I recently played through Detroit: Become Human to completion after looking at various storylines and possible outcomes. I was thinking about how amazing it is as a technical achievement but from a gameplay standpoint, you are not really asked to do much aside from guide a player around and select responses for a good part of the game. That being said my wife summed it up well when she said it was more of a movie than a video game.
I had to agree about this factor and wondered if the game has really reached what has long been a goal of turning games into interactive movies. There are efforts underway to have certain films give users the option to vote on which path the story takes next and it does seem like the line between movies and games is blurring more than usual.
Heavy Rain set a standard as to what players could expect with Detroit: Become Human as the diverse and well defined characters fit well into a dark and mature setting where users were free to craft the story to the direction they thought best.
This also allowed for some great replay value as the story could branch into some very diverse paths if certain choices were made.
The sales for the game have been very good so far so it does seem to indicate that gamers do have an interest in this type of gaming vs the traditional twitch shooters and other styles of games that are out there.
While I do not think this style of game is going to replace shooters and action games anytime soon, I do wonder if it will lead to more games having narrative options in their gameplay and being less linear. It was refreshing to have the option to fail at something and yet not have it be the end of the game or being forced to replay the segment over.
The strong characters and graphics made the game very immersive but it was the great writing and storyline that really made the game so enthralling.
It will be interesting to see what happens next as for now, Battle Royale seems to be the new Zombie mode, but it will be great to see how game narratives may evolve in the future.
