Detroit: Become Human

Detroit: Become Human
Developer(s)	Quantic Dream
Publisher(s)	Sony Interactive Entertainment
Director(s)	David Cage
Producer(s)	Guillaume de Fondaumière
Writer(s)	David Cage
Platform(s)	PlayStation 4
Genre(s)	Action-adventure, Interactive drama
Mode(s)	Single-player

Detroit: Become Human is an upcoming neo-noir thriller video game developed by Quantic Dream and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment for the PlayStation 4.

The plot revolves around several playable characters, all of whom are androids; among them Kara, who escapes the factory she was made in to explore her newfound sentience; and Connor, whose job it is to hunt down deviant androids like Kara. The characters may survive or perish depending on the choices that are made, which serve to shape the story as customised by the player.

Detroit: Become Human is derived from Quantic Dream's 2012 tech demo Kara. Valorie Curry returns to reprise the title role. To research the setting, the developers visited Detroit, Michigan. Quantic Dream built a new engine to complement the game and cast hundreds of actors from Los Angeles, London and Paris before commencing a year-and-a-half-long process of shooting and animation. The script took David Cage more than two years to write.

Gameplay

Player character engaged in crisis negotiation with a range of dialogue choices that can either fail or accomplish the mission.

Detroit: Become Human is an action-adventure game played from a third-person view.^[1][2] There are multiple playable characters in the game^[3] who can die as the story continues without them;^[4] as a result, there is no "game over" message following a character's death.^[5] The story will branch out depending on which choices are made.^[6] The more information one collects within an allotted time,^[7] the greater the chance of success will be in deciding a course of action.^[8] Obtaining clues at crime scenes allows the player to reconstruct and replay the events that occurred.^[2]

Characters

• Kara (Valorie Curry)^[9] is a newly created android with artificial consciousness who discovers how it is to live among humans, struggling to find her place in a world where androids are still without consciousness and utilised as servants.^[10]
• Connor (Bryan Dechart)^[7] is an advanced police model android tasked with hunting down androids that have mysteriously deviated from their programmed behaviours.^[4][6]

Development

In late 2013, Quantic Dream founder and CEO David Cage was in preproduction on Detroit: Become Human^[11] which he said would build upon what he had done in the past with Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls, "but in a very, very different way".^[12] Cage's unfinished script – comprising thousands of pages –^[13] was first relayed to the design team whilst the programmers created the graphics^[14] as well as a new game engine with advancements in features like rendering, dynamic lighting, shading and cameras.^[1] The casting process extended to Los Angeles, London and Paris in search for about 220 actors to portray 300 characters; the actors were scanned in 3D and the models were subsequently made into characters. Shooting and animation followed, which as of August 2016 had lasted one year, with six months to go.^[14] In October 2016, Cage completed the screenplay after more than two years of writing. It was described as his most complex work.^[15]

The game is based on the developer's 2012 PS3 tech demo Kara.^[16][17][18] Cage wanted to make the demo into a full game, despite not originally having planned to, because he was curious as to what would happen next.^[19][20] He took inspiration from Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity Is Near, which explains that the rate at which human intelligence develops pales in comparison to that of a machine. Therefore, Cage proposes that machines may one day have emotions.^[21] Detroit was chosen as the setting to revitalise a city that had succumbed to economic decline after having made a historical contribution to American industry.^[22] The developers travelled to Detroit to conduct field research for the game,^[23] taking pictures, visiting abandoned buildings and meeting people.^[24]

Detroit: Become Human was announced on 27 October 2015 at a Sony press conference during Paris Games Week.^[25] Cage said at the 2016 Electronic Entertainment Expo that the game would not be released that year.^[26] At release, the game will support the 4K resolution and high-dynamic-range imaging featured on the PlayStation 4 Pro.^[27]

Awards

Detroit: Become Human was nominated for the 2016 Best of E3 Game Critics Awards in the category of Best Original Game^[28] but lost out to Horizon Zero Dawn.^[29]

References

External links

• Archive of Quantic Dream's tech demo Kara