'Detroit: Become Human' has the worst twist

My bridge to the future

You may have heard me say it before, but I'm really not a huge fan of Quantic Dream, and not just for the obvious reasons of the way they conduct themselves internally. Actually, I disliked them before a lot of these recent allegations. And that doesn't come from an inherent dislike of narrative based games for the accusation that they're 'boring' and 'lack action' as some others believe, my problem stems from what I believe are an overrated catalogue of games propped up by the impressive nature of the tech and graphics that bring them to life. So that's to say that I don't like David Cage, or his stories, and the things that he chooses to write about. Indigo Prophecy was entertainingly out there, but as far as I'm concerned that was the peak of his work and since then he's spiralled in so many weird directions that either play things too safe, discredit themselves or both. Beyond Two Souls seemed to war against the very concept of branching narrative, Heavy Rain cheated it's audience out of a real solvable mystery in favour of a cheap twist and 'Detroit: Become Human'... oh there's so much I have to say about Detroit.

The fact that Detroit is one of their most well received and lauded games just annoys me deeply, for whilst it is easily the best game that Quanitc Dream has put out and arguably has the best writing, I find the concept to be so mundane, overdone and lacking in genuine creative spark that I broil every time I think of how much more famous that game is compared to Nier Automata. But I'm not here to talk about that today, I'm here to talk about what I consider to be one of the worst twists in a narrative based game from every one that I've played, and I've played all of the big mainstream ones. From Telltale to DONTNOD to Supermassive, I've done the rounds, and still I think Detroit become human takes the ca- actually 'Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope' had a final twist which really annoyed me... But that's more a subjective opinion, what I have to say about Detroit cuts a lot deeper than that. And in discussing this twist I want to bring a comparison game with a grand twist of it's own in a somewhat similar vein so that I can compare how this is done right compared to how it can be done catastrophically wrong. The comparison I've picked is from Death Stranding, but unfortunately that means I'm going to have to spoil an incredibly big (as in literally the last hour of gameplay is dedicated to it) plot point as well as a central big route spoiler for 'Detroit: Become Human.' If that's going to be a problem for you, I suggest you skip this one. Still here? Good.

So 'Detroit: Become Human' paints a world were an American servant class of humanoid android suddenly gain sentience and everything plays out pretty much the way you'd expect from a decently budgeted Sci-Fi channel miniseries. Cue hammy and slightly belittling civil rights analogies and a shaky grander world setting that doesn't really come together cohesively outside of immediate events but it doesn't matter because Cage doesn't care about world building apparently. In typical Cage fashion, the narrative is split between the perspectives of three protagonists, although rather atypically, they don't intersect nearly as much as you'd think they would. In fact I think there's only one scene where all the protagonists are in the same setting at the same time, which I guess isn't totally uncommon, but overall motivations seem individually distinct too. I'm not sure how I feel about that plot structure, but this isn't about that right now. Right now I want to talk about the machinations of one storyline in particular, the one that follows Kara.

Kara is the service android of one Todd at the beginning of the game, your typical single abusive father who beats his child daughter: lovely. The entirety of Kara's narrative follows her relationship with this child, Alice, as they escape the abuses of Todd and go on the run as fugitives together. Whilst the other two storylines are based around prototypical oppressed freedom fighter and discount Bladerunner 2049, Kara's journey with Alice is the only one that seems somewhat unique to the typical formula you'd immediately expect from a setting like this. I think that special spark comes from the very idea of this android and human child coming together in a mother-daughter bond, both damaged and traumatised in their own way and forming an emotional bond that transcends their differing constitutions because of that. In a game with very underexplored avenues for the way that androids crossed the event horizon and gained sentience, Kara's story doesn't fill that void but it does work some way to justify it, arguing that the specifics don't matter when we have this sort of relationships between the species that demonstrates powerful unconditional love. A human child and an android mother- truly a fertile little bud of a story there. Sure they weren't my favourite characters, but I felt emotionally connected and intrigued to their journey more than the other two.

