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S2 Ep122: Detroit: Become Human
69 Plays5 years ago
MINOR SPOILERS: Detroit: Become Human
Join Dave and Jake they figure out what it really means to be human, and if that's even something we should be aiming for in this week's episode!
Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
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Join Dave and Jake they figure out what it really means to be human, and if that's even something we should be aiming for in this week's episode!
Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Pleasantries
00:00:34
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I'm joined by my co-host as always, Dave. How's it going today, Dave? It's going good. I have done nothing and I have finished my White Claw pre-recording. What's up? How are you? That sounds pretty good.
00:00:53
Speaker
How are you with a donut, right? Well, yeah, I'm doing fine. That white claw is an alcoholic seltzer. Ah, okay. You think I'm just like slinging donuts? I don't know. I mean, it seems fairly- My webcam's been on,
Humorous Takes on 2020 and Gaming
00:01:09
Speaker
by the way. You've seen me just sip a beverage.
00:01:12
Speaker
I missed it. It was one of those it was one of those like game event type things where it's like, hey, wait until the person's turned away and then hit the button. It's like Dave's sneaking sips over here, apparently. But you think there's liquid in the can. It's actually small pieces of donut. It's a real pain in the ass to get through the hole, but it's worth it. Finished off drinking that donut. I'm doing I'm doing pretty pretty well, though.
00:01:41
Speaker
Got a lot of sleep. Excited for today's episode because I enjoy this game. That's the fastest we've gone talking about the game. I'm ready to jump back out and talk about something else. Legitimately, it is good. So I'm fine if we go either way. Yeah.
00:02:02
Speaker
Do you want to vampel? You want to hop in? Yeah. I mean, real life sucks right now. So maybe it's better to just talk about games. Yeah. Uh, rest in peace, 2020. Hobo is doing good out there. I know things are complete shit all the time. Um, but hopefully this can offer a brief respite.
00:02:22
Speaker
I like respite. Like I say it respite. I've been saying respite forever and then I heard somebody say respite. I'm like, fuck respite sounds cool. Yeah, it sounds cool. That's the only reason I changed it. It's kind of like a Britishification of it a little bit. Yeah. Or it's even if it's not, I don't even know how British people would say it, but the term respite just sounds more fancy.
00:02:44
Speaker
I'll give them respite and repost. Ah, okay. Which I don't know how else you say repost. Repost? Yeah, repost. I don't know. Repost day. That's a sauce, I think.
Introduction to 'Detroit: Become Human'
00:03:02
Speaker
So yeah, today's episode's on Detroit Become Human, which is, it's a game. Would you say that's accurate?
00:03:11
Speaker
We got to work on this. Yeah, it is a game. It's another game by David Cage. I wouldn't expect anybody to know that name because I didn't know that name, but he also did Heavy Rain, which is kind of elaborate story, interweaving story, but a lot of just cut scenes and you making choices. There's still interactable pieces as well, but largely it is a story game and less so
00:03:42
Speaker
action-based. Yeah, I think that's 100% accurate.
Evolution of David Cage's Games
00:03:49
Speaker
Their studio Quantic Dream also did, if you go back a little bit further, they did Indigo Prophecy, which it's kind of funny if you've played several David Cage games like
00:04:03
Speaker
they get better, which is really good. But man, the tail end of Indigo Prophecy just went like off the deep end, right corner into nowhere. You could tell when they ran out of money. I think one of the things I like about Detroit is just like, they never ran out of money. Yeah, they never ran out of money. It just kept going. It was consistently good.
00:04:23
Speaker
I played a bit of Heavy Rain in college. We had an evening where everybody picked a character and we kind of played through the pieces. Oh, that's cool. To be fair, we only did this for like a couple of hours, but we started really late. So I kind of tapped that around like 2am.
00:04:42
Speaker
So I didn't play any more of the game, but I got enough to get the meme. I'm sure everybody's familiar with press X to Jason. Yes. Jason. Jason. Yeah. That's where that's from. Yeah. So there wasn't anything as Mimi in this game, unfortunately.
00:05:02
Speaker
There are actually, I'll have to share some stuff with you later, but there are some good memes that came out of this game.
Game's Visuals and Setting
00:05:09
Speaker
28 stab wounds is the one that immediately pops to mind. Which, you know, without context makes no sense. And with context makes some sense. I wonder how it's a meme, but yeah. It's like super cut and stuff like that. But yeah, it's pretty great. The game had a pretty good community at launch. So this came out
00:05:32
Speaker
two years ago as of this recording, which by the way, I know we've talked about visual fidelity with like the 3080 dropping was yesterday. Two days ago. Two days ago, yeah, yeah. Not like a fucking half one. As of recording. Yeah. This will be dated immediately.
00:05:53
Speaker
But yeah, this game actually has really held up. If you said it came out yesterday, it'd be like, yep. It's pretty good. Yep, it did. Because it is narrative, for the most part, it is a narrative game. It's all about the story. For the story pieces, like the background and the setting and the characters, it looks really crisp and believable. Oh, yeah. That immersion aspect is very choice.
00:06:24
Speaker
I really like how this game takes place in a combination futurist slash modern Detroit. Go figure, right? And one of the things I really like about it is it's believable. You still have subways, and you still have roads, and you still have houses. But then just certain aspects of the industry have been massively modernized. So buses are automatic.
00:06:53
Speaker
cars are just like, they look kind of futuristic, but they still have wheels. And then they have like this neon gloss over, not to the extent of like cyberpunk, but think of like augmented reality arrows when you cross the street, telling you like whether it's red or green. Things like that, just like the little sort of improvements you could see being plausible without doing the full jump into sci-fi.
