Is it fun? Is it satisfying? What about the actual gameplay? Well, there isn't any real gameplay to speak of. 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. Instead, the story chooses to bludgeon you about the head with the issues, rather then employ any guile or subtlety. The rather blatant parallels to apartheid and slavery are not well managed here. In fact, DBH borrows extensively from films like Blade Runner, I Robot, Johnny Mnemonic and shows like Almost Human. 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.
So what is the fly in this ointment? Put simply, the story is a little stale, and handled here somewhat clunkily. Actors that do their jobs very well and get you invested in the characters. Plenty of mo-cap and gorgeous environments to look at. DBH, by contrast gives you nothing but those original books, made into digital. The difference with the latter from their book origin is that they altered the format slightly, bringing in more gameplay options, combat etc.
#DETROIT BECOME HUMAN PC IMPROVEMENTS SERIES#
In fact, there are already game versions of the Fighting Fantasy series books available to play. Detroit Become Human is the digital equivalent of this. 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. Where you read page one and then, at the bottom, you were offered three or four choices of things to do. Its story is a bit hit-and-miss but that doesn't stop it from being a generally entertaining time. Regardless of its issues, though, the game is fun and, generally, well-crafted. Some of the climaxes feel slightly unsatisfying because of the every specific things you have to do to achieve them, which aren't always obvious enough. Its ending is based upon a number of choices made during this segment, which is better than it being based on one major choice right at the end. The piece builds towards a cross-cutting finale which is fairly satisfying. Yet, this makes sense within the context of the plot, as each main character starts out fairly robotic and progresses towards a form of humanity. A lot of them are more binary than we've come to expect and often aren't described all that well (their outcomes are unexpected). Its choices shape the narrative in relatively natural ways, with a good amount of variation between potential outcomes. It also has its fair share of straight-up goofy moments. It's entertaining on a surface level but it's nowhere near as profound as it thinks it is.
It's incredibly clumsy with its storytelling, though it mixes up civil rights metaphors with holocaust imagery. As such, a lot of its set-pieces are suspenseful and its choices carry weight. Like 'Heavy Rain (2010)', the characters can die. The three playable leads each go on distinct journeys which intertwine at critical points. It's centred around three androids who begin to understand their existence and place within the world. 'Detroit: Become Human (2018)' is a bit of a mixed bag.