I've recently finished QUANTIC DREAM's "Detroit: Become Human". While playing it I also made some notes (for reasons) and needed some time to structure them. I guess this would be the first review for anything, which prompted me to such an approach.
It is a good game. A good story. And, to be honest, if you are the type of gamer, who replays such games to see different possibilities - you can actually safely buy it for full price: it will be worth it.
I like the idea of android on title screen and a level of interactivity we get with it through the game. I like the implementation of "detective vision" here, since it really fits the setting (even more so than the one in Batman did), although I do not like, that it does not seem to highlight some of the "view" objects. In my mind it makes it a bit inconsistent, since it's meant to highlight points of interest, but exclude some of them for some reason. It would be more or less understandable, if the game was about exploration of your environment, but it's not. In fact, the narrative tends to give you a certain sense of urgency quite often and you can't just relax and explore like in Life is Strange, for example. Thus I'd prefer to highlight everything.
The game did get quite good with emotions compared to previous ones from the team. But there are still a lot of inconsistences, that I've noticed. Sadly, I doubt I can share any of them without spoiling parts of the story, but in general, there were quite a few details and actions that did not make much sense not only in real world, but also in the actual story setting. They are not as major as in "Heavy Rain", for example, but still, they were there. And I am not even counting the fact, that the story is more "fi", then "si" in how it depicts the whole "deviants" situation. And sometimes it's too "human".
It does not mean it will disrupt your enjoyment. If I was not trying to improve my observation skill in order to learn how (not) to narrate, I may not have noticed some of those things. The story has very good dynamic and progression, and there are few quite powerful scenes in there. Most gamers will not notice small mistakes thanks to quality of the rest of the content and lots of details. Flowchart mechanic seems to be made precisely to make you see how many things you can to and see in this game. And I really like this implementation, although, I'd prefer to have it on separate button and auto-scroll it to your current position in it and collapse non-branching sequences for a bit cleaner look.
But it will not be just the story, that will grab a gamer's attention: visuals and music will do their part as well. When my grandma saw little Jodie in "Beyond: Two Souls" she said she thought it was a movie and real actress. I smirked internally then, because I would not be fooled like that, even though it was still pretty good. But Detroit, even though not exactly photo-realistic, made such a tremendous leap in terms of visuals, that it's just... Awe inspiring.
The animation is really smooth, even facial one, which looks quite natural. And from a decent distance you could mistake some of the "frames" for those in a live-action film. I am saying "frames", because when there is movement, I can still see significant difference compared to natural movements, even at a distance. But really, it's one of the best games in terms of visual that I've played in recent years. And it's 2 years old already.
And music is good, too. It's not too prominent, but noticeable enough, that it sets the moods correctly. In previous games I did not care much for the music: it's there and that's it. Here it was actual part of the narrative and it fit properly.
So, yes, I've enjoyed the game. And I do recommend playing it, if you still haven't. It will be worth every penny.
Despite that, there are some inconsistencies, that I've logged here.
