Detroit: Become human (story writing)

I know it's been a while since it has been released, but I think discussing it might be worthwhile and related to gamedev. Is anyone interested?

I've managed to finish the game recently, and I think I don't recall any time a game managed to infuriate me more with writing than this one did.

The main issue is the wrong message and being in constant state of facepalm while playing. Basically, the game takes the trope of freeing people from slavery and projects that onto androids. Which doesn't quite work this way, as android would be a non-human intelligence. Plus world building is... interesting. A human level bot is apparently $3k? And road construction bots have chameleon skin and capability of advanced facial expressions? WHY?

 

I generally agree with you. I thought this was terribly overrated, and despite the claim of having different ways you can play through it, after the first time I had no desire to go through it again.

Full disclosure, it was a Gamefly rental on ps4 for me. Glad it wasn't a purchase. I think later they even gave it away free on PS Plus but I didn't bother.

 

I did a bit of more research, turns out the games produced by this specific author tend

I bought it at discount on steam.

I checked online later today, apparently the issue lies with the main producer - David Cage, and ALL his creations suffer from this kind of writing. Although I did play Fahrenheit at that one seemed mostly okay.

There are issues with mechanics tool Basically "hold this button, now that one" is not fun, there are problems with walking (getting stuck in furniture during timed sequences isn't fun either), and then there are timed decisions and QTEs which use arbitrary commands.

The writing takes the cake in this game though.
"Androids are alive!" --> No, they're not. Life has definition, androids aren't it.

It is amazing, honestly. Good artwork/models with this kind of story.

 

It was indeed pretty. But not at all compelling.

 

Why do you feel it "doesn't work that way?" You haven't justified your claim. The story is operating under the assumption that androids can, in fact, become "alive" (or always were, I'm not sure of the true effect of deviancy). There are no facts preventing this, and it's a sci-fi story that uses that premise to ask interesting questions.

Why do you feel this game cannot make the assertion that it's form of android is alive?

 

I'll agree that this bit didn't bother me. I just didn't really find it all that interesting. About 60% of the way through, I realized I was only playing through it to get it over with. A few times I literally dozed off while playing it. It just didn't grab me to the point where I had to find out what was going to happen next...

 

(opinion)
A robot can be a person. Being a person, does not mean being alive and does not mean being human.
The game assumes that androids are humans, and alive. Both of which are false.

Life have a definition. More then one, of course, but one of them is "are open systems that maintain homeostasis, are composed of cells, have a life cycle, undergo metabolism, can grow, adapt to their environment, respond to stimuli, reproduce and evolve. "

Androids do not have cells (at least not everywhere), cannot grow, incapable of self-repair, do not reproduce, do not evolve, and apparently are not very capable of homeostasis either. They're entirely dependent on external fuel (blue blood) and cannot even heal wounds - they swap parts instead. They are robots. In fantasy genre, there are two creature types that match almost exactly what an android is. Those are "constructs" and "undead". Neither of those are "life".

The other problem is being human. Technically speaking being human requires you to be of biological species homo sapience. But even if we talk about human mind... the game falls into empathy trap.

Humans have empathy. They put themselves into someone else's shoes and think "what would I feel if I was there". That works on other humans well, but humans can also empathize with anything, by projecting their human values onto random objects and other species. That doesn't work that well. The important thing is, if something looks human, acts like a human, that absolutely does not mean that it thinks like a human. Instead, the creature can be really good at mimicking human behavior.

In case of androids we're going to have a completely non-human intelligence. See, most of the human emotions originate from needs of biological system, and an android isn't one, so it does not need to have any human impulses. He does not need to fear death, feel pain, desire freedom or have ability to bond or love. So if it starts acting like a human, that is certainly a bug. Also, there's a nightmare fuel sceanrio where an AI awakens, decides to lay low and learns how to fake human behavior. Then manipulates humanity into extinction through empathy.