But before I pull the rug out from under you, let me bring up my competing twist from Death Stranding. (strap in, because discussing anything about this game is a trip.) So the world of Death Stranding's America is beset by an invasion of spirits from death known as BTs (Beached Things) that can only be seen when someone straps themselves to a BB (Beach Baby). a BB is a human child that has been taken out of it's comatose mother before birth and placed inside of a mechanical simulated womb that porters strap to their chest and then connect to via tubes so that they can integrate their suit systems with the emotional response of the BB. Oh, and BB's can see BTs because having not been born yet they technically aren't alive and since their mothers are brain dead they 'bridge' the gap between life and death. Did you... did you follow all of that? Because I'm not sure I even did.

The story makes clear there is a twist coming right away, when the protagonist Sam first connects to his BB, (known as BB-28) and is greeted to a memory which shows the perspective of a baby in a pod observing the goings on of a man we would come to know as Clifford Unger and his comatose wife. The problem being that the twist here is obvious. Clifford, played by Mads Mikkelson, is obviously going to be an important reoccurring character in the story, the visions (which are repeated and only happen when connecting to BB-28 after a rest) clearly show a BB before service, and Clifford literally talks to the BB like it's his child throughout the entire game; and yet Sam never seems to directly address it. I mean sure, he's attacked by the spirit of Cliff throughout the game, dragged through hell and forced to fight him. Every fight is inundated with the ghostly calls of Cliff to 'return his BB', and every boss fight ends with him literally trying to rip BB-28 from your arms, but Sam and cast still play twenty questions trying to figure out who Cliff could possibly be and what his connection to you and BB-28 is.

It's almost insulting how much the game drags out this twist which lays itself out so evidently from the getgo, no one with a working frontal cortex could fail to make the connection between Cliff and BB-28 after the first cutscene, let alone the thirtieth! Thus we don't even engage with that aspect of the story and question it as the narrative pans out, even when scenes don't play out quite as you might expect. The final boss fight with Cliff, for example, ends with him finally coming to his senses and directly addressing the player. "They told me you were Sam Porter, but your Sam Bridges. My bridge to the future." Sam even hands him the BB-28 pod, recognising Cliff as the father, only to see Cliff take it, hold it for a moment, and then hand him back. It's a simple scene, but seems to vaguely threaten what seemed like clear cut fact at the very start of the story. It's only after this encounter that Sam even mentions the possibility that Cliff could be BB-28's father, but with how terminally un-insightful Sam has proven himself throughout the entire game, this moment actually shakes belief in what seemed to be immutable fact more than anything else. What we have here is a twist made so obvious that we don't even realise when it hides something deeper.

Coming back to Detroit, the twist set-up is much more straightforward so let me resolve that one for us right now. Alice and Kara meet another android and they expand their familial unit whilst trying to escape the country. Only once all the protagonists come together do we get the big reveal, as Kara goes off to meet with the cameo squad and gets a bit lost when she returns. She bumps into Alice, only to discover that she isn't her Alice, but another Alice altogether. Another android Alice. That's right, little kid Alice was an android that Todd (a man who is apparently destitute and depressed and yet can afford two androids and a replacement for the one he smashed) bought to replace his daughter who left with his wife when they got divorced. And the game waits until now to tell us. The reveal is handled decent enough but the twist... is just actively terrible.

