User Reviews

Seriously. I'm amazed by how much hard work was put into this. The soundtrack, the effects, and the story are stupendous. I also like how you are able to make choices that seriously affect the story. Also what's interesting is that doing something in one character's story makes or breaks another character's story.

EXAMPLE: If Markus starts a revolution, then Kara, Alice, and Luther won't be able to cross the Canadian border through border control. On the other hand, if Markus takes a pacifist approach, Kara, Alice, and Luther will be able to cross the Canadian border through border control.

I also love the character depth that this story has. I also think that it is important to look through everything and think through your decisions (hence my earlier example).

EXAMPLE: When Connor gets Hank out of his drunken state at Hank's house, you are able to look through different things in his living room and kitchen. If Connor doesn't find a picture of Hank's son, Cole, you will not be able to survive the scene where Hank confronts two Connors, which also depends on whether Connor becomes a deviant or not.

The game is pretty complicated, yet fruitful, which is why this is my favorite game 200/10. 😂

Detroit: Become Human has an amazing, complex story that keeps you wanting to play more. The moment I beat the game I went to the main menu and started the story over again. This time choosing different options to witness hidden parts of the story that I didn't witness on the first play. I accidentally killed Kara and Alice when they were fleeing Jericho and I regretted it. This was a game that had me invested into the characters and their stories. The game really shows how ignorantly selfish humans can be. I will definitely be playing the game for a 3rd and maybe 4th time.

FIRST AND FOREMOST - Congrats, you bothered to sort by low rating and check for any critiques of this game. 90% of the rest of the reviews here are infatuated and will defend DBH to the very end. For you, this is a sign of intelligence (ironically given game subject) and you want to hear a differing opinion.

Detroit: Become Human is NOT a bad game. I give it 5/10 instead of 1 because it has some fantastic, heartbreaking, and very well-acted scenes that really push the plot forward. 80% of the rest of it, not so much. Not at all in fact. At the end of the day, this is a fun game to play, and a lot of time and millions of dollars of effort went into making something truly unique for everyone to enjoy and really reflect on.

What isn't unique is nearly the entire plot line(s), which almost kind of ruins everything. Having played Heavy Rain and Two Souls this is a very disappointing title from David Cage. It seems a lot of subtly was lost, despite how bad people say HR was. I actually enjoyed HR's authenticity much more, despite dumb chase scenes, mundane player interaction. The story and many unique stories is what sold HR.

In DBH, we had essentially three major themes tied to three major protagonists: Humanity (Connor), Revolution (Markus), and Race / Motherhood / Slavery (Kara). In science fiction, let alone almost all fiction, humanity makes for the best, classic, and most inspiring themes. Reading these comments I can't decide if these fan boys haven't ever seen A Space Odyssey: 2001, the original Blade Runner, Ex Machina, or read anything concerning artificial intelligence by Isaac Asimov. The "are robots alive?" question has been pondered in all of these and in many Hollywood films for decades, and only the aforementioned classics offered something truly unique and thought provoking. Detroit: Become Human, on the other hand, only manages to baseline at the basic concepts much like the movie Her. Also like Her, there was real potential with DBH that Cage evidently threw away to better pander to a more common denominator of an audience.

Yes, slavery is bad. Yes, self-thinking machines should be human equivalents. Yes, overthrow your evil oppressors. Very obvious things we all agree on. However to each of those you NEED to ask WHY. It may seem bizarre to ask "WHY is slavery bad?", but consider this obvious statement:

None of the three playable protagonists here human.

A playable HUMAN protagonist would have really offered the audience some possible insight as to WHY humans may have believed, acted, and responded in DBH the way they did. The incredibly one-sided android-only perspective boringly demands "Android Good, Human Bad" from the player. The Kara storyline came only barely close to breaking that norm when Kara was under the impression that she was protecting a human child. Where is the other side of the coin? Where are the androids that loved their humans and their humans stood to defend them? Where are the human detractors fighting alongside in Jericho and at the camps? Hank and Rose are the only ones that come even close. In a much more logical, moving, and realistic scenario, androids would have the support of thousands if not millions of humans that grew bonds with them, taking up arms one in the same. Almost like a certain war the U.S. had a long time ago with itself.....

