Game design observation on:

                                       Detroit: Become Human


Detroit: Become Human is an interactive drama adventure game where every decision matters. Every
slightest decision in the game, which can be in cutscene (dialogs) or in "normal "gameplay,
drastically changes the story and experience the player will have and feel while playing.

Story:

The story is set in 2038 when androids (machines designed to look like humans) are companions in
almost every household. After only roughly 20 minutes of gameplay, this brings the first
philosophical and moral question. Is this the way humanity will / wants to go in the near future?

A player experiences the story from three android's point of view. Kara, Connor, and Markus. All
those androids have different backgrounds, so the player experiences three stories in 1, but those
stories are more and more connected throughout the gameplay.

Gameplay:

Third person, sometimes first person. Lot of cutscenes (decisions)

Action / Combat system:

In dialogs, the player's decision on what to say is time-limited. Personally, I have always "said
something " before the time ran out, even though the decision was tough. To this day, I have no
idea what could happen if I let the timer run out.

In combat/action, the game shows the player a button (keyboard/controller) that he has to press,
press and drag (mouse/joystick), press and hold, or any combination of those. In some situations,
the game lets the player fail—for example, press "x "in the time limit. But usually, as I wrote
earlier, every single decision matters; so, for instance, if the player is trying to run somewhere
in a cutscene and fails to open the door, the android that the player is currently playing could
die, and that could drastically change the outcome of the story.

Loops:

As I said, the player experiences the game from 3 points of view. Kara, Connor, and Markus. Those
three are, with some exceptions, periodically changing, starting from Connor to Kara to Markus and
so on.

The player plays one event, which usually starts with a cutscene and ends with a cutscene, then
gets switched to another android and plays their event, and so on.

After every scene, the game shows a tree, which shows how the player went through the scene. It's
fascinating how a simple scene that takes 20 minutes to complete could end in 5 different ways
based on my decisions.

Experience:

The game is heavily story-ridden; someone could even say it's more like an interactive movie than a
game. There are a lot of philosophical and moral questions which could only suit some. Sometimes, I
spent a good 10 minutes on a single dialogue decision just because I didn't know what to do. Since
we don't have android companions (yet), the player really has to (if he wants to, (HE SHOULD))
think about what the situation was (in the game, will (may) be in our reality).

Lots of emotions, ugly cries, a heartbeat of 120, jump scares, stressful situations, but on the
other hand, beautiful, emotional (in a positive way) moments.

Graphics:

The game is set to be (hyper) realistic. Since my dream job would be to work in a game studio as a
character / 3D artist, I immensely enjoyed the game's look.

Even details like the androids have slightly more "robotic "animations than humans have. It's just
amazing.

My own experience:

I started playing last week, and I'm rushing this observation so I can finally finish it and cry
like a baby. I enjoyed every single second of this game, even though I thought it would bore me to
death, and I'll play it once and never again. I'm not planning to play the story more than once
since I feel like stories like this (with a lot of decisions) should be played only once because
every other playthrough is just a fake where I would be like, "What will happen if I say this
instead of this "etc. I have chosen to say this because I felt like saying this at the moment.

I plan to play more games in this genre just because of Detroit: Become Human.




I have written this observation myself, BUT I used Grammarly to correct me grammar wise.