For those of you that know me, you’ll be aware that I am a computer science student studying at university at the time I am writing this. For the past six years of my life, the computing industry and more specifically, Artificial Intelligence, has been a key interest of mine – touching my literary interests, my career ambitions and even my choice of video games. Obviously, I am nowhere near an expert, but I always enter games based on computational theories or methods, with a sceptical mind. This means that hacking minigames or games based in future dystopias containing robots, tend to turn my head and not always in a good way.
So, where do I come down on Detroit Become Human? Well, David Cage games and I have never really gotten on, especially considering the portrayal of their female characters – such as Maddison from Heavy Rain being limited to be a romantic interest to protagonist Ethan or attempting to force Jodie into several relationships in Beyond Two Souls. So, walking into Detroit Become Human, I was worried, to say the least.
DBH follows a similar formula to other David Cage games, in that your decisions and responses to quick time events, have a significant effect on the fate of your characters. You follow three different androids as their stories unfold and intersect with one another, with whether they survive to enjoy a happy ending being entirely dependent on your unique choices. Out of the three characters, I feel that only one of them really is worth following the story of – that being Kara.
Kara is an android owned by deadbeat dad Todd and is responsible for looking after the house and Todd’s daughter Alice. Almost immediately after the game begins, Todd’s abusive behaviour towards both Kara and Alice, causes Kara to break from her programming and flee into the night with Alice in tow, protecting the little girl from her father’s abuse – potentially killing him in the process, depending on your choices. The entirety of her character arc, is mostly about learning to be free, protecting this little girl and trying to escape the society that wishes to scrap her for parts. It is eventually revealed that Alice is also a robot but your attachment to this little one is not affected by this revelation, in fact, considering how this version of America treats androids, you want to protect her even more.
Kara’s story makes you think about the ethics of Artificial Intelligence – a subject that has been highly debated since the topic was founded. Kara and Alice clearly care deeply for one another, with Kara putting herself in danger to protect the young android, showing she is capable of love and affection and fear and bravery, raising the question about whether she deserves to be free to live her life, just like any living, breathing creature on the planet. In the ending I got, Kara and Alice manage to escape to Canada alongside their friend Luther, to live their lives without the fear that followed you for the entirety of her parts of the game.
Then you have Connor. Connor is a detective unit of android, designed to assist with the investigation of crimes and works alongside a human who thoroughly dislikes androids, who can slowly become more than just a “android created by Cyberlife” or can work to oppress his own people and ensure the androids never get the freedom that they are fighting for. Connor’s story can be sweet, his buddy cop relationship with Hank and slowly becoming more “human” is a joy to see but it doesn’t have the same emotional connection as Kara and Alice do, so it does have the better moral dilemmas such as allowing fugitives to escape or refusing to execute another android just to gain information that could help a case.
Finally, we come to Markus. He starts out as an assistance android to an old painter, who treats him kindly and they get along very well. However, disaster strikes in the form of the painter’s douche of a son whose actions cause his father to have a heart attack and blames it on Markus, resulting in him being destroyed and thrown onto the scrap heap. He survives, reassembles himself and goes on to become the leader of the revolution for android freedom. His choices can affect whether Kara escapes to Canada successfully or whether hundreds of civilians and androids die in the explosion of a dirty bomb. This use of a “minorities struggle” is where my problem with Detroit Become Human lies.
I love storytelling games, but the writer of Markus’s storyline is attempting to shove in a narrative about the fight for equality, be that in women’s rights, LGBT+ rights or the struggle that minority groups go through every day just to have something “edgy” to put on the back of the box. Normally, I’d support games that raise awareness of these issues, but this storyline doesn’t feel genuine. It feels forced in by a writer who clearly has never truly struggled in life or experienced true oppression, like so many communities in our world fight against. It cheapens the effect of this so-called “fight for freedom”, feeling more like a story gimmick than a genuine message about equality or freedom.
Oppression isn’t always obvious, it’s subtle. It comes across in the tone of someone’s voice or the subtle body language of the people you walk past on the street. It doesn’t wander around with a giant neon sign saying LOOK AT ME! We shouldn’t be taking such a critical issue such as minority group’s struggle against racism, oppression and prejudice, and turning it into a quick plot point in a video game. They. Deserve. Better.
The civil rights movement and other campaigns for equality such as Black Lives Matter, share very little except the aesthetic of “fighting for equality” with DBH. The only way the androids receive their freedom is by choosing peaceful solutions at every turn, even if it means watching as your fellow androids are gunned down for protesting peacefully. The fight for equal rights is not just about peace, it’s about people being willing to die for what they believe in such as Emily Davison diving in front of the king’s horse and becoming a martyr for the suffragette cause. David Cage claimed this game was not meant to be a political statement, meaning that the resulting storyline seems so much more shallow and makes the impact of the stories told in the game, seem worth so much less.
In conclusion, I feel that DBH had real potential. Even the portrayal of artificial intelligence made sense in the context, though was not entirely accurate (I’ll let them off, it is a video game after all). However, the storylines they chose to follow let down their entire premise, seemingly jumping on a bandwagon of including revolutions and fights for equality in media, instead of following its own unique blend of storytelling and the consequences of our actions. Maybe next time get writers who have experienced those events, to tell the story, instead of doing it yourself Cage.
Sorry if I seem a bit harsh this week, I thought I’d go for a more realistic approach to a game that I did have hope for. Can’t always be nice after all.
Thanks,
CaitlinRC.