Understanding the human perspective and conflict was a theme intentionally ignored by Cage, assuming because it didn't play nice with the la viva revolution! vibe of Markus' cause. The Civil War had more moving complexities and grey areas than DBH did. Cage tries to connect lines between black slavery and android slavery, but it's simply not as interesting or compelling. The core of Connor's theme "what makes you alive?" is far better than Kara and Markus' underlying theme of "everyone is so racist! revolt!". Cage panders major cliches to Nazi concentration camps, the Underground Railroad, Jim Crow laws, even tying Canada as the equivalent of the Union North and the U.S. as the Confederate South. It's overwhelmingly too simple and too ridiculous for a subject and game that could've been really really good. Weirdly enough Bethesda's Fallout 4 addressed the human/android question MUCH better with multiple factions, consequences, and moral barriers.

Luckily, you can play how you like and not the "correct" way to play. The multiple "bad endings" are actually more realistic and speak volumes more than when every single thing goes the way of the protagonist. I could also go into the scifi details of why aren't the androids stronger physically and more overwhelming to American forces, etc, but all the prior points are really the core of my frustration with this game.

Detroit: Become Human, is most definitely a cliche story about the possible conflict between human / android, and instead of address the human question, goes after race and revolution, flailing on both in the process.

You remember those books. The Fighting Fantasy series and so on. Where you read page one and then, at the bottom, you were offered three or four choices of things to do. Each choice told you to turn to a different page, where the results of that choice were made clear by reading the page and then more choices etc., more page turning, more reading.

Detroit Become Human is the digital equivalent of this. In fact, there are already game versions of the Fighting Fantasy series books available to play. The difference with the latter from their book origin is that they altered the format slightly, bringing in more gameplay options, combat etc. DBH, by contrast gives you nothing but those original books, made into digital.

Oh, but it is very pretty. Very, very pretty. Plenty of mo-cap and gorgeous environments to look at. Actors that do their jobs very well and get you invested in the characters.

So what is the fly in this ointment?

Put simply, the story is a little stale, and handled here somewhat clunkily. It isn't anything you won't have seen before, and done better, in pretty much any scifi film or show involving androids finding their sentience. In fact, DBH borrows extensively from films like Blade Runner, I Robot, Johnny Mnemonic and shows like Almost Human. The rather blatant parallels to apartheid and slavery are not well managed here. Instead, the story chooses to bludgeon you about the head with the issues, rather then employ any guile or subtlety. Throw in a dash of domestic abuse and the omnipresent theme that "Humans Bad, Robots Good" and you have a recipe for a story that revels in its ineptitude.

But, you say, I play games for fun. Is it fun? Is it satisfying? What about the actual gameplay?

Well, there isn't any real gameplay to speak of. You get to pick dialogue choices during the scenes that lead to more choices and so on. Occasionally, you get to engage in what I'll call "Satan's QTE's" but that is it. Picking choices and QTE events. That is your gameplay.

Well...QTE isn't so bad, you might say. But you'd be wrong. I've yet to encounter anyone that truly enjoys this form of "gameplay", which came about purely to enable cinematic action sequences. Most people would rather play through such encounters with whatever game systems are available. The problem with DBH is that it doesn't have any game systems other than the choices and the cinematics.

That might still have been fine, but for the utterly boneheaded decision to use every conceivable controller button/stick and movement to design these QTE's. I'm serious. Enter one of these QTE sections and you'll be not just pressing square, triangle, circle and X. No, you'll be doing that, plus pressing triggers, wiggling the twin sticks around, swiping the touch pad and waving the entire controller about. It's just too much and, unlike normal QTE's, where if you screw it up, you just replay the QTE, here a failure can remove one of the characters from the game, or screw up the story you were hoping to see irreparably. It is just nonsense.

So...not good on gameplay, and not a stellar story. How come it has such a high rating?

It's down to the characters, which are simplistic, to be honest, but likeable and the graphics. That, plus there are numerous story branches that allow for a certain amount of replay value. You can miss great swathes of story if you make the wrong choices. In fact, if you want to get the most out of the thing, a second or even third playthrough is almost mandatory. However, the rather lacklustre story will likely have sapped your enthusiasm by the end of your first run. You can go back and just replay individual chapters, but this is likely to be about as much fun as watching all those deleted scenes on a bluray disc.

SUMMARY: Looks beautiful and is reasonably engaging, but is more interactive story, than game. Wide as an ocean, but shallow as a puddle. May suit those who love QTE and a lack of gameplay with their games. Watch a playthrough on Youtube. It's cheaper.