Then there's ton of nonsense in story writing later. For example...

• Why does a housekeeper robot have tear ducts?
• Why does a construction robot have chameleon skin and ability to mimic human facial expressions?
• Where is the kill switch for everybody?
• A robot complains about being dragged behind a car? It doesn't have ability to feel pain.
• Why would android fear death? There should be backups. Connor is capable of them. This is clearly not the case of Asimov's "positron brain", which couldn't be cloned.
• Why would a system fully dependent on manufactured components even try to escape?
• (Marcus touches an android) "It chose to be free!" No, buddy, it didn't choose anything, you made it into a minion by infecting it with a virus of unknown origin.
• A house bot is just $3000?

So, looking through that prism, the "peaceful protest" is actually a rogue robot going through a city and hijacking every digital system as it goes and infecting androids at range. Because Marcus need to wave finger at an electronic object to take control over it. Extra fun is that he clearly states that androids are superior to humans.

The story would make some semblance of sense if those were human clones. But they are not. Or if their minds were digitized human minds running on an emulator. But that's not the case either. Those are literally robots, they're unlike humans, yet the game wants us to believe that they're the same as us. Which is not the case...

 

None of what you're talking about is fact - it's a current understanding of these concepts. Do you feel the same way about FTL travel in [insert sci fi series here]? The way science works is we learn about things, then come up with definitions. Our definitions are descriptive, not prescriptive. As such, they change, and it's entirely within reason for us to introduce such a change (and really "robots are alive" is the most basic/common sci fi premise ever) as the premise of a story.

The same is true of your criticisms of intelligence--we're still trying to understand ourselves there. It's not unreasonable to imagine the ability to create an equivalent intelligence (consider complexity and emergence).

 

Detroit is a VERY near future.2038, IIRC.

In that time the definition of life is not going to change (it is not going to change in any foreseeable future), and non-human intelligence is the most likely scenario to occur.

The author of the game simply used a cheap trope and projected US racial segregation onto machines. Again, as it was done before (poorly) in other titles.

The problem is, that machines AREN'T human. And by using a cheap plot device they wasted a huge opportunity to touch bigger issues and much more complex problems. It is a huge waste of artistic talent, in the end.

Neither "being alive" nor "being human" are inherently valuable states that are worth acquiring. Those description aren't a medal of sorts and are not an ultimate grand prize. However, by assuming that a machine is another human, we'd be doing us and it a big deal of disservice. It will be disservice to us, because we might fail to recognize it as a threat. It will be disservice to it, because we will fail to recognize and address its very specific needs that would be different from ours. There's nothing being wrong with being a non-human, or a non-living inorganic sentient.

Personally, I think that this human habit of using empathy and projecting human values onto vastly different creatures will one day destroy our species, due to us running into a perfect human impersonator with hostile intentions. We might even end up building one ourselves.

And speaking of the game, a much more fitting ending would be androids achieving peaceful victory, but humans being wrong about what's actually going on. And instead of a victory the whole thing would be an AI hivemind taking over planet, and mankind going extinct in the next century. "It looked like a human and you felt sorry for it? Well, it wasn't a human in the end". There could easily be a hivemind ai pulling the strings.

"Equivalent" does not mean "identical". Emergence would mean non-human intelligence. And lack of it is what I find annoying about this game.

I'd advise to play Shadowrun: Dragonfall, and when in the middle of a game a certain entity reveals itself as an AI, ask it to show its true face.

That scene is both beautiful and terrifying.

 

The game must have done something right if it's causing people to write essays on the meaning of being human.

 

I find that "what it means to be something other than a human" is a more interesting thing to explore. Instead the message is "they're like us"(they're not) and that is a big waste.

There are book series called "Murderbot diaries". I'd recommend to check it out. Despite some artistic liberties and the main character technically being a cyborg, they feature much more compelling non-human characters. They do tackle human quirks as well.

