'Detroit: Become Human' isn't very good.

So when it comes to me checking story based interactive games, lately I've been trying to go through as many of them as possible. I've done my best to either play through them myself or watch long play versions of these games on Youtube.

Indeed, as a writer who is currently dabbling with a project that has to do with interactive story based gaming, reviewing these games has been a crash course to learn about the genre. It has been a great learning tool in figuring out how to write a similar project myself.

So this time I decided to check and review 'Detroit: Become Human', a story based game that I had in my Playstation 4 library. I had added it when it was free on Ps plus store, but hadn't for some reason tried it, even though the game kinda seemed interesting.

Premise-wise, what we're dealing with here is a futuristic world in the United States that has androids in it. In a not so near future (2038) technology has advanced so rapidly that these human like robots are now assisting humans in our everyday life.

Game-wise, the story consists of three characters / storylines that has androids as our protagonists. We have an investigative android cop "Connor", a housemaid 'Kara' (looks like Jennifer Lawrence) and a servant 'Markus', that we get to control as players during the story.

Catalyst-wise, the story starts when Connor is assigned to investigate why some androids seem to get deviant and stop obeying their masters. These formerly obedient androids have started acting like human beings and are getting in trouble with the law.

Indeed, as we get introduced soon to our other protagonists, 'Kara' is wanted for kidnapping a girl whereas 'Markus' gets caught by the cops for killing a person. Clearly something is going on and we need to figure out what is going on and why.

Story-wise, as we experience things unfolding, the biggest gimmick in the game is that your decisions have an effect on how the story unfolds. The way you choose to react (shoot/not kill etc.) to different situations changes the way the game progresses.

Not surprisingly, the challenge with a genre that has 'story trees' and a huge script is that it's difficult to write a story that makes sense and that can take different directions. It's really challenging to come up with a plausible story that doesn't get ridiculous at some point.

Indeed, especially in a game like this, when you have a script with three storylines that reportedly ran for 6000 pages, that means that you need to know what you're doing. Your premise and structure better be bulletproof and thematically solid in order to work well. 

Unfortunately, In 'Detroit: Become Human', even though at first the 'androids as humans' story seems intriguing, later on things more or less fall apart. It becomes obvious that the premise isn't well thought out and that the questions raised in the first act won't be answered.

Indeed, when you reach like 40% in the game, you'll notice that almost nothing makes sense. Things aren't explained, the plot holes are big, the story has no momentum, deus exes happen and there's no emotional pay-off (Markus's storyline is especially boring) at the end.

In that sense, when I think about 'Detroit: Become Human' and the genre in general, I think it's obvious that it's not easy to come up with a multi-threaded story that works. It's not easy to come up with a story that feels rewarding and keeps you interested from start to finish.

After all, in a game like this, when you give the audience that many decisions to make during the gameplay (it's mostly an interactive movie), it creates so many hurdles. It's challenging to write a coherent story without making serious mistakes in the process.

In that sense, in the end, when it comes to this particular game, even though 'Detroit: Become Human' certainly doesn't have the worst story I've ever seen, that doesn't mean that I enjoyed it that much. I can't say that I was particularly entertained by what I saw.

After all, when you exclude the first act that worked, considering all the problems that followed (heavy handed themes, plot holes, lack of direction, too many bland protagonists etc.) those were bad. You shouldn't get too excited about the game and its story.

On the contrary, unless you're really a fan of 'interactive movies' that have a lot of 'quick time events' and tons of decisions to make, this is not a game for you. 'Detroit: Become Human' isn't a game for you and will likely not entertain you the way it should.