How many authors are there in the video game industry? People whose paw, style, and who intend to develop a work? The Japanese have Hideo Kojima. The Americans have (the Chinese) Jenova Chen. In France, we have the Quantic Dream studio and its founder, David Cage, cleavage creator, sometimes rented (L’Express spoke of “Godard du pixel”), other times mocked for the pretension of his games, even sharply criticized for its management methods.
Either way, Mr. Cage is trying things out. The latest attempt is called Detroit : Become Human and hits PlayStation 4 on Friday, May 25. A video game that intends to make people think, even move.
It also opens with a naive warning, a little pretentious, terribly cabotin, declaimed by a pixel narrator with a face crying out for truth: what we are regarding to experience is not just a game, it is is our future. It is artificial intelligence that will be discussed, its progress and the fact that it would be, according to Mr. Cage’s position, more and more inseparable from a very real intelligence and consciousness. .
Corvables thank you
Sketched in the kind draft Fahrenheit (2005), matured with the most interesting Heavy Rain (2010) and definitively endorsed in the yet nanar Beyond : Two Souls (2013), David Cage and Quantic Dream have developed a grammar that has become a trademark, a genre in its own right, which squints at the cinema without being one.
The recipe has finally not changed since Heavy Rain. First, you need a choral cast, in which the player will play alternately each of the protagonists. In Detroit, these are three androids who, in the near future, are considered to be hard labor at mercy.
First there is Connor, a zealous young cop expert in negotiations. Then Kara, housekeeper in the service of an unemployed man – and therefore necessarily violent and drugged, like most people in need in David Cage’s work. Finally, there is Markus, helper of a sickly old man, half artist, half mentor, whom we do not imagine for a second that he might survive the first hour of play.
This begins when our three heroes, until now servile robots, discover a conscience, and therefore a humanity. How did they become human? This may be the subtitle of the game, but it is not its purpose: oddly, this problem will never be addressed.
No, what interests Mr. Cage is not what makes the difference between an AI and a human, but to imagine what consequences on our society might have a desire for emancipation of androids.
It’s up to the player to decide
Then, as always with David Cage, you need a Hollywood vibe. Each chapter is staged like a movie set, so many scenes in which the players must make decisions with serious consequences.
Sublimated by the studio of motion capture which makes Quantic Dream proud, these scenes are voiced by film actors, who regularly lend their features and gestures to the characters.
The player has here at any time the possibility of printing his mark. You have to pay attention to what you say and what you do in Detroit. Words and deeds have consequences, and gradually shape an adventure that will never be quite the same from one party to another.
Trivial
Finally, the third constituent element of David Cage’s work: a radical bias in terms of handling. Unlike 99% of video game production, there is not a button to run, another to jump and a last to shoot.
Instead, the French ask us to reproduce, with the joysticks, or even by moving a joystick crippled with motion detectors, the actions that appear on the screen. To turn a handle, for example, the right joystick will be rotated 360 °. To push the door, we will push it forward. To fight, we will press rhythmically on a sequence of keys that appears on the screen. A gimmick whose interest is clearly to offer the player to take care of the fingers between two dialogues, and which Mr. Cage, it must be said, abuses a little.
There is indeed something nicely grotesque, following ten hours of play and as the world descends into chaos, regarding mimicking the gesture of pouring yourself a coffee or putting on a shoe. A desire to show everything, to do everything, even the most trivial, which contrasts singularly with the cinematographic ambition of a game that does not seem quite at ease with the art of the ellipse.
Simple playful object
Detroit so tries, sometimes with a touch of awkwardness, to break away from the canons of the video game to concentrate on the story. He tries, but on this point largely fails.
Detroit in fact constantly reminds us of its simple condition as a playful object. For example by explaining to us that looking for clues in the scenery allows us to have access to certain dialogue options “Beneficial”, implied that others would be bad, as there is a right and a wrong way to play chess or marbles.
Like a simple Donkey Kong Where Sonic, Detroit even offers a “score” system at the end of the levels, points which reward the player following each more or less successful sequence – but successful compared to what? Mystery.
Internal kitchen
Detroit is therefore only a game… but it is precisely in the moments when he accepts it that it becomes fascinating. Thus, very regularly, between each scene to tell the truth, he offers the player to observe a tree structure, where he can see at a glance all the decisions he has taken – and all those he has taken. might have taken.
During these sequences of a confusing frankness, he seems to raise the curtain on his backstage, explaining to us in great detail how an interactive storytelling works.
And this internal cuisine, contrary to a sometimes uneven history, is fascinating. It is a veritable cathedral of “narrative design” that one explores with growing amazement, as the stories, and the way in which they interweave, continue to become more complex.
So much so that if the beginnings of the adventure are the same for all players, its conclusion will be virtually different for each of its thousands of players.
It’s smart. By its very device, Detroit was doomed anyway not to say anything interesting regarding the robots: yes, Connor, Kara or Markus have human reactions. Yes, they doubt. Yes they do feel empathy. But who will be surprised, when they are nothing but empty shells animated by a puppeteer, the player, very human him?
Detroit, a bit of a cheating game, is therefore not a game regarding robots. On the other hand, it is a great game on video games.
Pixels review
We liked:
- the countless choices that are offered to the player, and the contortions that developers make to succeed in taking them into account;
- writing more sober and controlled than in the past;
- a very high level achievement.
We didn’t like:
- everyday actions to mimic with the joystick, tiring following ten hours of play;
- a few moments, especially at the end, where the story loses coherence;
- a game that pretends to talk regarding how androids feel, when they are actually permanently controlled by a human player.
It’s for you if:
- you have loved Heavy Rain. It’s the same only better.
It is not for you if:
- you like Breathless and Contempt. It has absolutely no connection.
The Pixels Note
872 good decisions out of 1,152 possible endings.