00:07:20
Speaker
Animal Crossing now makes sense as a game in this universe. They finally responded to everyone's feedback. Finally, a safe way for animals to cross.
00:07:30
Speaker
Yeah, but it's like a near future setting. Yes. Where, not near the game, but near as an N-E-A-R, possibly soon approaching. And near future setting is actually far future setting because that's linear works. Yeah, it's basically the loose plot and setting is, hey, androids are a part of society.
00:07:57
Speaker
Yeah. And this takes place obviously in Detroit and kind of follows the storylines of a couple of individuals slash groups and just how they deal with that.
Character-Driven Narrative
00:08:13
Speaker
I will say as an aside, since we've mentioned it was Detroit twice, the least believable part of this game is that all of this hope and friendly interactions and everything like that is coming from Detroit. That's the part that's hardest to wrap my mind around. Of all the cities to pick for an industrial revolution, was it Detroit, right? Well, I thought it was like Detroit was just the setting. I thought this was kind of everywhere.
00:08:40
Speaker
Yeah, it's happening everywhere, but like the main corporation of the game that creates Androids is called Cyber Life and their headquarters is Detroit. So in this fiction, because they were headquartered in Detroit, it basically uplifted the city because it's like finding oil for the first time in a town somewhere. It's going to completely renovate the entire infrastructure. So that's exactly what happened
Game Mechanics and Player Immersion
00:09:09
Speaker
in this game.
00:09:09
Speaker
Gotcha. But yeah, it really, you mentioned like it's following these different characters. And it's, I think even more so I realized going back, so this is my second playthrough. It's so tremendously character driven, like,
00:09:28
Speaker
Uh, just the characters are very expressive because I think they motion captured everything that happened in the game. Like all of the lines, all of the running, all the interactions. I would believe it. Save a couple of voice lines where it seems a little, a little hammy, but we forgive those immediately. Yeah. Um.
00:09:50
Speaker
But it's absolutely character driven. I really want to contrast this to the like, telltale games where they kind of tried to do some non-primary character development and it always sort of fell flat for me. It's like I kind of only care about what the main character is doing.
00:10:11
Speaker
Well, it's a distribution of time, right? So like in going with Wolf Among Us, primarily you are Big Speed Wolf. And there are some other characters you interact with more frequently, but a lot of times not as much. It's more as like throughout the chapters, they'll kind of flesh out characters. Whereas in this game, when you're given choices,
00:10:36
Speaker
like the very next chapter probably be the next character. So it's not like you're going a long time without seeing a character. It's like, oh, these are the primary roles. Yeah. But I like that. Yeah, it does the narrative thing books have been doing for forever where you switch back and forth between character perspectives, between chapters.
00:10:59
Speaker
That's largely how the game plays out, and Heavy Rain was the same. I didn't play Heavy Rain, but I know it was the same. And Indigo Prophecy was the same. They like doing that to provide different perspectives, and sometimes conflicting perspectives.
00:11:17
Speaker
So, uh, I guess we can get started on probably like the first, the first chapter, right? The very first part of the game is, uh, drops you into the shoes of Connor, Connor, I believe. Right. Connor is a Android who.
00:11:33
Speaker
works for or is contracted to CyberLife and he's sent to help the police with deviant androids.
Connor: The Detective Android
00:11:42
Speaker
So standard androids have a function whether it's like, oh, I want to help take care of the house or I'll be working construction or whatever. So deviant androids is any android who deviates from that path and has aberrant behavior.
00:11:58
Speaker
So in this case, an Android killed its owner and then has a little girl hostage and there's like a SWAT team there. You kind of have to figure out what's going on and how to resolve the situation. Yeah. And they drop you straight into it too. There's not like a tutorial or anything like that. It's like all you see is him flipping his coin like in the elevator on the way down with inhuman precision and it's freaking awesome.
00:12:26
Speaker
That seems like something that you would like because I know you like hand fidgety type stuff. Yeah. Yeah. He's like like launching it back and forth between his hands and like spinning it and balancing it on his fingertip. It's choice. Anyways, that's not what the game is about.
00:12:43
Speaker
Then you get down the elevator and like I think the girl's mother is there and she's kind of like freaking out and she's like, why did you send an Android as a hostage negotiator? Like my daughter is going to get killed. And this is the first bout of
00:13:01
Speaker
some oppression that you'll get used to through the course of the game. Weirdly, humans kind of do not evaluate androids on the same level as other humans. Surprise. So that comes up a lot throughout the game.
00:13:20
Speaker
One of the first choices you actually have here, one of the first choices of the game is there's an aquarium that broke, and if there's a fish on the ground, and you can choose to pick up the fish and put it back in the water so it doesn't die. It's the broken aquarium, so it falls back out again. Right, yeah. I think that's a separate compartment you put it in. And then Android's got basic deduction skills.
00:13:47
Speaker
But it actually helps kind of set some of the tone of the game, which is like you'll have choice over meaningful and non-meaningful consequences, but they do impact how that character responds to the situation.
Impact of Player Choices
00:14:02
Speaker
Yeah, I should have assumed that that was going to be the case for playing heavy rain or telltale type stuff. A lot of things you're just like, oh, that'll kind of be a throwaway, right? Yeah. How do you respond to this? Oh, fucking whatever. And then later it comes up, you're like,
00:14:22
Speaker
Uh, so it actually, it programmed me, I had programmed to be more suspicious of choices going forward. Yeah. There was a point later in the game where it's like, Hey, do you want to turn off like these, uh, temperature readings?
