Detroit isn’t much these days. In the future, it’s Android City.
In Android City, we have hostage-taking androids and hostage-negotiating androids. Androids negotiating with androids for humans over human life.
That’s the intriguing premise as shown in the E3 2016 trailer for Detroit: Become Human.
Connor is an android negotiator. He’s sent in when an android has taken a human girl as hostage. Reason: he doesn’t like being an android. He doesn’t like being a slave to the humans who created androids to be slaves.
The trailer presents us with the choose-your-adventure gameplay. Hit square to do this and X to do that, and so on. Each action leads to a different outcome. For example, one action leads to the death of the human girl. Another action leads to everyone dying or the two dudes dying or just one of the androids dying, etc. In other words, try and try again until you get the outcome you want. Exciting!
My sarcasm on the shelf, this seems like another interesting premise wasted on the game design. But I’m biased – not a big fan of choose-your-adventure, not even those kids’ books. Ultimately, it’s not like Fable or Knights of the Old Republic where each action has a subtle effect that accumulates to a significant consequence later in life. But with these games, pushing X instead of O leads to death, which only leads to one thing: load and re-try.
But all good. This is Android City, Jake. It’s Android City and nothing is as it seems. The game, I hope, is as surprising and mysterious as Android City.
The game is currently in development for PS4, exclusive.
