Sentimental singularity: what is the game "Detroit: Become a man"

What? Tell us more about the technologies and laws by which the androids of the future live? Oh everyone

Yesterday the release of the promising (judging by the video, screenshots and messages of developers) of the game “Detroit: Become a Man” took place. Long before the release, it was known that the plot of the game project is based on androids, synthetic robots, which are almost indistinguishable from humans. Yes, as you can already guess, the action takes place in the future. The place is the American city of Detroit.

There are several protagonists, all of them are androids: the girl Cara, a very emotional character, the policeman Connor, who unquestioningly obeys the letter and spirit of the law as well as Marcus, the android who escaped from his master.

Who is who?

Cara moves mainly in the poor areas of Detroit (social stratification has not gone anywhere in the future). She believes that her task is to protect the little girl. She looked after this girl in a fairly wealthy family, but then something went wrong and Cara decided that the girl needed protection.


Connor , being a policeman, investigates the most complicated cases. He is an investigator of a special police department. True, he fights not with murderers, thieves and other scum of human society, but with the same androids as himself. But not with everyone in a row, but with those who lost the software installation. Due to a failure, androids refuse to obey their masters. They are considered deviants and hunted for them.


Marcus - just a vivid example of the deviant. He escaped from his master, unable to endure the cruel treatment, and joined a large group of androids, such as deviants, like himself. In the end, Marcus becomes the leader of the movement for the release of Detroit androids. He can choose a humane path of struggle, and can become a terrorist with all that it implies.

Plot

We have already said that the action of the game takes place in the near (relatively) future, in 2038. People who live in this time enjoy the consequences of the technological revolution that the inventor Elijah Kamsky almost accomplished almost alone. He created androids with full-fledged intelligence and translated their development into a commercial direction, having founded the Cyberlife corporation. Androids have reached such perfection that it became simply impossible to distinguish them from people.


Shout at the robot? Why not?

They began to perform the duties of porters, vendors, security guards, nurses, etc. Due to the fact that they do not need to pay, they don’t ask, they do what they say, the business areas in which they began to use androids began to flourish. Detroit gradually rose from the ashes and became almost the center of the world. All roads lead to Detroit - in 2038 it became so.

But the androids had enemies - the very same guards, porters, waiters. Hundreds of thousands of people lost their jobs and, of course, they were not satisfied with this fact.

Artificial people began to be produced and on an individual order - both for families, and for, kgm, institutions where girls do not need the most difficult behavior.

Pros of the game

There are a lot of them. The main positive point is a huge, detailed world. Everything, including slums, makes you want to get to know this world better.


No, I'm not Bishop, you were wrong

The characters of the characters, both people and androids, are perfectly worked out.

Detriot is a non-linear game, here even minor acts can cause consequences that were difficult to predict ( passing in Russian is already there , I used it in some cases). Detroit can be overrun with violence, turning a couple of characters into terrorists, and you can try to make a "velvet revolution", not only in a political sense, but in technology. Indeed, despite the fact that androids have a full-fledged mind, not inferior to the human, they are treated like ordinary machines, household devices.

You can spend a lot of hours playing a game - it is very colorful. It does not bother to play, there is no repetition of the plot, “Detroit: Becoming a man” does not slip into the routine “rogue”.


Drama on drama

Protagonists and antagonists act out these actors who participated in the development process. Among others, Clancy Brown and Lance Henriksen showed up (yes, he already played an android in Aliens).

In short, playing “Detroit: Becoming a man” is interesting, but ...

Minuses

One huge disadvantage is the lack of a distinct script. Well, that is, yes, storylines are developing, characters are drawn. But some actions of both people and androids cause bewilderment.


The revolutionary - it sounds good

In the game we see, in fact, the singularity - the city is a fusion of urbanism with technology. Since there is a lot about artificial intelligence, you expect explanations of what androids are capable of, what they can do, and what they don’t.

A vivid example of an almost perfect story about robots with AI is the “I, Robot” series. The laws of robotics, technology, social element, futurism. Azimov created a brilliant world where everything is relatively clear.

But with the world of "Detroit" everything is different. Androids behave completely illogical - well, that is, from the word at all. In one frame, the android helps the owner to mock his fellows, in the other - he is already a revolutionary and is rebelling against tyranny. How, why, why? Well, "I'm an artist - I see it."


There you see the critic? Shoot him

The problem is that the game often tries to “hook” the player with excessive dramatic elements and sentimentality. This, of course, is not Santa Barbara, but sometimes the plot begins to resemble soap operas. This is especially pronounced in line with the father, the girl and the android defender.

Gradually, according to the plot, the difference between androids and people is leveled and developers seem to forget where everyone is. Androids are shown exclusively in the role of victims of evil slave owners - people. And these slaves begin to fight for their rights. Here, the struggle is devoted more and more time, and the answers to questions about technology and the world of 2038 are less and less. The situation is aggravated by the fact that there are many cliches in the plot - this applies to both the main line and the secondary ones.

So is it worth playing?

Sure, yes. Despite all its shortcomings, the game is striking nonlinearity, there are dozens of options for passing, the same situation, the problem can be solved very differently. Kill all people or just talk to the problem character, trying to convince him that he was right - there are many possibilities. The protagonist can be lost at the very beginning - you can come to this finale by taking several wrong decisions. By the way, Cara has super powers - the ability to cook :) Well, why not?

Who is the developer?

"Detroit" appeared through the efforts of David Cage and the studio Quantic Dream, which this year marks 21 years already. For nearly a quarter of a century, the company has been creating games. And no, there are not tens or hundreds of them at all - currently there are only five titles: Omikron, Fahrenheit, Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls and Detroit: Become Human. Little, but each game is a masterpiece. And "Detroit", despite these shortcomings, it is also a masterpiece. The game is an exclusive for PS4, and once everything was the other way around (“PlayStation is not promising, they told Cage, show the game for PC”).

It was developed for four years. It all started with a video from Quantic Dream, which showed the story of the android - the very girl Kara. Everyone who saw the video asked questions - what is this android and why did it (her) create it? The studio gave the answer in the form of a new game. The answer, I must say, is good.

In general, “Detroit: Becoming a man” is an experiment. If he is successful, the studio will continue to experiment. And who will say that this is bad?