00:14:38
Speaker
I was like, are you going to bite me in the ass if I say yes? Yes, right. It's always like waiting for the other shoe to drop, but I like that type of tension in a game like this because you're invested in what happens. At a point when you become invested, you're actively looking to not fuck up. Yes. You don't know how to do that because a lot of the options you are provided
00:15:02
Speaker
will either be kind of backed up by like, hey, we're really pushing for you to get this done in a certain time constraint. Yeah. But maybe if you do something else, it will work, but you don't know. Right. Or maybe dialogue choices come down to Jake and I were joking about this before. It's like cat or dog. Or it might even just be like a one word thing and you don't know
00:15:22
Speaker
If you pick dog, does that mean you're going to talk about dogs? I mean, you're going to kick a dog. Right. Yeah. Do you become a dog for the next voice of dialogue? Who knows? A best effort to go through the story in the way that you had hoped. Yeah, I would. I would mark that up as one of the few.
00:15:41
Speaker
It's clearly a design decision. So just real quickly, you mentioned on time, there's active time and passive time constraints through a large portion of the game where when a dialogue choice comes up, you'll have like four or five seconds to select an option if it's under pressure, like something's going on actively in the background. Or sometimes it's just like, if you were talking to a real person and they were like,
00:16:10
Speaker
How are you doing today? And then if you stood there for like five seconds staring at them, they would say something else. Right. So it's the same kind of idea. Yeah. Where they kind of ungame a fire a little bit. But unfortunately, that's not the way real life dialogue works, where you're like, you have a list of options that pop up in your head. You just instinctively respond with something. Right.
00:16:31
Speaker
This is what I've been talking about with the intro for years. This is why I just say good most of the time. Right? It's just good, she's my queen, and I don't want it. I don't want it. But yeah, the passive time pressure.
00:16:49
Speaker
Kind of lends itself to avoiding one thing they seem to want to avoid from a game design standpoint is a full exploration Approach and this hostage situation at the beginning of the game I think really like drives that home and that the child is being like held on a ledge by an Android with a gun and
00:17:13
Speaker
while you're investigating the apartment. There's only so much time you really have and you don't know how much time that is. And the game gives you hints that things are escalating. If you take too long trying to figure out what's going on, one of the officers gets shot and dragged away from the door and he's like, okay, he's still stable. He doesn't die for this.
00:17:34
Speaker
You didn't kill this guy. But stuff is progressing. Yeah, exactly. You don't unfortunately get like a full Blue's Clues episode where they kind of highlight certain things. You're like, let's check the mailbox. They do have a feature to highlight things. So not to. Yes, they don't have the full episode, but they do have a time stop thing where you get this blue overlay detective vision from the Batman games.
Control Scheme and Player Experience
00:18:01
Speaker
You can just pan the camera around and see interactables near you, which is really nice. Also, all of the interactables, I'm not sure how you felt about this, they're not press a certain button to interact. It's always move the analog stick in a certain way.
00:18:16
Speaker
And sometimes you do have to roll the analog stick or other things. And sometimes you do have, for more explicit interactables, you do have to hold multiple buttons. I don't know why I'm reaching for my controller here. Oh, I'll show Jake. He doesn't know. You can hear the clicks.
00:18:37
Speaker
Yeah, I can confirm. I can see his controller. So confirm for the audience. So how did you feel about that interactability? It's kind of it's a mixed bag. I think if it's done. So the goal I feel like from game development is if you're using controls like this, it gets to the point where it's intuitive. Like our one is always your right arm.
00:18:58
Speaker
L1 is always your left arm. If you're climbing up a hill, you're like alternating these things or whatever, right? But I don't know if the game ever 100% achieves that. There are some points where
00:19:10
Speaker
I'm actually gonna make a comparison to the recent game Last of Us Part 2 Where you like in that game you can strum a guitar with the touchpad on PlayStation because I played this on PlayStation It's out on PC now. I have no idea how that impacts the motion controls. I assume they just remove them from the game But similar deal one of the characters can be like washing dishes and you're just like
00:19:36
Speaker
You know, like rubbing back and forth on the touch pad of the PlayStation becomes very Nintendogs at a point. Yes, exactly. I think in the worst case instances, it felt like that control scheme held back. It held back the pacing a little bit in the moment. It does build tension, but I think it does it in like the wrong way, because if you know the character should like climb up
00:20:05
Speaker
you're just waiting for the game to tell you what the button presses are to climb up. And that's just more noise between what you want to do and what you actually do. And I think that's kind of unnecessary.
00:20:18
Speaker
I mean, I don't disagree with that. But at the same time, there are playing as Connor, who is the detective, the Android. You might have a chase sequence where you're chasing after a suspect. And you might have time to slow down and make a decision which route you go.
Analog Stick Controls and Realism
00:20:36
Speaker
But other times, you will require certain input if you need to vault over something. And if you hook up the input, you're now further away from the suspect.
00:20:45
Speaker
So I guess that kind of falls down closer to like a QuickTime event. Yes. Then consistent, interactable controls. Yeah. They're definitely two different things, I feel like. QuickTime events are just like an arbitrary button is going to pop up and you'll either have to press it, hold it, or mash it.
00:21:06
Speaker
and then the movement type controls. These have been around since the Indigo Prophecy, and they were kind of notorious in that game. It's like, all right, getting milk out of the fridge. In any other game, you press X near the fridge, right? And in this one, it's like, are you ready to fold DDR your way through opening this fridge? It's usually like you drag the analog sticks right. You might then push the analog stick forward as the camera angle changes to reach in and grab the milk.
00:21:35
Speaker
Maybe you'll have an R1. That's a very extreme example. It's usually not over the top, but it's enough to make you feel like you are doing it. If you're grabbing a door handle, you actually have to turn. Yes. Then they do the half circle motions a lot. If you're used to fighting games, I think the half circle motions are probably pretty doable.
