Board 8 > Zen's Train of Thought/Review of Detroit: Become Two Heavy *SPOILERS*

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SPOILERS FOR ALL DAVID CAGE GAMES

"Review" used loosely, this is my stream of consciousness with a half-assed rating attached

If you want a tl;dr: It's good with some major caveats. 7/10, David Cage is a hack but makes games I enjoy to some extent. Story is fun but not great. Adding the flow chart greatly improved the replay-ability and general enjoyment. Will play again.

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Backstory: I do not like David Cage games but I have played them all, specifically in this order: Indigo Prophecy, Heavy Rain, Omikron, Beyond Two Souls

They are all bad. Heavy Rain is the least bad objectively, but I have the most fun with Indigo Prophecy. "Fun" also used loosely. Omikron is the worst by far. Beyond is bad but because I played it much later than the others I was pretty prepared for what I experienced. It's bad but I didn't get offended.

I think that David Cage and his games are fascinatingly ugly. I will never stop playing them.

Here's some of my thoughts after completing Beyond Detroit for the second time:

1. Its much better than Heavy Rain and Indigo Prophecy, theres no argument there. David Cage removed all the dumb mysticism" (for the most part), which helped me actually take it seriously.

2. The flow charts at the end of each scene add a lot to the experience, encouraging you to play several times and making it explicitly clear how many endings and events you can see. This is the opposite of Cage saying that you should only play Heavy Rain once, and it's a welcome addition.

2b. "Game overs are the failure of the game designer" is a famously absurd David Cage quote, and while he's still sticking to his guns on this one, he's managed to do it in a way that feels way better. You can still get through a scene whilst failing every quicktime event, but there are way more explicit consequences, and the flowchart will even show that you messed up and how that leads you off other paths.

3. The story itself is really weak, David Cage once again simplifies a lot of the narrative into black and white with no real room for grey. There's a plethora of endings but nothing too surprising for any of the characters.

4. The Androids have seemingly limitless capabilities in some scenes, and in others they are helpless. New abilities are randomly revealed and forgotten about multiple times throughout the game. David Cage does a very poor job establishing the world and the rules.

5. There is a lot of hand waving of obvious plot holes and inconsistencies, such as why cant the humans just track or shut down the Deviant Androids?

6. Still kind of racist, but not as bad as Heavy Rain. There is a magical black Android that speaks in riddles and sees prophecies. What? I believe Cage tries to write it off as her programming being damaged. This character adds nothing to the game. There are a few other bland black stereotypes (like literally putting Harriet Tubman into the game) but there are some black characters that are just people and thats all I really ask for. The only Hispanic character in the game is short, fat and physically and verbally abusive. David Cage took the criticisms of his previous games to heart but could not stop being David Cage completely.

7. There were obvious plot twists that my girlfriend and I predicted hours before they happened and were laughing about because we thought they would be too outlandish to be true. The twists sometimes do not fit the established narrative but David Cage loves to surprise players. They really detracted from the game overall. Having a twist doesnt make things better.
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8. David Cage enjoys beating you over the head with the morals of the games story, but its a big budget video game that Sony dumped a lot into and I didnt expect anything else, so I wasnt really surprised or put off. Its just his style. Subtlety goes out the window the second you see Directed by David Cage in the credits.

9. There are three playable characters and two are much stronger than any one featured in Heavy Rain:

1. Connor is the highlight, as you can play him as a machine or as a man, and the difference is night and day. It completely changes his story and its great to see such variety in characterization and consequence.
2. Markus is fine, hes a really corny character but he never feels like a waste or incompetent. Youre on his side in the end. He tends to only make choices that are one extreme or the other.
3. Kara is the weakest character. Once again, David Cage shows he cannot write a strong woman. Shes just a damsel most of the time and most of her scenarios are get Kara out of X danger by relying on Y character. She also is very dismissive of other characters who want to give her relevant information just so David Cage can string his bad plot twists along.

