the opportunity to plunge into this paradoxical vortex and experience why bionic humans have the idea of being human, or even higher than, human beings. And for us humans, what is the significance and revelation of the events caused by bionic humans for us humans.
Although I venture to believe that allowing the player to re-choose at a certain point in the gameplay may affect the player's immersion in the story. After all, if everyone doesn't like their current choices, and runs back to the previous choice point and chooses again, this behavior may pull the player away from the producer's originally designed plot and the immersion it brings, making the game change from a movie-like and American drama experience to a pure ordinary multi-option game experience.
Therefore, if possible, I personally think that before the first pass, I do not recommend that you use any way to return to the choice point before the first time to make a new choice, which may be the best way to appreciate the charm of the story of this game and understand the meaning that the screenwriter and producer want to convey.
Of course, just like in the game, all this is the player's own choice, whether to immerse yourself completely in and tolerate all the choices of suffering, or not tolerating your original choices and deciding to take a different route, all of which will be your choice.
<b>Q: A good interactive movie game not only needs a smooth narrative, but also the player wants to have as many choices as possible, which is actually a conflict between the two points, how does the production team balance the two? </b>
A: This is a good question, the production team needs to consider the rhythm of each place, and the characters in the game often need some time to think before they can implement some actions. But if this thought process lasts too long, the player may get bored. Therefore, the production team should fully consider how much time a person will spend thinking and acting.
For the game, the choices and the consequences they trigger can be seen everywhere, for example, in the initial scene of the game, the player will see a police officer lying on the balcony, and if your character chooses to help him stop the bleeding and save him at this time, this seemingly insignificant choice will have an impact later in the game. As another example, when Kara is cleaning the house, she will find different things, such as pistols, which can lead to different outcomes, and your choices and the fates of the characters will be largely intertwined.
<b>q: Regarding the design of the ps4 gamepad touchpad in the game, did the production team think of using the touchpad to do some operations at the beginning, or did Sony ask you to add touchpad related operations? </b>
a: No, we have always been committed to letting players experience how the characters in the game make different actions, touchpad can let players experience this, and can also make players more involved in the game (Editor's note: the game such as drawing, playing the piano, turning the page of the book and other actions can be done through the touchpad).
<b>q: We found that the game can change the difficulty halfway through the trial, if I choose simple difficulty, will it affect the unlocked content and trophies? </b>
a: Yes, even if the player chooses a difficulty at the beginning, the difficulty can be switched at will during the game, of course, this will have an impact on the plot that appears later. The difference between the two difficulty modes is that in the more challenging mode, the player will be more challenged, while in the easy mode, the player does not need to control the camera and has a lower chance of killing the character. It's like a more easy-going mode for players who don't want to be challenged too much by the gamepad, so that they can pay more attention to the development of the story. These difficulties also won't have any impact on the trophy, as the production team wanted players to choose a mode that suited them and enjoy the journey the game had to offer them.
<b>q: What's new about Detroit compared to Rainstorm? </b>
a: Of course, there is a big difference between the two, such as the graphics, after all, "Rainstorm" is already a game from 8 years ago (Editor's Note: "Rainstorm" was originally released in ps3 in 2010), so the new technology, the engine will bring better graphics to players, and the two also have a completely different story.
Another important difference is that in Rainstorm, choices are important, whereas in Detroit, players' choices become more important, and the outcomes of their choices are broader. Therefore, "Detroit" can be said to be an enhanced, enhanced and reinforced version of "Heavy Rain" (laughs).
<b>q: Does "Detroit" refer to and borrow from other related films or novels that also describe bionic people? </b>
a: "Yes" and "no" coexist. "Yes" because everyone knows that there are a lot of related bionic works now, such as Blade Runner, Westworld, etc., which have more or less influenced David Cage (the game director and screenwriter of "Detroit") and the team.
And "no" is because the story we provide this time is absolutely original, the player will only control the bionic people, and will look at their impact on society and human beings through the perspective of bionic people; on the other hand, the story will touch on many themes, unlike "Blade Runner" will only focus on the process of bionic people hunting down bionic people, nor will it only talk about the game world itself like "Westworld", leaving aside the impact on real society. Detroit will contain themes that are missing here, so discussing how bionic humans affect humans and the scope of society will be larger, such as how bionic humans enter society and cause humans to lose their jobs, etc., which will make Detroit more interesting.
<b>Q: This time, the production team did not invite heavyweight movie stars such as Ellen Peggy to play the role of the game (Editor's Note: "The Extraordinary Twins" invited Alan Peggy to play the heroine), how does the production team think about the impact of this heavyweight movie star starring in interactive movie games, and do you think they are important? </b>
A: Talent is the most important thing for the production team, the production team has never blindly pursued the fame of some movie stars, we only value their acting skills. We chose these movie stars because the production team saw some traits in them that we wanted to bring to our game characters, so we chose them.
This time, the production team had more than 300 different roles to find actors, so we did a very large-scale audition, and we would talk to the actors corresponding to each role about what the production team's ideal role was. In addition to the 3 most important protagonists, there are more than 20 important supporting characters in the game, and the production team needs to be very careful to choose the right actors for these roles.
<b>q: Why did you choose to play with 3 characters alternating? Is it also possible to use the route of a single character to play the game after completing the level? </b>
a: No. We provided 3 different perspectives from 3 different characters in the game, and the stories of the 3 characters were all on the same line, and their start times were also synchronized, and we thought it would be very interesting to have the 3 characters' perspectives alternate. But if the player can't get the 3 characters to survive to the end, then the player won't be able to see the plot and ending of the dead characters. Other than this way, there is no possibility for the player to focus on only one character and ignore the others.
Players may have a favorite character, but because the fates and perspectives of these 3 characters are intertwined, they also evolve over time, and in the process, the player's love may also be transferred to other characters through the game process, which does happen when the player tests.