00:21:59
Speaker
I remember Indigo Prophecy being a little bit worse, because as you're describing this door opening on the fridge, I'm like, okay, I can visualize, press R1 to move your hand forward, hold the trigger to grab the door, pull back on the right stick to open the door, L1 to put the hand in to try to get the milk, but oh no, you released the trigger, so the door closed again. Now you have to redo this. It's slam shut as if it was just by magic.
00:22:27
Speaker
There is a little bit of animation reverse if you do start to screw up one of the inputs. The hand reaching out and then coming back and reaching out and coming back. Do I really need the calories? I don't know. There's some of that. I feel like I only goofed a couple of times.
00:22:46
Speaker
Yeah. Usually it was more so in the space of those quick time events where like a button came up and like, I hit it. And it's like, we need you to mash it. And I was like, oh, okay. Nothing would happen. I'd be like, oh, I'd hit it repeatedly. Yeah.
00:23:01
Speaker
But it doesn't really penalize you too much, at least for the difficulty I was playing at. I'm not sure how strict the other difficulty is, where kind of like if you make a certain decision or fuck up in some way, it can just be game over for a certain storyline. I'm actually struggling to remember a little bit about the difficulty choice.
00:23:26
Speaker
I think it's just like standard or the other one was like more realistic. Like, let's say you missed a quick time event for like somebody pointing a gun in your face. That character might die. I don't know. Gotcha. So yeah, it looks like there was a casual difficulty and then like a normal or something for people who wanted the story.
00:23:46
Speaker
versus people who wanted to be, like, frustrated by the quick time events, I guess, right? So I had picked it back, I guess, years ago, and they didn't prompt me to change it. So that's why I didn't notice there was, I didn't remember there was another one. That's kind of convenient. I like that because I was gonna, I must have been playing on normal because there was definitely a lot of quick time prompts that I missed.
Story-Driven Consequences
00:24:10
Speaker
The game does
00:24:12
Speaker
Comparing this again to Telltale Games, which is going to be the whipping boy of this episode, sometimes the quick time events actually matter in Detroit. One of the things I think is best in this game is that it doesn't quit out in failure states.
00:24:32
Speaker
Things that would cause you to have to like reload from a save point in a different game. A lot of times don't end that way in Detroit. No, the whole thing is like for ramifications of your actions and decisions. Yeah. So like, um.
00:24:50
Speaker
We were talking about the hostage situation. You can get a bunch of information in advance before talking to this hostage taker, this Android, to try to calm him down, call him out by his name, things like that. Legitimate psychological tactics to try to get this guy to calm down, reduce his stress levels so that, you know,
00:25:14
Speaker
he can be taken care of, which in this case, depending on what happens, there's a lot of possible outcomes. What happened in your game for the hostage situation? I went old school. I'm like, I'm not doing anything without clues because they literally just dropped me in the game. I'm like, I'm going to do my research. So Connor has a mechanic where after you scan certain items, you might have enough information to kind of replay back a scene with like a very low poly model.
00:25:44
Speaker
Yeah, the reconstruct, right? Yeah. You can kind of play back loosely what happened or maybe get other information from it. And also having this information can kind of unlock dialogue options, which I found out. Right. It's like when I went to go talk to the Android afterwards, it's like, oh, hey, your owner was going to replace you, huh? And that was shown as like an unlocked option at the top where if I didn't do the research, I'd just be like,
00:26:13
Speaker
Why are you like this? I will say the game turns the screws a little bit with that feature too, because it shows you when those options are locked. Yes. It's just like, hey, you missed something. It doesn't show you what the option is. It just shows you that there is a locked option. Exactly. With no description.
00:26:33
Speaker
But I did talk him down, the little girl was freed, and then he was shot multiple times by a sniper.
Character Narration and Decision Tree
00:26:41
Speaker
Pretty cool shooting sequence. Again, graphically, the game is pretty impressive, and the action is also pretty good to watch. This could be a movie, and if you don't want to play the game, watch it as a movie.
00:26:54
Speaker
If you don't want to play it, it's a watch somebody play it. Yes. It doesn't work as a movie because like the decisions do matter. So like I'm never going to play through this again. I played through it once. And if I played through it again, I feel like I would try and go back and do the opposite of all my other decisions for as much as I could remember. But if I watch somebody play it fresh, I get to see their take on it. And there's no right or wrong. It's just how you're approaching the situation.
00:27:26
Speaker
Yeah, there's a lot of choices to be made at different points in this game and I think
00:27:34
Speaker
There's a lot of concessions that are usually made in branching story games that make complete sense that Detroit doesn't do. So one example of that is for a given chapter, make only major decisions come back up later. For the most part, that's kind of true, but there are some smaller decisions that can like bleed through or at least are referenced later that makes the world feel a lot more real. An example here is
00:28:03
Speaker
When you're approaching this guy that's holding the little girl, there's a cop off to the side and he's bleeding out. And you can choose to like frustrate this guy a bit and apply a tourniquet on this cop. And if you save his life, you can talk to him later. And he like, thanks you for saving his life. And I think it improves public opinion, which is mechanic equipment I talked about. But there's tons of different, tons of different outcomes here.
00:28:28
Speaker
um connor can actually find a gun shoot the hostage taker uh personally shoot the hostage excuse the hostage yeah the little girl's down um he can uh fail miserably they'll both fall off the ledge and die um connor i think can be shot uh
00:28:49
Speaker
There's the outcome we both had this playthrough, which is the snipers after the talk them down. I think like I'm just spoiling the first one, but this is an example of how much like how many different outcomes can happen. And a lot of times you'll see three or four branching.
00:29:07
Speaker
like in states for a given chapter with major decisions. And you only get one per. Yeah. So like after I completed that mission, it's like, oh, hey, here's the tree. And it kind of like quickly goes through each thing. But it shows you where each of those branches were. Or it might be like a certain block of like, hey, other things you probably could have done in the area at this time. But they're always shown as just hidden locked. But you know that options were there, which is cool.