10. Your choices actually do feel they have consequences, but if some supporting characters die they just get replaced by new characters in the cutscenes that have pretty much the same lines. Still, you do see the consequences of your actions much further into the game in most cases. Your choices arent confined to just the scenes you are in.

11. Good graphics. Thats to be expected, though.

12. There is one scene in the game that is so out of place and so awful I cannot stop thinking about it. Kara goes to an evil spooky mansion that is obviously a trap and you cannot turn around and just get the hell out even when the little girl with her points out that its obviously a trap. If youve played Heavy Rain its just a recreation of the scene where Madison goes to the dentists house for no reason and almost dies, but at least in that you can just straight-up leave if you feel uneasy. This game does not give you that option and it just makes you dislike Kara even more. Its also incredibly Cage-y to still be putting torture house scenes in these games.

13. Overall its way better than other Cage games and a step in the right direction. I had more fun playing it than Id expected, and Id say I only yelled COME ON DAVID CAGE and THIS GAME BLOWS ASS at the screen 20 times or so, which is way better than his other four games Ive played. I always try to break David Cages games by making ridiculous choices that he didnt account for to get endings I think wont exist, but surprisingly David Cage thought of (mostly) everything. I ended up getting an ending for Connor that, according to the games statistics, 0% of other players also received, which makes me feel pretty good. For Markus I got a common ending (88%) and for Kara I got an uncommon ending (33%)

14. On my second playthrough I let Kara die in the opening and I believe it greatly improved the game. When everything focuses on just Markus and Connor, the game is a lot faster paced and my suspension of disbelief threshold is a little bit higher. It's overall a way more entertaining experience. I do want to play another round with Kara just to see how far off the beaten path I can take her.

Once you beat the game you unlock a survey where the game asks which of the Main 3 you like the most, and Kara and Connor are both tied at 6% with Marcus at 88%. I'm not sure why people feel that way about Connor but Kara at 6% is no surprise.
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15. Also I want to point out that the controls are really frustrating sometimes, the motion controls are unwelcome and you can't turn them off. You also need to randomly use the touchpad and it's uncomfortable and annoying to swipe it certain ways when you just want to hold a damn controller and not have to worry about constantly repositioning your hands.

You also perform actions AND control the camera with the right analog stick, which surprisingly works most of the time but unsurprisingly is incredibly frustrating while you're first getting the hang of things and in some sections of the game where you need to be more precise with where you point the camera.

There's no dumb segments in the game where David Cage makes you hold like 13 buttons and wiggle both sticks so I guess he learned that artificial "do your hands have enough dexterity" challenges aren't welcome.

What is welcome is not having to hold R2 to walk, fuck that. Heavy Rain really was the worst.

16. Set design and world are really pretty and fun to look at. Areas have a good amount to explore although aren't that interactive.

17. Holy shit the whole "Markus touches you and you are now a Deviant Android" is such lazy writing. Later in the game he doesn't even need to touch you and he can kind of just gesture in your direction. They obviously didn't want to write around "Markus has to explain his cause to every Android he meets and convince them to join," but the fact that no Android has any reservations with joining him once they've merely been touched is such an eye-rolling plot point of this game.

The beginning of the game makes it a point to show some Androids are pretty happy with their situations and are friends of the family. They also make a point to show that Androids fear death. Wouldn't some Androids, when touched by Markus, be like "yeah man I'm good, I like my owner and I don't wanna die." I'm not saying here that slavery is better but I can't believe there is a 100% acceptance rate as long as Markus touches you. What?

Markus could be "brainwashing" the other Androids so that they all share his exact goals. Other Androids that reached Deviant status on their own seemed to have their own interpretations of right and wrong. Markus forcing his way of thinking on the other Androids is like its own brand of slavery. Even during American slave times you had "house slaves" and "Uncle Toms" which is not a great thing to think about but they did exist.

18. Acting is way improved over the other games, and there's no out-of-place French accents like in the others. Nice to know David Cage went out of his way to get American actors to appear in his game set in America for once.
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