Gaming
Games
Detroit: Become Human is the next step in story-driven gaming
As David Cage prepares to unleash his latest masterpiece on the world, we look at how the genre has evolved over the past few years
When you consider how many amazing stories exist in the realm of video gaming, it's perhaps surprising that the medium doesn't actually lend itself all that well to the art of storytelling.
A story, by definition, is already written and can't be interacted with, but in video games, the player controls the action, and therefore the beats of the story. The end result is games where player agency is removed at points where the designers want to push the story forward; you can't take control during a cutscene and dramatically alter the plot, as everything has been pre-scripted. You're only allowed back in the driver's seat when the exposition is over and the designer is happy to hand back control.
While other studios move towards a more open-world approach, which gives the player as much freedom as possible – the most notable recent example being Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which essentially tore up the rulebook for the Zelda series – French studio Quantic Dream are taking the opposite approach by seeing just how far it's possible to push the tightly-scripted, story-driven video game using modern technology.
Quantic Dream's David Cage, like Hideo Kojima (Metal Gear Solid) and Yoko Taro (Nier: Automata), is a true auteur. His video games haven't always found a totally accepting audience, and recent accusations of 'toxic' working conditions at his studio have gained negative press (accusations which Quantic Dream deny and are seeking legal action to address), but his contribution to the realm of narrative-driven gaming cannot be understated.
Cage's first major undertaking in the games industry was Omikron: The Nomad Soul, a grand Sega Dreamcast adventure that was perhaps most notable for including original material by the late David Bowie, who also starred as a character in the game. While it bravely combined various genres, such as fighting and puzzle-solving, Omikron already showed how keen Cage was to tinker with the established norms of the industry. Death in the game simply results in reincarnation as another character, rather than 'game over' – an outcome which Cage has taken particular issue with in the past.
Speaking to Joystiq in 2013, Cage said that Game Over is "a state of failure more for the game designer than from the player." The idea of a game never really ending despite the player's failure is a common theme throughout Cage's other titles.
Quantic Dream followed Omikron with 2005's Fahrenheit, which took Cage's story-telling focus to the next level. The script alone was around 2,000 pages long. It also marked the beginning of Cage's desire to remove agency from the player in order to place more emphasis on the plot. While the game was rendered in 3D, control was mainly handled using the analogue sticks, and was largely context-driven – you could have a character perform multiple actions in any given situation by tiling the right-hand stick in a certain direction.
Despite retaining a fixed narrative, Fahrenheit featured branching dialogue trees and a story system that gave the player a surprising amount of wiggle-room – although, in reality, this was merely an illusion of freedom, you couldn't ultimately change the outcome of the game. Nevertheless, Fahrenheit was critically lauded upon release, and established Cage's credentials as one of gaming's most exciting storytellers.
With his next title, Cage wanted to break away from the notion of a fixed story and give the player's choices more lasting meaning. In 2010's Heavy Rain, it was actually possible for lead characters to die, and this had an impact on the narrative – a truly branching storyline. This was not mere hyperbole, either. There were over 20 possible epilogues with wildly different outcomes, and even finding the real killer responsible for the game's gruesome crimes wasn't as straightforward as you might expect.
Commercially and critically successful, Heavy Rain took the idea of a flexible video game narrative to new levels; not only was this a tightly-scripted and deeply engaging story, but it could be manipulated in subtle ways by the player's actions without them even realising it, and the various possible endings made it feel like a novel that changed each time you read it.
Do androids dream of electric sheep?
© Quantic Dream / SCE
Cage turned this freeform approach up a notch with his next title, 2013's Beyond: Two Souls, which boasted major Hollywood talent such as Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe in lead roles.
The game's supernatural premise – the lead character is connected to a spirit-being who can pass through walls and even possess other people – pushed the boundaries of plausibility too far for some players, and reviews were lukewarm rather than effusive, with some stating that Quantic Dream had gone too far in their quest to unite complex, non-linear narratives with gameplay. This was, some critics commented, a good story ruined by the need to include interaction.
Despite its polarising nature, Beyond: Two Souls still sold in excess of 2,000,000 units globally, and has the distinction of being the first video game to be shown at the Tribeca Film Festival – this was perhaps all the vindication Cage needed for his 'interactive storytelling' approach to games.