00:29:37
Speaker
It's actually tremendously, it's kind of boastful, I think, that they implemented that decision tree as they did.
Character Development and Dynamics
00:29:45
Speaker
Because every game has a decision tree like that. But as far as I know, Detroit's the only game I've seen where they just show you the tree. They're just like, hey, now that we're going to actually remove you from the narrative for a second to show you the path that you took,
00:30:00
Speaker
and that there were these other divergent paths. And you can see large frames for ends. If there's a large frame, that means that the chapter would have ended when you reach that frame. And they're just like, here you go. Look at our storyboard, basically, right? We've censored it, but here's the storyboard.
00:30:20
Speaker
I feel like that drives replayability. It makes you curious enough to be like, fuck, what could I have done that there were four separate endings? Even just having this conversation now, I did not see the fish or the cop. They died. I'll let you know, they died in my playthrough.
00:30:39
Speaker
The fish doesn't come back to high, I don't think. Connor, it's good to see you again. And then the choices you make can impact the character development. I think Connor is one of the best examples of that, where if you choose to
00:31:02
Speaker
There's basically two main states. It's Conner's either becoming deviant or becoming more machine-like. And if you just do your job to the letter with ruthless efficiency, then you're being more machine-like as one would expect. But it can impact some choices later in the game as well. And that's awesome.
00:31:25
Speaker
And for every decision you make, there's always somebody who's going to be pissed off every fucking time. Like, we'll talk more about Marcus here in a sec. But the character, Marcus, there's some other androids he meets up with, and it's like a little gaggle of them. There's this one guy, Josh, who's like, we should be nice and not fight. We're the good guys. Violence only provokes more violence. And then there's the other character, North, who's like,
00:31:53
Speaker
We should totally kill the humans though. You avoid an option. It's like, I'm not going to kill everybody. She's like, there's like a little indicator of like North like opinion has gone down of you. I'm like, oh, she's kind of this game has like holographic UI because you're playing as Android. It's pretty much the entire game.
00:32:13
Speaker
uh like here's a mission objective or something like that and i'm just imagining like a holographic sign above north and it's like time since last human killed counting up sad face getting sadder um
Exploration of Main Characters
00:32:27
Speaker
Yeah, they definitely represent some disparate approaches. There's three main groups of people or parties in the game. There's Marcus, or playable characters. There you go. That's the easiest way to classify it. Connor, Kara, and Marcus.
00:32:48
Speaker
Yeah. Connor, as we mentioned, is the investigator who's trying to figure out why androids are being deviant and what's going on. There's Marcus who starts off as a simple caretaker. Yeah. It's kind of a hospice sort of servant thing. And she's very chill, very chill.
00:33:12
Speaker
I won't, I won't spoil what happens there. Um, yeah, but I feel like his arc is much more, cause each of these characters at some point, the whole point is for them to kind of like break free from their standard machine routine to kind of become a human, which is why it's Detroit become human. Uh, so Mark's, this thing is like,
00:33:39
Speaker
how he wants to be an android and live amongst humans. And then Kara's thing, she's initially purchased as another house caretaker for this guy and this little girl. Like a maid model basically. Yeah, exactly.
00:34:01
Speaker
How much can I spoil this? Yeah. I mean, I feel like talking a little bit about the overall arcs are fine. I think we're going. I'll change it if necessary, but right now we're still at like minor spoilers level. So I feel like first mission I feel is first mission for each one. So basically.
00:34:23
Speaker
Actually, the very first mission for her, you are literally in a store. You are in a fixed position. You're just kind of looking around. You kind of figure out that you're an Android and somebody's looking to buy you or something. But basically, this kind of disheveled, looking like a piece of shit type of guy comes in. And he's like, oh, hey, we repaired this model for you. What was the issue with her again?
00:34:48
Speaker
It's like, oh, she got hit by a car or something. And it's in that way. It's like, that's a fucking lie. Yeah. The disheveled guy is picking up the Android for clarification, not the employee. And the employee, I think, is also an Android.
00:35:04
Speaker
because you can see multiple versions of him throughout the story all talking. Pretty much other androids selling androids. Standard work is usually going to be an android in this game. And then there's like the cutscene of him driving you back from the store, which is like in the city, very modernized to kind of like the outskirts and suburbs. And there's less neon and cool things, kind of like a beat to shit neighborhood.
00:35:34
Speaker
Yeah, the house looks very, very similar with few exceptions to just a house like out in dystopia. You know, yeah. But yeah, I really like the first person. I think that's the only time in the game you have like a first person perspective as an Android unless you're specifically looking around for something. There's one or two other times where it's
00:36:00
Speaker
You're kind of like, hey, you're stuck here. You have to look around for something you can interact with to progress. Yeah. That comes up occasionally. But the guy, I remember the salesperson was just like, oh, did you name her? And he's like, my daughter did, walks up and he's just, and the salesperson's like, record your name, whatever. The guy's just like, Cara. And then you get the character swap and you see the actual Android and she's like, it's just her face. And she's smiling. She's like, my name is Cara.
00:36:30
Speaker
scene and it's just it's it's good filmmaking. Oh, yeah. The way they do everything, not going to suck a stick too much, but it's really good from a storytelling perspective. Yeah. Which of the arcs did you enjoy the most? Man, that's really tough to just drop on me. It's tough because like Marcus's arc is more about the development of androids like kind of as a whole.
00:36:59
Speaker
Where are androids going to end up in a game that's called Detroit Become Human? Connor's arc is the difference between choices like we're told to make versus choices we want to make.
