Yes, yes, Detroit: Become Human was great. We loved it here at Twinfinite. We made it our Game of the Month for May, and scored it a 4.5 out of 5. That’s pretty high! That’s like, a 90 on Metacritic or something, from us anyway.
While Kara’s journey with Alice was heartwarming and harrowing, and Markus’ revolution plot is what really drove the story forward, Connor by far had the most engaging gameplay, and the best character development alongside his partner Hank Anderson.
The ol’ good cop, bad cop routine is played out. It’s why we don’t get as many cop dramas in movies anymore, at least it doesn’t feel like it. The golden age that lasted from the 80s to the early 2000s which featured movies Lethal Weapon, Bad Boys, Rush Hour, and Die Hard is long gone sadly. Well, with the exception of Lethal Weapon 5 and Lethal Weapon 6 of course.
The android-cop reluctantly partnered with drunken asshole cop that’s getting too old for this shit, odd-couple dynamic in Detroit: Become Human is the best part of Detroit and it’s not even close.
Hank, even at his warmest and fuzziest, is at best just tolerant of Connor, his new android partner assigned to him by Hank’s superior who has totally had enough of Hank’s late-night bar binges, which is par for the course for all tough, but fair police bosses. Despite rocking what appears to be Tommy Bahama shirts on the regular, which would suggest he’s a pretty chill dude, he’s actually salty just about all of the time. He’s rundown, past his prime, plays by his own rules, and just wants to do the bare minimum despite having a decorated past. He’s gone through some tragedy in his life, which explains at least some of his behavior, but he’s also just kind of a dick. Yet, when push comes to shove, especially when motivated by Connor, his cop instincts kick in when it matters most.
Connor, is the “young” super-cop who is literally built to be by-the-book, and has talents that even the best detective can only dream of. He can scan a room, find clues, run tests on any recovered samples, reconstruct crimes, and analyze faces and criminal records in an instant. Despite being incredibly helpful, this of course irritates Hank who wants nothing to do with androids, especially one that is going to stay up his butt all day long and force him to actually do work instead of drink and watch basketball.
Connor throughout Detroit: Become Human, tries to balance his primary function to solve cases while also trying to be a good partner to Hank. It takes a while for Connor to realize that solving cases isn’t everything and that human detectives are a lot more complicated than he is, despite being the more advanced being.
Now I don’t want to go too far, and dip into heavy Detroit spoilers here, but does this not sound like the plot of every great cop dramedy? The rub here of course, is that this is a video game and it opens the door for way more experiences than watching a movie can. Aside from their interactions with each other being entertaining to watch, Connor’s detective sequences were very fun to play too.
In these gameplay sections, time is of the essence, and Connor needs to quickly search for clues, and piece together what crime occurred before the investigation goes south. There is a point in Detroit: Become Human where Connor and Hank go to an android strip club, to investigate a human that was murdered by a deviant (read: rogue) android. Hank has to purchase a bunch of escort androids in order to give Connor access to their memory banks, to figure out where the deviant went before their memories are automatically wiped. Hank, of course, is complaining the whole time about how it will appear on his bank statement. Classic Hank! It was a thrilling sequence that I wish there were even more of.
What’s especially cool is that the game moves on whether you succeed, or fail in your investigation. The branching paths don’t need to be at the level that we see in Detroit: Become Human, but having a whole game based around dynamic investigation that will evolve based on your actions and your acumen as a detective certainly sounds great to me!
Maybe I’m just fanboying hard about Connor, my love of cheesy cop dramas, or both… But either way Quantic Dream, or someone at Sony, take the wheel and let’s make this happen.