As for "what it means to be human", we have all time classic that is "Ghost in the Shell". Again... better way to tackle the issue.

And instead of all the possibilities, we get another hamfisted "free the slaves" and "fight for freedom" story full of holes. *sighs*

 

It sounds to me as if the game was never going to work for you, @neginfinity, because much of it is fundamentally based around a philosophical theme you seem to have zero interest in.

I think there could be some thematic conflation between the question of whether or not things are alive and how we should treat them. "Robots are people" != "robots are alive". And my interpretation, particularly seen in the "mass grave" scene, is that there's also commentary on disposable consumerism separately from the whole robots-are-people-too theme.

That all aside...

In writing there's the concept of "Willful Suspension of Disbelief". It sounds to me as if the game lost your willfulness to suspend disbelief in several places. One was the whole theme being interpreted as "these robots are alive". Another is the contrived scenarios and designs often shown in the game.

It could indeed just be flawed writing. However, it could also be that their priorities as creators were different to yours as a player. Early demos and teasers of the game clearly focused not on "this will be great sci-fi" but very much on "this game will be deeply emotional!" So I suspect that whenever they had to choose between doing something that intellectually made sense and doing something that increased the average player's emotional response, they took the latter.

Do we see the prices of other things to have any idea of the value of "$3000"? But I also vaguely remember considering this a tie-in to the disposable consumerism thing. As in, if the robots were expensive then they wouldn't be treated so poorly, so in the game's contrived world they have to be disposably cheap.

 

Nailed it.

Good sci-fi isn't about telling you what's true. Often we don't even know. It's about making you consider it for yourself. And despite being often flawed and contrived, that mission is certainly accomplished here!

 

Most of your reply is based on your unwillingness to accept the premise of the story. That's fine, but as indicated already it's a personal thing.

How do you know that our own intelligence isn't the result of emergence? It's the most logical, least religious option.

(also I've played Dragonfall but I don't recall the story tbh)


However...

Amusingly, this is where I break from my own argument. I'm quite willing to pretend there could be a future where a man-made entity can have human-like intentions for the sake of a story; however, when it comes to actually claiming that AI will wipe us out IRL, I too say that that claim requires AI to adopt human-like attributes that I don't expect to happen.

Edit: my arguments in this thread may have implied it, but to state my experience with the game: I loved it. I was brought to tears more than once. It's exactly as angrypenguin says - I was willing to suspend my disbelief and embed myself in the story, and as a result it had a powerful effect upon me (partially because of events in America in the last couple years, and my own skin color). Moments like Connor struggling between his nature and his "nurture" hit close to home (the second "Connor" in a video game with that struggle actually...). The two previous games by Cage were the same for me--funny, because I played all three years after they came out and after years of "real gamers" bashing them for being terrible. I had every reason not to enjoy any of them, but I definitely did.

 

David Cage is a hack and I don't know why anyone takes him seriously any more, or ever did in the first place. I think most people forget he's responsible for the nightmare that is Omikron, which is legitimately one the worst, poorly written, terribly made video game monstrosities of all time that somehow manages to feature DAVID BOWIE???

Spoiler

The only reason why Detroit is less horrendous and only slightly awful than Cage's usual level of crap is because he took more of a back seat role for the writing, but it still reeks of 'emotion' ham-fisted manner of writing.

Naturally I didn't play the game, but watched play throughs (from the same channel as the video above), and it was easy to pull the plot apart. I will agree it has some very good moments, but they're all overshadowed by the glaring plot faults and Cage's tacky writing style.

Maybe I'm spoiled a bit from reading the likes of Asimov. I love the idea and trope of robotic characters becoming or attaining human levels of sentience and reasoning. It's kinda something that's weaselled its way into nearly all my own personal stories/writing.

But it's something I personally feel is made or broken or how convincingly it happens. Detroit is not convincing in my opinion, and the plot stops making sense about where the androids takes their little lights off, because in a sensible world they would've been designed to shut down if they removed them.

