Life is a funny thing. Every decision was waves of consequences, both mundane and momentous. For decades, games have been attempting to replicate the butterfly effect that random decisions can have, but due to the sheer magnitude of such machinations, they’ve been largely unable to succeed. Often there’s a lot of smoke and mirrors, behind the scenes magic that allows for the illusion of choice while still providing the developer with an element of control. Games like Until Dawn, Telltale’s episodic titles, and even Quantic Dream’s own Heavy Rain were often found to be hiding these tricks, directing players back along a comparatively finite path. After a limited time with Detroit: Become Human, I’m convinced Quantic Dream might be able to buck that trend. For a game about androids, Detroit is undeniably human. Last week, I had the opportunity to play through the first three hours of the game. Weaving back and forth across a number of scenes, I played as each of the three main android characters: Connor, Markus, and Kara. Connor is an investigator sent to help the police department with deviant crimes, that is, crimes associated with rogue androids that have gone off of their programming. Markus is the caretaker android of an old famous painter with which he has an almost father-son relationship with. Finally, Kara is a housekeeper android owned by a wildly abusive man and his daughter.
Kara heads home with Todd after being picked up from an and...