Detroit: Become Human - Are we human?

Previews 11/04/2015

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PREVIEW – The pre-Paris Game Week rumours saying that Quantic Dream’s PlayStation 4-exclusive title would be announced here were proven to be true: David Cage himself came on the stage to open up the world of Detroit. We have seen this already somewhere though…

If you were a PlayStation-owner in the previous console generation already, you might remember Quantic Dream‘s 2012 Kara techdemo, which was pretty much showing off the capabilities of the aging console.

There, Kara got a slow makeover into a more humanoid look, while getting information on what’s happening. Cage and co took this techdemo as the baseline for Detroit – the passed three years, the newer console and the more possibilities can give us an interesting end result.

From three to four

Quantic Dream really got attention on the PlayStation 3 with their Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls – these game will get a PS4-port, although they don’t really seem to tell us when exactly this will happen -, but they tend to make a new 3D engine per game, and this will be the case with Detroit too.

Their aim with this is to maximalize the visuals using the most of the PlayStation 4’s power. They already said a few details: better lighting, a much more lively background, and of course, the character’s face mimics will all receive improvements. Despite that, Cage thinks that Detroit will be a different game than their two earlier ones. We’ll see…

Android

The problem is that this storyline is questionable: an android, I am one of them – will they be able to interpret it in a unique, stylish way, or they will end up having a nice looking game, but eventually boring because of the awful story?

We can only wildly guess about this, especially because Detroit is still a fresh announcement. How will they writing this android facing the human world and its emotions storyline is absolutely beyond us, we’re eager to find that out.

Where else to go?

Quantic Dream is typically the type of team that barely speaks, but when they do, they blast others away. Fahrenheit wasn’t bad (let’s just not talk about the updated version whatsoever though…), so we can trust them with Detroit too… but still, they will have to jump three hurdles to reach the glory again.

Somehow, they must get the replayability going, while having a nicely written storyline – if these are present, the technical details will decide whether this game will run to become a Game of the Year contender or not. No idea which year though, because there is no release date – not even a year! – is announced at the moment.

If I had to guess, Sony might rush Quantic Dream for an end-2016 launch, but if next year’s line-up of exclusives will fare well, they might get a 2017 release date going. Will Detroit be able to move past the developers’ past, or will we have to press X to shout Shaun again?

-V-