Detroit: Become Human and the Importance of Video Game Storytelling
Six decades and millions of titles after an Atari programmer birthed the video game industry with Pong, the average modern video game is universes away from the simple paddle-and-ball training exercise that started it all. Between breathtaking graphics and innovative game design, video games today are more lifelike and immersive than ever. And as the video game developed as a form of play, it also surfaced as an equally potent medium of storytelling.
Most video games have some sort of plot—that of the very first Super Mario Bros., for example, was as simple as an ordinary plumber journeying through a strange kingdom to save a princess from an evil fire-breathing–turtle-dragon. Only in the last two decades or so, however, have video games started to position that plot at the very heart of their experience, right alongside the gameplay mechanics that fundamentally define them. Ask someone what they like best about a Pokémon game and they will likely explain the thrill of exploring its detailed biomes, collecting cute creatures and watching them evolve into mighty beasts in battle. But ask someone what they remember best about The Last Of Us’ action-adventure campaign, and they will likely reminisce about the emotional journey they followed protagonists Joel and Ellie on.
This story-first blueprint is the backbone of Detroit: Become Human, a choose-your-own-adventure game directed by David Cage and developed by French studio Quantic Dream. Their unconventional formula for their titles often makes them feel more like movies than games; cinematography, narrative, and writing often take priority over traditional gameplay mechanics, and DBH is no exception. Set in a near future where hyperrealistic androids are omnipresent and sold as human companions serving a myriad of roles, from police assistant to prostitute, DBH explores what the world may look like if these androids attempted to break from their programming and gain sentience, living alongside humans as equals.
DBH has an extremely large protostory (total narrative space); there exist over one hundred and fifty forking paths and eighty-five endings. Yet it’s the depth, not the width, of its narrative space that I find most indelible. Detroit: Become Human boasts unparalleled player agency for its genre, which in turn allows for meaningful engagement with its narrative.
Video games can often cultivate parasocial relationships between players and the avatars they inhabit. Narrative isn’t even necessarily required for this—someone playing a Street Fighter title would likely wince at the sight of their fighter getting beaten into a pulp by an opponent—but where narrative is present, this bond takes on a new dimension. Avatars supplemented by narrative are no longer simply avatars, but layered characters that fans can empathize with as though they were film or TV characters. Unlike film or TV characters, however, players are directly responsible for their characters’ journeys in narrative-based video games like DBH, encouraging them to make thoughtful decisions, and creating a form of immersion that is not only tangible but meaningful. This “choice architecture” is the core of DBH's gameplay. Players are prompted to make decisions about how the three android protagonists—Connor, a detective; Kara, a caretaker; and Markus, a revolutionary—will respond in a range of situations. Every decision, every dialogue and action has an immediate impact, and can also significantly alter the direction of the story well into the future. The narrative weight of these decisions—and the fact that the player is made aware of the consequentiality of their choices immediately upon making each decision—creates a high degree of agency. Said agency gives players the power and responsibility to engage thoughtfully with DBH’s themes and social commentary, greatly accentuating their impact.
On the surface level, Detroit: Become Human grapples with an android population that believes they are alive in a society that is reluctant to come to terms with that realization. The game’s central question is about what it means to, as its title indicates, “be human.”
Each protagonist's journey attempts to define and answer that question; for Connor, humanity means the power to choose his own destiny; for Kara, humanity is to love her found family as if they were her own; and for Markus, humanity is about learning to sacrifice and fight for what you believe in. In a vacuum, each of those narratives is significant in its own way. But DBH transcends that conversation; it uses androids as a narrative vessel to make players question historical and current notions of humanity, and how humans have treated, and continue to treat, what we see as the “other." This struggle is encapsulated perfectly by the following exchange that may take place between Connor and his human partner Hank in Chapter 29:
“What if we’re on the wrong side, Connor? What if we’re fighting against people who just wanna be free?”
“They're not people, Lieutenant. They're defective machines.”
“They’re not people. That’s what we say every time we want to oppress someone.”
The game, across almost all of its storylines, employs rich symbolism that likens the story’s events to various critical periods in human history, most notably the Civil Rights Struggle and the Holocaust. For example, Markus is asked to stand in a special android-only compartment in the back of a bus, harkening to Jim Crow segregation. Elsewhere, at a point in Kara’s story, she will meet Rose, who offers to help her and Alice sneak over the border into Canada—an evident allegory to the Underground Railroad. Connor, in his story, references a fictional law where all androids must identify themselves by wearing blue LED armbands, akin to laws in Nazi Germany forcing Jewish people to identify themselves with the Star of David.
The game has drawn a fair share of criticism for being arguably too blunt with its allegories, to the point of potentially cheapening their significance. Nonetheless, its unique focus on player agency in its narrative allows it to fluidly introduce these histories to players who otherwise might not have much exposure to them. In DBH, the previously discussed allegorical scenes and chapters are saliently uncomfortable to engage with; they are designed to be. Part of the reason agency feels so important in the game is that it brings a sense of responsibility endowed upon players to do the right thing not just for their characters or the story, but also in the context of the history the game draws so prominently from. It’s through these connections to the past that DBH can create "prosthetic memories" of the history it allegorizes, allowing audiences to relate vicariously to historical events and experiences they have not lived.
To that end, the game almost functions like a form of literature in that it encourages players to reflect upon the cultural significance of work outside its vacuum and the parallels between fictional and real social landscapes. It's an ambitious project, one that may feel out of its depth to some, but to me, it represents an important step forward to what we think games can teach us about the world.
To see more of what I’m playing right now, check out my Playlist account.
