Blade Runner. Detroit. Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol. L.A. Noire. Toy Story 3. Heavy Rain. Blade Runner 2049. The Matrix. Terminator 2: Judgement Day. The Matrix Revolutions. Toy Story. Telltale's Batman: The Enemy Within.

I thought about all these films and games while playing Detroit: Become Human this weekend, a game I've been sure I'd absolutely despise since it was announced, on through the early reviews and brief discourse on podcasts like Giant Bomb's and Waypoint's...and yet now that I've played it, I have very mixed feelings about the game. When it leans into the Blade Runner, L.A. Noire, Telltale-ness of it all it seems like Quantic Dream has finally hit the jackpot here. The direction (or the technology used to direct) has finally caught up to Cage's ambitions and many of the shots in this game are absolutely gorgeous. Connor is absolutely intimidating and stoic in certain frames, while Markus can come off as a crazed religious fanatic and Kara...well, the less said about her storyline the better.

I say that because Kara's storyline is emblematic of every flaw coursing through Detroit's blue-blood pumping veins. Her sequences consist almost entirely of oddly sketched stealth sequences, puzzles in which you reach all the yellow cards in your scanner before a timer hits zero followed by action sequences that inevitably spill out of failed stealth sequences, and worst of all most of her character building moments smear the most mud over exactly how these androids work. Much is said of their programming and intentions, but oftentimes Kara's campaign seems to exist solely to throw all that world building into doubt. The nicest NPCs in the game are introduced like it's The Night of the Living Dead for some reason, pretty much every android she meets is either a Sids playroom monstrosity or a...sorry, a RINO (Robot in Name Only) exhibiting every characteristic of a human being other than that little LED on their temple (which it seems only main characters prefer to remove, oddly).

Even forgiving that - and it's a video game, so ultimately I expect the logic undergirding its world building to buckle under the needs of the plot from time to time - Kara also deals with by far the most Cageian characters, whether that's the nearly identical alcoholic dad and sadistic mad scientist or all the cops who conveniently can't see you until the "skill" check pops you out in the open. The sequence where Kara has her memory erased, regains it in the span of five minutes (while freeing the aforementioned imprisoned misfit toys as well as a half-robot polar bear for some reason) then proceeds to fight Luther's Mr. X-like will throughout the house until they reach the backyard and he just...has enough? That was an ugly bit of Quantic Dream foolishness and had me set down the controller for the night, unsure I'd come back to the game.

But come back I did, in large part thanks to the flowchart feature that caps every segment. Until that moment I'd been making decisions that landed me in the upper-80 to mid-90s percentile, and while the game looked stellar and had some very good performances (forgiving that every android actor aside from Connor and to an extent Markus didn't find the inhumanity in their performances) I was also beginning to worry the game was just too on the nose for me to get anything out of it. Except, in the chapter prior, I'd flubbed a quick-time event and Connor had been run over my a crop harvester. I thought he was gone for good, and I wanted to see how the game would play out...especially since only 4% of players failed that sequence.

Well, if you've played the game you probably remember that Detroit would have had a hell of a time writing Connor out of the remaining 60% of the game (tellingly, Kara can die in the that very first sequence with Todd) and thus began my super-engaging experience with the Connor-Hank narrative. To that point Hank had been taking a decent-enough liking to me despite playing Connor mostly cold and distant, and this returning Connor openly joked with Hank while sobering him up and on the way to the Eden Club. However, once the investigation was under way I made some poor assumptions about the path of the sex robot and became one of just 10% of players to fail that sequence - not only had Connor ultimately failed twice in a row, he was racking up a pretty huge bill on Hank's expense report.

Later that night, Connor remained self-righteous about his purpose and his livelihood, and Hank murdered him in cold blood on the boardwalk - only 16% of players experienced this scene this way, likely because by this point they'd accepted the game's core argument that androids are humans too, but I wanted Connor to accept this new reality of his. Connor is a utility in the world of Detroit: BH, and what is dead may never die, but I was genuinely shocked, particularly because I (and Connor) had understood the subtext of that scene involved Hank's dead son but we chose to withhold that knowledge from Hank because it wasn't our goal.

And now that I had this mindset entrenched, that an android would pursue goals above all else, especially empathy, the game started really opening up for me. Markus killed Simon on the roof after giving a mostly peace-driven speech on the broadcast, which left me in the minority again with 22% of players. This also began my rollercoaster ride with North in which she did ultimately fall in love with me but seemed to be more reactionary and emotionally driven by every word I said than a pre-teen (or sitting American President). Later, investigating the crime scene (for those who haven't played, I think we can all universally agree this pair of sequences is the high point of the game) I stumbled my way into the kitchen, triggering events that would bring about the end of the vignette with, because Connor was aware he could return and Hank could not, Connor sacrificing himself to save Hank.

Three days of investigation, three dead Connors. Hank was wrecked. His partner just kept dying, reminding him of the artificial nature of androids and the corporeal nature of his son. There was nothing I could do at this point to earn his trust, and unlike their first meeting rooted in standard buddy cop tropes this hatred felt truly earned. Better yet, I'd come by it honestly. I wasn't manipulating the game to experience this side of it - I'd long before assumed it incapable of such honest storytelling. Following that, as Markus I hacked the police radio (5%) to get them off my tail and reveal the scarier side of an android/tech-led revolution. I peacefully tagged benches (59%) but demonstratively toppled the statue celebrating the "birth" of androids. I sent a strong, pacifist message (71%) but killed the police (14%) who killed my brothers and sisters in the street. As Connor was displaying a clear sense of fealty to his mission and the laws of Detroit's world, Markus was convulsing wildly within them.

Unfortunately, from there Connor meets a bad analog of the tech bro from Ex Machina while he and Markus both struggle with the existential question of whether or not they're Neo from The Matrix (complete with their own respective takes on The Oracle) while Kara...stumbles around in a really crummy recreation of the Underground Railroad that is neither truly embarrassing nor all that interesting. And then the game just keeps going and going, seeming to end multiple times and just going all out on more, more, more. Eventually, I just put the controller down and let the police beat the shit out of Markus before murdering him in the middle of the street.

Zero percent of players reached the same level of exhaustion I ultimately did if this game is to be trusted, so maybe that says more about me than it does the game. But for one beautiful three hour stretch in the middle there, and speckled all throughout the first third as well, Detroit has a game that I really could've loved in it. Unfortunately, David Cage made it and so it had to mean something, despite his long since proving he has nothing interesting to say about the world and its ills at all.

My Connor let Hank have his suicide, in the end. After all, the mission was over, and we wouldn't be coming back for more.