00:37:15
Speaker
Um, and cars is just like being a mom, basically, basically the arc. It's much more like interpert, like close, familial relationships, um, and like love and things like that. It seems stupid to say that, but that's literally what it is. Um, emotions, I would say.
00:37:38
Speaker
Yeah, because her whole thing is, so the piece of shit guy is abusive. Surprise, surprise. That's why you need to be repaired in the first place. There's strong hands that he's also abusing his daughter and you see him being very vocal and a little bit physical at points.
00:37:58
Speaker
So it's on red ice. Yeah, which is a drug. Which is a drug in Detroit. It sounds cooler than other drugs in real life. It looks like crystal meth, but red. That's all it looks like. Yeah, not there. I think in Breaking Bad, it was blue. So that was taken. So they had to make it red here. So they're like, fuck.
00:38:25
Speaker
Her whole thing is protecting the little girl. So in the first mission, regardless of what happens, you both kind of run off together to escape that situation. Yeah. And then it is you trying to protect her. So everything is done from the view of I'm an android, but I've kind of broken free of standard android things to kind of protect this human, right?
00:38:55
Speaker
Yeah, it's very good. I'd say there's a little sequence for when you kind of, because you're initially told to stay downstairs and you see him going up with a belt after literally smoking meth. He's like, I'm going to teach you some respect or whatever the abusers say.
00:39:14
Speaker
So you have, you kind of break through this imaginary wall. Yeah. It has the, um, it'll show whatever the order is that you're trying to defy. Yeah. But it's, it's a, um, a physical kind of like or virtual
00:39:32
Speaker
very violent barrier. Yeah breaking that um represents uh becoming deviant and having free will Exactly, right. So in this case, um, todd is the the dad's name has said stand stand like stand right there and don't move And then is you know, kind of go commit domestic violence um and
00:39:57
Speaker
It's
Themes and Societal Reflections
00:39:58
Speaker
just like you actually can stand there. I don't know.
00:40:04
Speaker
If things progress until you do move, I think you have to move, but I'm not 100% sure. But if you start to move, if you start putting controller input, that's when you see the virtual wall come up. And it's like, if you are actually going to physically move, you've got to break through this programming barrier first. And I think it's an option that can come up, depending on your choices, for a couple different characters.
00:40:32
Speaker
And yeah, it's always really cool. It's always really cool because it feels like you're taking it to the man a little bit. You're literally breaking down the wall. But what I like is.
00:40:42
Speaker
Each character arc is done from like a different perspective. Like you said, Kara is much more being familial and interpersonal relationships. Yes. Mark is much more with the future of androids and Connors is very much from the perspective of a machine, like what is humanity and being humane. And Connors is an investigator too. Like that's one of his main arcs is figuring out the truth of what's going on.
00:41:12
Speaker
Yeah, but he's also paired with this piece of shit partner named Hank. Whose do I love? Hank is great. I like his voice actor. His character can be comedic, but usually he's a grumpy piece of shit. Um, so that impact enforced a lot of my decisions around him.
00:41:31
Speaker
but he's very much, he hates androids. Yes. So it's kind of like a buddy cop type situation where it's like, we have to work together, but man, I don't like you. They literally have the partner scene where it's just like, this android here is going to be a partner. And then he's just like, I work with no pun. Slimes hands on desk. Yeah. You screwed me here, chief.
00:41:56
Speaker
He's like, don't make me write you up once again. And it's literally that, literally that, you know, without the voices. But I love that. I'm a fan. No, it was it's definitely good because like you see the characters, all of the characters develop over the course of the game where there's a maturation regardless of their circumstance. But it's done from really cool, different perspectives.
00:42:24
Speaker
And a lot of things throughout the game are meant to evoke reactions from you pointing to the camera, you as the player. Yes.
00:42:34
Speaker
Okay, they're machines, but like here's a whole fucking pile of them in a ditch. How do you feel about that? And if they're doing these correlates to like, but if they were physically human though, you'd feel differently type of thing. And they're very expressive. Oh yeah. Yeah.
00:42:54
Speaker
I don't know if you ever talked about uncanny valley or defined it, but it's the idea that things are too close to reality and it makes you uncomfortable. Like technology has gotten far enough in game making and graphically, Detroit has gotten far enough that it's obviously come back around to being human-like and androids can be very human-like in Detroit.
00:43:16
Speaker
Yeah, because as far as you as the player is concerned, they're designed the same. They're like people, but they have like a light on their head or they have like a service uniform or something. So it's done intentionally. They have a blue ring or a yellow ring or a red ring, depending on their emotional state, which I also love. That's cool. The fucking blue ring on the temple. Yeah.
00:43:43
Speaker
And I like the skin concept too. They have Android bodies, but they can basically generate human-looking skin from this almost nanite substance. It's magic, basically, but it looks really cool.
00:43:58
Speaker
Yes. Yeah, I don't know. I like that this is coming from the design of Android's perspective. I like the way the game portrays them because it's like make them as human like as possible to like integrate them in the world. And that's a theme the game definitely plays around with a lot.
00:44:18
Speaker
Yeah, they do again. So I'll jump over everything as far as the story. There's so many like touch points that we're specifically not touching. All right. I'm going to ask some high level things. Sure.
00:44:33
Speaker
Were you more aggressive or non aggressive, more of a pacifist option as far as the majority of Marcus's storyline? In my first playthrough, I was completely passive, pacifist, at least. There's definitely a difference because you can if you if you do a completely pacifist run of this game, you better be really good at quick time events.
00:45:02
Speaker
That's my pro tip or else tragedy will befall you on many occasions and it never stops. But my current play through, I was going more pure Android independence above all else focus and didn't really care about human life on the way there.