Which leads us to Detroit: Become Human, Cage's latest magnum opus. Born out of a PlayStation 3 graphics demo from 2012, which showcased a female android being constructed and seemingly becoming self-aware, Detroit: Become Human explores the divide between ourselves and the robot servants we will almost inevitably create in the future.
Like the best science fiction, the game asks that vital question: what does it mean to be human? The game tells this story from the perspective of three different androids. There's Kara, the same robot seen in the aforementioned 2012 tech demo and a household droid who develops artificial consciousness – she's entering a new and unfamiliar world, very much like the player. On the opposite end of the scale is Connor, a police model android who's tasked with tracking down rogue droids who've abandoned their programmed roles – androids like the third playable character, Markus, who's made it his mission to liberate his brethren from their servitude.
By placing you in control of three very different characters, Detroit grants a trio of very distinct perspectives and storylines, which we can safely assume will all intersect at some point. What's really interesting is that Cage isn't content to simply use the personalities of these individuals to make them stand out; everything from the way the in-game camera behaves and the music played during each of their sections is unique. It can often feel like playing three entirely different games. Connor is able to inspect the environment for clues and even reconstruct events to gain the truth, for example.
While his previous titles have been narrative epics, they are comfortably dwarfed by the scale of Detroit: Become Human. The initial script – penned by Cage alongside lead writer Adam Williams – shown to the design team was apparently between 2,000 and 3,000 pages long, and the final game calls upon the vocal talents of 250 actors in a whopping 513 different roles. The game's screenplay took two years to fully complete, and Cage apparently wrote around 6,000 pages of notes to accompany the process, meticulously planning out each and every potential route through the game's twisting, futuristic narrative.
What does all of this effort get you in video game terms, though? Well, Detroit: Become Human promises to be just as open-ended as Cage's other titles, if not more so. While you have the opportunity to replay certain key events, for the most part you have to live with the consequences of your actions. As was the case in other Quantic Dream games, the death of a character doesn't mean the end of the game, and the branching narrative allows the story to expand and grow in many different ways.
Cage has never been one to shy away from tackling controversial topics, and a trailer for the game shown last year depicted a rather shocking scene of a child being physically abused by her father. Given that it's a game that drills deep into the notion of humanity and what it's like to be a human being, it's interesting to see how it justifies the actions of its cast, as well as the actions of the player.
The aforementioned abusive father is, if you search for clues, found to be on drugs for depression, which can potentially impact his behaviour. Given that he's not in control of his own actions, is the most obvious option – death – really justifiable to save the child? Detroit: Become Human is packed with moral and ethical dilemmas like this one, which not only force you to seriously consider the result of your actions, but also make you place yourself in the shoes of a trio of androids with their own objectives, thoughts and emotions.
Dealing with consequences isn't something that many story-based video games really force us to do. Genre classics like L.A. Noire feature pivotal moments, where asking the right question or finding the right piece of evidence can lead to a breakthrough in your investigation, but as long as you fumble your way through each case, you'll eventually find the culprit.
The trouble with narrative-driven video games is that the designer – who could perhaps be described more accurately as the storyteller – has to keep you on the right path; if you stray from that path or, even worse, fail to find it in the first place, the story simply cannot continue. What Detroit: Become Human is promising is a story that grows and changes depending on your actions, many of which are permanent and lasting.
The Holy Grail of a truly open-ended, story-based video game is perhaps something of an unattainable goal – after all, a computer can't write and record new dialogue so the designer still has to predict every eventual outcome to ensure that the player doesn't find themselves stranded in a narrative dead end. Instead, like all of the best auteurs, Cage should perhaps be considered a master of misdirection, an illusionist who makes us believe we have liberty when in fact we're constrained by an almost invisible set of rules and pathways. When Detroit: Become Human launches later this month, we'll see if Quantic Dream have succeeded in this goal.
Irrespective of that, it's clear that storytelling in video games is evolving in line with the available technology, and the term 'interactive movie' – once used in a negative context to describe the interaction-light Full Motion Video productions of the early 1990s – could become a reality that's as solid and believable as the androids seen in Cage's PlayStation 4 epic.