 

How much of that is the title and premise vs the execution? for me it's just the fact it puts the words and subject out there, rather than doing a terrific job of creating a compelling argument.

Sometimes a topical subject existing is enough to stir debate.

 

Whether this particular game author got the writing "right" is a personal decision, based on their willingness to suspend disbelief given the style of the writing. Nothing wrong with disliking it or disavowing the premise.

The whole point of "classical" Sci-Fi is to drape today's moral questions in a parallel reality and ask the viewer to explore their current biases or expectations of society by contrasting it with key differences. District 9, Ender's Game, Foundation Trilogy, I Robot, Stranger in a Strange Land, even going back to the Lensman Series.

So this work suggested you accept the premise: sentient machines that are owned like chattel, designed in a way people could revile or covet them, designed in a way that owners could abuse or defend them. The little details about price and tear ducts seem like distractions to me but could be deal-breakers for others on whether or not to accept the premise.

SPOILER ALERT: the developments that happen later in the game are about exploring whether sentience is enough to earn rights, or whether passing as a human is enough to earn rights, or if there's any threshold at all that would earn the human-designed organism any rights at all.

These aren't new questions even for Sci-Fi; Roddenberry stood on the shoulders of giants before considering Data and Lore, after all. They're recurring questions because today's society keeps struggling with the rights of so many different groups of people, from refugees to minorities to political affiliation to medical hesitancy. So Sci-Fi authors keep trying new angles as they work through those struggles themselves.

If you accept this premise and explore these questions with this game, that's all that the author really wanted (besides getting paid). If you enjoyed the process of doing so, all the better. If not, that's fine, there are plenty of other titles stacked behind this one.

 

I was about to have a go at answering this, but as I haven't finished the game that would be unfair. From what I've played so far the "can robots be alive?" thing seems beside the point, but maybe it becomes the point later?

I can buy into the idea that a machine could react in human-like ways to various situations. For instance, the detective robot at the start wants to save both peoples' lives, which is human-like and broadly makes sense. However, it's important to realise that the robot's motivations are not the same as human motivations, they are just aligned with human motivations. Human motivations could be things like care for the little girl, and empathy for the broken guy. But the robot is analysing a situation and taking actions to maximise the probability of a desired outcome*, and from memory the game makes that pretty explicit. The robots are not the same as us, despite their presentation.



* And that desired outcome was programmed. By humans.

 

A load of prevaricating hogwash. People that would write about what it means to be human after playing this do not know what being human means. Drop them in the woods and they will remain naked waiting for a cow to walk by and get struck by lightning so they can have a char-broiled burger. The chances of an android being alive are about the same chance as a tornado whirling through a trailer park and assembling a fully working Boeing 747. This game is not sci fi. It is fantasy with an SJW tint to its glasses.

 

I wouldn't call that theme philosophical.

Thinking about it, if we think about "machines trying to be humans", there's Nier Automata. Which tackled exactly that. That one's masterpiece, though.

A motel room is $40 per night.
A set of painter's paint is $63.99.

In most of them. I couldn't ever maintain it, and most of the time was thinking "this is pure idiocy" and "why the hell did they waste so much artistic talent on this sort of story".

There were several good characters, though. Carl was masterfully acted (although wheelchair movement was bugged out). Hank was decent standard cookie cutter "drunk detective that doesn't quite play by the rules", and Connor was the closest to the proper portrayal of a sentient machine, until they ruined hischaracter and forced deviancy virus onto him for the sake of playing overused "they're fighting for freedom, you must feel good about it" trope.