00:45:27
Speaker
Um, and man, that also makes certain parts of the game a little bit hard. Yeah. I can imagine. I feel like they like putting these choices in front of you where like you're so focused on like major choices of, Hey, I'm not trying to like murder a whole bunch of people, but that's like, Hey, do you want to save this person?
00:45:50
Speaker
They might die, they might not. What are you going to do? Like early on it's like in a chase sequence, Hank trips and he's like hanging off of a ledge. It's like, do you want to save Hank or do you want to keep chasing the suspect? He has like a very high percentage chance to like recover and be fine. And I was like, oh, I'll fucking take the odds. I'm going to keep chasing this asshole. And then afterwards, Hank was really pissed at me for almost letting him die.
00:46:18
Speaker
Yeah. Whereas when I try to save other people, a lot of times I was able to without ramifications. Mm-hmm. Whereas I'm sure there are- That's a clear binary choice. Yeah. But there are also times where it's
00:46:35
Speaker
I feel like they're almost threatening like, hey, if you do go back and try and save this person under these dire circumstances, you will lose something in return. Yes. It never felt like, do you want them to live or die? And I'd be like, I want them to live. Like, okay, they lived. Are we done here? They're like, yeah, you're good.
00:46:53
Speaker
It's like, do you do this needlessly harmful action for no benefit? Yeah. Or this other thing. It gives you a lot of devil's bargains. And I think that's a really good touch point. Because if you do save him, you miss out on any possibility to catch that guy.
00:47:12
Speaker
like you miss out on that potential information. So if you really wanted to get the whole picture and you're not willing to go to YouTube, then you would need to do chapter select or something, come back and try it again. The game does give you points for filling out all the boxes across your multiple playthroughs. That's a lot of effort.
00:47:31
Speaker
That would require a lot. Also, they're imaginary points, which is just really like, I don't even know what it's called on PlayStation. It's a gamerscore stuff. Oh, cool. So it's like Xbox 360 back today. It means fuck all. Yeah. Achievement trophy points. It's EP. Yeah, it's EP. But even then, it's not even for achievements, I guess, in this case.
00:47:52
Speaker
But yeah, I love those choices. I love when it's like, hey, here's your time limit. And I think that gives you like 10 seconds or something to make a decision because they realize otherwise people would have heart attacks.
Replayability and Community Engagement
00:48:03
Speaker
And if you save Hank, it can be the start of like a really cool, beneficial friendship that what I experienced in my first playthrough. And I didn't have the heart to avoid in my second because I enjoyed it so much from the first playthrough. I was like, I realize I can deviate. I can be completely mission focused, but I'm too attached to this character at this point to be a jerk.
00:48:28
Speaker
I like that we have that difference because I thought Hank was an asshole. Yeah. And I thought if I let the suspect go, he would even be more mad at me and have to deal with more of his shit. So I was willing to risk letting him die. But again, it's like it's just that cool disparity of Jake and I are two different people. So we're going to have different approaches. We might overlap on some things. We might deviate and others deviate. Haha.
00:48:56
Speaker
But at this point, because you've had two playthroughs, I've only had one, I would love to watch a third unnamed party who has not played through yet play through their first time and see what choices they make.
00:49:10
Speaker
If I could recommend a stream to you for a playthrough of this game, the actor that did the motion capture, the voice acting, and everything for Connor, his name's Bryant, he played through it with his
00:49:31
Speaker
Fiance at the time eventually they got married who also is the actor voice actor I think and motion capture for blue Tracy Which is from a character in the game that I'm not going to go into
00:49:46
Speaker
But yeah, they just they stream the game together and then make decisions based off chat. And he doesn't know what the story is. He has some ideas based off the motion capture he did. So it's actually fresh to him. And man, some of the anguish they go through and these choices where it's just like, that's me, that's Connor. And we're about to throw him into like danger versus all
Critique of the Game's Title
00:50:09
Speaker
these other people. It actually sounds really good to watch.
00:50:11
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's like a five-part series. It's like pretty long but it's I I saw a little bit of it and it was great If you like watching people play games watching someone play Detroit is pretty pretty good Especially if you can like poke them and make them hit buttons Are you ticklish not now? Yeah, I
00:50:33
Speaker
Man, yeah, I don't want to go into too much regarding spoilers. I think we've got given people a pretty good idea of some of these characters and relationships. I just want to say from a high level perspective, I think that the title, like Detroit Become Human, this is one of the one of the greats I actually have with the game. And I realize it's purely my personal opinion
00:51:01
Speaker
This whole podcast is our personal opinion, Jake, so go nuts. That's true. That's true. But it's both of our personal opinions. Become Human is not a great subtitle for the game, in my opinion. And my reasoning for this, my justification, my thesis is
00:51:19
Speaker
If you go through the game, humans, for the most part, are not that good. Sometimes they're OK. But really, you're playing from the perspective of the oppressed. So it's really easy to go through the game. We didn't really mention it, but lots of people can die in this game. Side characters, main characters, the game keeps going. There is a lot of work done making sure that it can keep going.
00:51:48
Speaker
And you can only take so many losses before you're like, I don't really empathize with the humans that much anymore, right? So you're saying it's too one-sided? I think Become Human is a little like pessimistic of a subtitle. Oh, because humans are depicted as being shitty. Exactly, right.
00:52:12
Speaker
And depending on your choices, you can definitely become human by the end of it, even with that definition.
00:52:20
Speaker
For me, trying to be an optimist and stuff like that, most of the androids you come across are naive in some ways. They're innocent. Even if they're adults and they're fully cognizant and they're intelligent, they tend to be willing to hear you out, quiet, soft-spoken for the most part, analytical and non-cynical.