I don't mean that it's weak, although it kind of is; but it is unique in that it actively cheapens the dynamic that the game worked so hard to set. It's a twist that takes depth out of the narrative, rather than one which enriches it. Think about it- we had a mother figure android looking after an ostensibly human girl and providing a model for the way that these robots can serve just as important a role to humans as flesh and blood family members can. We had a story of species being bridged together! Only- no. The kid was an android the whole time. So it's just an android that looks like a kid being adopted by an android that looks like an adult, suddenly feeling like a pale imitation of human relationships just because. Because that's what humans do and that's what they're doing. In a smarter game, like Nier, this would have been a branching off point to explore the significance of inherent human societal functions and what those roles look like dragged out of context and purpose.(And Automata actually has a scene which does exactly that) But in Detroit, managed by David Cage, it just feels vapid in way he clearly wasn't planning it to be. You took the human out of the relationship and, despite the heavy lifting the actors put in to make it work, sullied it with misplaced and badly judged context which served as nothing more than a 'gotcha'. Nothing was elevated about the emotion or meaning of the story, all that has changed is that significance has been drained. I knew that a twist could be disappointing and eye rolling, but 'Detroit: Become Human' was the first time I realised that a twist could be so bad it's actively harmful to the narrative. Who let David shoot his own script in the foot like this?

On the otherside of the fence we have Death Stranding and the mystery surrounding it's seemingly straightforward twist. By the subsequent credits of the game there are still lingering mysteries hanging around the finer points of the story, alongside that uneasy sense from your last strange encounter with Cliff. Key point of frowning for me came when Amelie lectured Sam throughout the credits about her history, and stated matter-of-factly "A pulled the trigger twice that day." What day? What trigger? Did I miss something? I'm sure I was paying attention. Why did you say that like I knew what you were talking about? It's literally the credits right now, so should I know what she's talking about? I was in a bit of a tail-spin moment. And as with any good twist, that oddity compounded with other clear inconsistences that rubbed me the wrong way. You have Die Hardman carrying a gun onto an afterlife-beach (something you can only do if an item has significant emotional importance to the person's beach) stating that he can do it because the gun is loaded with Hematic rounds from Sam's blood. Oh is that how that works? So I can just slather my blood on anything and drag it onto a beach? Or is he wantonly lying to avoid questions? Or the way Amelie takes to Sam as a literal baby despite them apparently having no relation to one another. Why does she care so much? Or Die Hardman's tear strewn confession to you about his murder of Cliff, which comes across as an apology for some strange reason.

Of course, the real 'smoking gun' (pun intended) comes once we learn the name of Cliff's comatose wife. Lisa Bridges. A real kick-in-balls "Wait, what?" moment which rocks the seemingly straight forward narrative. In the subsequent hour it's revealed that those visions throughout the game were not those of BB-28, now named Lou, but in fact those of Sam. Sam was the first BB, Cliff was his father, and the reason why Cliff is so invested in Sam's journey is because he's hunting him, but he doesn't recognise his son grown up because he died when he was still a baby! It's a brilliant cog-fits-into-place moment for the way it makes every last bit of confusing narrative make sense and enriches the tale for it. Suddenly Cliffs last interaction "They said you were Sam Porter- but you're Sam Bridges" makes perfect sense- he stops fighting because he realises that Sam is his son. Amelie's weird talk about shooting things and Die Hardman's gun lies- were because that was the revolver Amelie used to kill them. And the reason why Amelie is so attached to Sam is because she was the one who shot him and his father and was trying to make amends by raising Sam. It's a perfectly neat and, crucially, satisfying twist which wraps up everything, and which is danced around the entire game through clever manipulation on Kojima's part to make us think the events were more straightforward than they appeared to be. (And given Kojima's past with writing narratively convenient family trees, the misdirection was utterly necessary for the reveal to land as well as it does.)

So there we have two twists based around a revelation of who a character actually is, but one being straightforward yet a total mess to the emotional heart of the narrative and they other being strewn with misdirection and intentional confusion for the reward of ultimate story satisfaction. I hope that space between the two extremes shows you a bit of why I find Detroit's twist so revolting, not just for what it did but for what it could have achieved. I mean to be honest, David just wanted to have his special little moment to match Scott Shelby's reveal from Heavy Rain, Detroit didn't need any sort of twist whatsoever. But in his hubris I think David botched more than he could have ever dreamed and sullied my last vestige of faith in him as a writer director. Let him stick to bringing teams together and organising; that's where his talents- wait, Star Wars Eclipse is slated for a 2026-27 release date? Snap, guess he sucks at that too...