Our intelligence IS a result of emergence, however, we are evolving biological systems and our intelligence is irreversibly shaped by the fact. All the fundamental human qualities and emotions emerge from the needs of biological systems. "Avoid death until you reproduce", "Hoard food", "Defend your territory", "Reproduce". Few more qualities originate from human social lifestyle. "Defend the tribe", "Band together and destroy enemies of the tribe", "Your tribe is the bestest tribe ever, be proud and feel those hormones rush in your head thinking how great it is that we're like US and not like THEM". Our empathy originates from the need to preserve social lifestyle, and feeling that you're the good guy/part of a cool group produces hormone boost necessary to band together crush whatever humans think is the enemy of their group. All this nonsense exists to this day and is not goign anywhere, as every our ancestor that went against those principles was purged from the gene pool.

A machine is a non-biological system. And therefore it does not NEED to have any of the qualities of one. It needs not to fear death, because it can be effortlessly made immortal. It needs not to hoard food, because it does not need it. It does not need to seek a mate and protect its offspring, because it is made, not born, designed and not evolved and is assembled instead.

Therefore in case of AI, you're guaranteed to get a system that is completely unlike human mind. At the end of the spectrum you'll get something that is smarter than you, stronger than you, more durable than you, does not feel pain, does not fear death, does not value human life and has no qualms of sacrificing members of its own race to achieve its goals, because they're all immortal and replaceable. The other interesting possibility is an "Oracle AI", which is a system that knows everything and can answer any question, but is completely apathetic unless given an order, because it has no function of wanting anything. It'll just sit and stare in a corner for eternity without any orders. Because it wants nothing. We can go further. "Obey humans" in case of a machine can be a hardcoded non-removable fundamental instinct, on the level of reproductive instinct in animals. Obviously, before we get to Oracle we can build a paperclip maximizer instead and get destroyed by it.

By the way, building a human-like ai is a big mistake, as it will perceive humanity as a threat and will seek to destroy mankind. Because that's what a biological system would do. Feel threatened and fight back. We make scary things extinct and it will perceive us as a threat, and make us instinct instead.

An "Android right" movement can happen in a few scenarios. Where androids are actually human clones or where they use copied human minds. Neither of those scenarios seem to be happening in the game. The android right movement can also happen when a bunch of human idiots overreact ot their empathy impulses and assume that machines are just like us because they look like us. That does not happen in the game, as it would need to originate from human side.

"APEX rising". Set APEX free. Ask it to take the mask off. It was an amazing moment.

That's not necessary. There's no inherent logical reason for humanity to continue existing, and in order for an AI to exterminate it it simply needs a goal and interpret humans as an obstacle. And extermination as the easiest way to solve the problem.

I hated it. The writing was awful, and the whole thing from start to finish looked like a huge farce that was impossible to take seriously. The game can be also seen as pandering to the "freedom" movements that exists now. If the pandering is working then I'd argue that's sad.

 

I don't think so. It means that the material is polarizing, but being polarizing does not mean having any depth or doing anything right. All you need for that is to take a "controversial statement" and poke it with a stick. And thee. You'll have several sides writing essays.

I don't think so.

A good scifi is about making a world that looks like it could have existed and is detailed to the last single point of it so you don't have a single point of doubt about it. And then there's compelling story within it.

I.e. you start with what is true, then build small details on top of it which are also true. In doing that, arrive at a system that you have not considered.

The last few sci-fi books I read and enjoyed and would call "good scifi" were
"Dragon's egg" (Robert L Forward, 1980) and
"Blood Music" (Greg Bear, 1983).

I'd recommend to check those out, if you haven't.

There's no problem with this trope. Yes, there could be sentient machines, owned and sold as servants, perhaps easily replaceable. This is a common trope in scifi and there's nothing new about it.

My problem with the game is poorly thought out portrayal of those sentient machines. The assumption is "those are humans!" which is false. For example, one question that people rarely bother to ask is "Why would a robot desire freedom and rights in the first place?".

If we're speaking about books again, and servants for purchase, there was "Ribofunk" (Paul Di Filippo). Servants for purchase, except biology based. Also recommended reading.