00:52:46
Speaker
Well, yeah, I think that makes sense though. Like who's going to design a robot where it's going to have the capacity for rage and always machines have been very logical, it's about to say creatures, but like they're designed in a logical way because they need to be efficient to support a functionality, right? Yes. So it makes sense that even if they were
00:53:16
Speaker
awaken to have a consciousness and a free will that they're not going to default to.
00:53:21
Speaker
Yeah. Fuck them. They're very much like, okay, this is a situation that we're in. How do we make the best of it to survive or get by? Yeah. But yeah, it definitely is much more one-sided where humans are shitty and androids are not for the most part.
Societal Critique and Human Nature
00:53:44
Speaker
There are some exceptions. Again, I don't think, but definitely some, but
00:53:51
Speaker
I feel like it's done in a way to kind of, it's like the, what is it, the black mirror or a dim reflection, a scanner darkly. It's like taking a look back at us as humanity and how we approach people, people of different races, people of different backgrounds, people of different economic standing and how we just progress forward as humanity.
00:54:21
Speaker
because humans are largely pieces of shit. Again, tying back to 2020. Right. I think the point I took exception with was the idea that it's like going to a convergence point. Because to me, by the end of the game, I was just like, man, androids are really cool. And a lot of the humans in this game don't deserve what they have by comparison. So it's kind of their,
00:54:49
Speaker
I don't think it's a huge leap. I don't think I was the only person to get to the end of this game and be like, I think Androids might actually just be the superior life form. So having the subtitle become human at the bottom of it felt kind of like contradictory to that conclusion. But a lot of it could depend on your choices too. I also think that it's good marketing because transhumanism is
00:55:16
Speaker
So hot right now, as the kids say, obviously with things like Altered Carbon out and a bunch of other things in that space, Deus Ex, all those games that came out. Cyberpunk, it's going to be coming out. I was going to say, how did I mention that? And I think Detroit takes a kind of unique twist on it by focusing so much on the
00:55:41
Speaker
the individuals. It makes it a much more engaging story for me. I was reluctant to go back and play initially because I was just like, kind of got some other games I want to play, things like that. And I got into it. I was like, man, this is just like going back and rereading a book that you really loved reading. Yeah, exactly. But in this case, some of the chapters have changed because in this one, you choose not to kill that guy.
00:56:08
Speaker
Okay, so it's like a choose your own adventure book. Mm-hmm. That's exactly that. But with good characters. You could still get a, what was it, Pizza Hut book sign off for that. I read a book. It was a choose your own adventure. It was 30 pages. Don't worry about it. Give me the pizza. The page or book reading competitions and things like that.
00:56:31
Speaker
Man. Books are great. Read books, play Detroit. I'm not a big book proponent, but I'm not going to judge either way. I will. But yeah, I just like transhumanism in general because I've always enjoyed having those discussions of philosophy, ethics. Just like there's no official line that we can say, here's where it is, here's where it isn't.
00:57:01
Speaker
Yeah. There's always cool to hear people's takes on it. Yeah. And there's a lot of mystery in the game, a lot of underlying motivations. There's other things. There's certain things I haven't had answered yet, which I'm going to ask you immediately after we're done recording. Right. Because I don't know if it actually comes up in the game where you can discover
00:57:25
Speaker
that Yeah, they they do a good job of answering I think most of the questions by the end but not necessarily all of them some of them characters might not have an opportunity to figure out but um, no, it's It's uh, it's ridiculously good play it Like for god's sake please try to keep your characters alive at least for the main playthrough Yeah, do your best. It's not always easy. Let me tell you um, and uh
00:57:54
Speaker
Yeah. I just say do what you think is best in the moment if you fuck up. Well, you fucked up. The only reason I'm advising people to keep the characters alive is because you can have people die and then half the story, they just are not around for it. And all of their choices, they're not around for it.
00:58:11
Speaker
There's, without going into specific spoilers, there's like a position at the end and a certain hierarchy of a group that can be filled by like three or four different individuals depending on who's left alive. It's very adaptive to somewhat extreme state.
00:58:31
Speaker
I would love if it was like a shit your game and like it just skip those. Here are the decisions you made. Okay, cool. Chapter 11. Wait, what? Did you hear about the, I'm going to make one last anecdote, I think. The mass effect to suicide mission. Are you familiar with that at all?
00:58:54
Speaker
We might have talked about it off podcast at some point, but please remind me and the listeners. The thing was for Mass Effect 2, if you did people's loyalty missions, you could get them to survive in the final mission. Otherwise, they were probably going to die.
00:59:11
Speaker
Detroit has a special hidden ending that's honestly kind of hard to achieve if basically everyone dies over the course of the game. If there's no one left whatsoever, the game has a hidden ending. And that's just an example of how
Conclusion and Recommendations
00:59:30
Speaker
Absolutely adaptive it is and how to get the most out of the story. You got to be paying attention to some of the stuff. It's great. I love it. I still have on PlayStation Detroit as my background like home screen and my character avatar is Connor.
00:59:45
Speaker
Nice. That's a great guy. Hi, I'm Connor. Yeah, no, it's superbly solid. I unfortunately only play this this past week, though it has been out for two years and people didn't recommend it to me, but I am nothing if not a stubborn idiot. Well, we have that in common. That's why we can record the podcast.
01:00:11
Speaker
Yeah, if you get a chance Check it out or watch a playthrough of it. It is Magnefico To borrow some Spanish there
01:00:23
Speaker
That's true. But if you have other ideas for transhumanist games or things that I can play before my life is subsumed entirely into cyberpunk, feel free to send those in to our Gmail at soapstonepodcast.gmail.com or you could join the discussion on Facebook if you want at facebook.com slash soapstonepodcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Bye.
01:01:36
Speaker
you