Detroit: Become Human

Detroit: Become Human is a stellar example of storytelling in the video game space. What initially seems like a futuristic science-fiction story quickly steers into a very real struggle of freedom vs. oppression which has been endured throughout history. With just one single playthrough, Detroit: Become Human will warm your heart, provoke your thoughts, and light a fire in your stomach.

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[Detroit: Become Human] is a social revolution simulator, where most of your choices actually matter, the story and characters are engaging and moving and the amount of narrative content is incredibly massive.

Detroit: Become Human is a masterclass in cinematic storytelling. Here is our review of Quantic Dream's new game...

Detroit: Become Human is Quantic Dream’s most ambitious game yet, boasting all through its development that there’d be a boatload of choices and endings for players to face. A studio best known for Heavy Rain and Beyond Two Souls has been working on this game for, like, five years. The same studio that gave us press X to Jason. Why, yes, I am skeptical towards Quantic Dream games, why do you ask?

A game with something to say, Detroit: Become Human merges the mediums of cinema and video game, with an outstanding result.

On the nose.

Republished on Tuesday 2nd July 2019: We're bringing this review back from the archives following the announcement of July's PlayStation Plus lineup. The original text follows.

Android autonomy and socio-economics are messily explored in Quantic Dream's latest adventure.

There’s definitely some joy to be had from Detroit, particularly if themes of artificial intelligence and sentience intrigue you. But there are other games and movies that do more with them (Soma, for example). For a game that relies so heavily on its narrative to carry it, Detroit: Become Human fails to excel. And having to tilt the controller for the nth time, just to perform a basic action that could equally be accomplished by a single button press, doesn’t add to its appeal either. In theory, the game is replayable – on my initial playthrough, Kara’s ending was rather grim – but faced with...

Detroit: Become Human wants to move you. It wants to elicit an emotional response through its story. The thing is, it really doesn't. The flowchart is a nice inclusion and adds some variance, but when the narrative is as cringey and ham-fisted as it is you won't want to play through it multiple times.

Want even more Detroit: Become Human? Listen to this week’s episode of The Polygon Show (jump to 30-minute mark). The Polygon Show is available via Art19, Apple Podcasts, and everywhere else podcasts are sold.