I was somewhat sceptical going into Detroit: Become Human. I consider it a very good narrative game, but not all of my doubts have been answered.

I'm not a vegetarian. This is relevant, I promise.

I'm not a vegetarian because, frankly, I don't think animals are worthy of moral consideration. Their suffering simply doesn't matter to me. If I felt otherwise, I would consider it inherently contradictory to not adopt vegetarian or even vegan principles.

Detroit is essentially about this question, of who or what matters in morality, but in the context of (presumptively) sentient robots rather than animals. Is sentience sufficient to qualify a construct as being morally important?

While I would criticise Detroit for leaning very strongly towards a particular conclusion on this point, it communicates its core ideas in an incredibly powerful way. In particular, the anthropomorphisation of its characters prompts the player to form intuitive bonds to them. This is aided by the exceptionally high-fidelity graphics - and is one of the few games in which I'd say graphical realism really offers this level of support. However, the characters I found myself becoming particularly attached to were, narratively, humans.

This highlights one of the weaknesses of the plot. It spends so long demonstrating the sentience of its robot characters, it doesn't pause to show consideration of what sentience is. Is there a distinction between consciousness and sentience? Is sentience about autonomy of decision-making? The experiential factors, the ability to feel pain? The ability to respect the moral agency of other beings? One might, quite fairly, question whether it is realistic to expect such questions to be answered in the context of a video game at all rather than in hefty philosophical tomes, coated with years of dust. However, whether or not this is a fair expectation, the presentation of Detroit begs this question.

I feel compelled to say that 'choices matter' is more than a mere label in Detroit. I have played 'choices matter' games where the only thing affected is whether the player gets a kiss from their character's love interest in the denouement. Detroit pays more than lip service (pun very much intended) to the player's choices. In particular, I love the choice maps at the end of levels. Towards the later levels, the unexplored paths vastly outnumber the explored ones, and show potentially dramatically different story development.

It's an engaging story too. I would expect it to perform well as a 10-episode BBC or Netflix series. Character development is paced extremely well, and the writers clearly decided to focus their attention on enabling the player to develop connections to a smaller number of characters - a decision I'm very fond of. There's hooks at nearly every chapter, and while I felt a little bit missing in the middle of Markus' story (there's a transition in his displayed personality which I don't think is entirely explained), that's a very minor criticism.

Another minor criticism is the controls. For context, I played this on a PS4 controller connected via USB. I am pleased that everything was set up such that the controls were shown clearly on a PS4 layout, but at many points, actually interacting with the game world felt obstructed by the developer's need to shout 'no this is a game, we promise' through a megaphone. I don't feel the experience is at all enhanced by having to make a particular analogue stick movement to open a door; and as someone who plays on a desk with a drink next to me, controls which made me physically move the controller were actively annoying due to the need to be careful for spillage when executing them, while being no more enjoyable than a simple 'interact' button.

As a final point to mention: I had to fiddle around with some stuff to get the game running on a 2022 gaming laptop running Windows 11, and dislike the game's decision to eschew loading screens in favour of frame rate drops at the start of passages. These are minor points, and google got it running within about 10 minutes, and I got my 'load screen' by simply hitting pause when I suffered those drops until the game was running smoothly again. You might not experience these issues, but I feel them worth mentioning.

On the whole, Detroit is a very strong narrative game I'd recommend to anyone with an interest in moralistic sci-fi, but leaves some room for improvement.

7.5/10

I was somewhat sceptical going into Detroit: Become Human. I consider it a very good narrative game, but not all of my doubts have been answered. I'm not a vegetarian. This is relevant, I promise. I'm not a vegetarian because, frankly, I don't think animals are worthy of moral consideration. Their suffering simply doesn't matter to me. If I felt otherwise, I would consider it inherently contradictory to not adopt vegetarian or even vegan principles. Detroit is essentially about this question, of who or what matters in morality, but in the context of (presumptively) sentient robots rather than animals. Is sentience sufficient to qualify a construct as being morally important? While I would criticise Detroit for leaning very strongly towards a particular conclusion on this point, it communicates its core ideas in an incredibly powerful way. In particular, the anthropomorphisation of its characters prompts the player to form intuitive bonds to them. This is aided by the exceptionally high-fidelity graphics - and is one of the few games in which I'd say graphical realism really offers this level of support. However, the characters I found myself becoming particularly attached to were, narratively, humans. This highlights one of the weaknesses of the plot. It spends so long demonstrating the sentience of its robot characters, it doesn't pause to show consideration of what sentience is. Is there a distinction between consciousness and sentience? Is sentience about autonomy of decision-making? The experiential factors, the ability to feel pain? The ability to respect the moral agency of other beings? One might, quite fairly, question whether it is realistic to expect such questions to be answered in the context of a video game at all rather than in hefty philosophical tomes, coated with years of dust. However, whether or not this is a fair expectation, the presentation of Detroit begs this question. I feel compelled to say that 'choices matter' is more than a mere label in Detroit. I have played 'choices matter' games where the only thing affected is whether the player gets a kiss from their character's love interest in the denouement. Detroit pays more than lip service (pun very much intended) to the player's choices. In particular, I love the choice maps at the end of levels. Towards the later levels, the unexplored paths vastly outnumber the explored ones, and show potentially dramatically different story development. It's an engaging story too. I would expect it to perform well as a 10-episode BBC or Netflix series. Character development is paced extremely well, and the writers clearly decided to focus their attention on enabling the player to develop connections to a smaller number of characters - a decision I'm very fond of. There's hooks at nearly every chapter, and while I felt a little bit missing in the middle of Markus' story (there's a transition in his displayed personality which I don't think is entirely explained), that's a very minor criticism. Another minor criticism is the controls. For context, I played this on a PS4 controller connected via USB. I am pleased that everything was set up such that the controls were shown clearly on a PS4 layout, but at many points, actually interacting with the game world felt obstructed by the developer's need to shout 'no this is a game, we promise' through a megaphone. I don't feel the experience is at all enhanced by having to make a particular analogue stick movement to open a door; and as someone who plays on a desk with a drink next to me, controls which made me physically move the controller were actively annoying due to the need to be careful for spillage when executing them, while being no more enjoyable than a simple 'interact' button. As a final point to mention: I had to fiddle around with some stuff to get the game running on a 2022 gaming laptop running Windows 11, and dislike the game's decision to eschew loading screens in favour of frame rate drops at the start of passages. These are minor points, and google got it running within about 10 minutes, and I got my 'load screen' by simply hitting pause when I suffered those drops until the game was running smoothly again. You might not experience these issues, but I feel them worth mentioning. On the whole, Detroit is a very strong narrative game I'd recommend to anyone with an interest in moralistic sci-fi, but leaves some room for improvement. 7.5/10