NobleGamer Detroit: Become Human Review

Detroit is an AAA branching story-driven masterpiece. Not everyone will interpret it as such, though most people do if the very positive reviews are any indication, but at minimum it is a masterpiece in terms of how intricate it is. I don't recommend it to min-maxers or 100%ers because they will likely get impatient at there not being more checkpoints or the ability to skip individual "cutscenes". People who play lots of story rich games might be critical of small or major parts of the story & such. Also there is the gamers' perception of whether the game is trying to send or teach a certain message regarding our real modern society, and then whether or not we like or agree the views that characters or the game world express. My personal approach to playing started with the games recommendation of playing through once without redoing anything. The second time, I would replay sections multiple times to unlock major things or smaller choices if I was really curious about a certain areas or choices, then go to the next chapter when I was "done", and repeat. In my second playthrough, it wasn't until the last 6 chapters where I would backtrack a bit more than one chapter, then play forward to see all the effects. Here is what you need to know about the game: +It is visually and audibly fantastic with a mostly orchestral score behind it. -It is a console port, and I happened to have the game crash twice on me. There is stuttering between some scene changes despite having run DDU, purged all shader caches, having a great SSD (970 Evo Plus), RTX 3080, 5600X, and 32GB RAM. If you have out of date or excess GPU driver type stuff, then expect more problems. Pausing the game for a while may allow stuttering to pass. +The branches for the story are significant, and so are the endings for the major characters. A few endings leave some societal questions unanswered, but most or all character loose ends get buttoned ip by the end. +I didn't find any "butterfly effect" where a small decision made a giant difference in the story, which is a good thing. The significance of choices are almost always proportional or at least understandable for their effects. +I thought the choice variety and how it affects the relationships among characters worked well. So some choices can result in what some would consider tropes, while others are more real or less tropey. ?This is a third person adventure game with quick time events when you dont have direct player control. QTEs only exist because not every action can be tied to the same unique button every time, and not every action is available at anytime. For instance, pressing a shoulder button doesnt always result in shooting a gun, nor should it always be available. I personally found it intuitive enough that the small learning curve was fair wasnt frustrating. ?No scenes within a chapter can be skipped with the exception of starting from a checkpoint where you have been before, which some people will hate. There can be up to a few checkpoints per chapter path, sometimes none or one for shorter chapters, and sometimes 1-2 more when including major branches. Checkpoints were a bit on the low side for me, though respect that the game is bordering a bit on interative movie in this regard. If I want to skip scenes, I should play Her Story which is literally playing video recordings. ?The extras unlocks of concept art, short videos, character models, soundtrack, and magazines were neat, though it only takes maybe one and a half playthroughs to unlock them all. +I found it fascinating to contrast early concepts from Extras with what actually made it into the game.