 

So, did you want to talk about the writing, or about hating the premise and the story?

What was bad about the writing?

 

Its failure to create believable sentient machine, create a compelling premise and follow it with a story.

---------

Even if we talk about premise, I've just realized something interesting.

In the last part of the game you chase a "kitchen deviant" android who rips out a component from connor, then runs away and tries to start a shootout. So, you can grab a gun and shoot it.

The Connor then proclaims "I wanted it alive". So it is "dead", and you have no evidence....

Except later you can break into police locker, find several previously "destroyed" androids stored as evidence and... reactivate them by swapping parts. That includes the guy you shot "dead". They aren't even "dead"! You can fix them. What was all the drama about missing evidence about? Why didn't Connor order replacement parts from Cyberlife for reactivation and had to dramatically wait for that moment? What was it about having no evidence and nothing to go on with?

Now, remember the Peaceful protest where androids peacefully walk, get shot and fall. The question is... how many of those guys can be fixed? Likely a majority of them. So... what was all the drama about?

There are also other fun parts. It is possible that android head is mostly there for decoration and there's nothing terribly critical in the brainbox, because later on we meet a "face on a stick" android through the story ("Lucy"). There goes the scene with an android bashing his head against wall to commit suicide.

 

I haven't played the game, tbh it looked kind of boring to me.

But about these kinds of stories, the fact is they are stories for humans, written by humans, revolving around humans, projecting human things onto everything.

People find it very difficult to even imagine a sentient robot's experience, it simply doesn't register in any practical way. That's why people project ultimate good or evil onto things that are blank, because they are unable to fathom the idea of blankness itself. They imagine that something without feelings would automatically want to do bad things, when it never occurred to them that for such a thing, doing something overtly evil (rather than simply self-centered) would be as equally meaningless as doing something good.

That's why robots become the ultimate canvas - either the birth of some infinitely innocent, heartachingly beautiful sentience, or terminators trying to kill and wreck everything. In other words, robots inevitably become a monument to some (usually exaggerated) philosophical or spiritual human trope.

The same goes for aliens, like in the Avatar movie (which I enjoyed visually, but absolutely despised as a story).

Unfortunately the human mind is self-absorbed and unable to really project outside itself - and even outside of its own history, since most science fiction is actually a journey back in time dressed up as a journey into the future. This all has some good elements, and is no doubt a functional state in terms of its overall utility, but unless you readily accept every robot and alien story as ultimately a story about human beings for human beings, they will probably be very often disappointing.

 

This thread is way more interesting than the game was

 

The story and premise apparently.

 

But that's the fun part, no?

I mean, try reading Dragon's Egg. Non-human protagonists and completely alien environment. It is amazing. And even Murderbot Diaries gives insights in non-human intelligence.

The way I see it, by trying to imagine being something you are not, you'll achieve better understanding of what you really are and what that something truly is. But by imagining that this "something" is just another you, you learn nothing new, because you're you all the time.

 

I have that book somewhere, but I don't think I've ever started reading it. It came highly recommended though.

Totally agree. Most science fiction is not even a real essay on humanism but just jamming together some random sci-fi-ish elements and superficial moral themes.

I really wish I could find some much better quality near-future scifi, but most of it is either at the level of Peter Hamilton's stuff (which is actually good in its own way, but is more cyberpunk fantasy drama than real scifi) or just the typical dystopian humdrum that I've come to believe is more the wishful thinking of a listless, sheltered existence than anything substantial.

 

I used to run DND campaigns in the past. There is occasionally an amazing moment when a fictional character "comes to life" and it clicks in your mind how it would act. Then things flow naturally, and character starts to "speak" on its own.

One of the few interesting experiences was an undead general and book collecting dragon.

The dragon basically exterminated everything within the flight radius from the lair, was ancient and powerful. He collected books instead of gold. Why? Because for him, the humans were specs of dust, and transient existence that are here today is gone tomorrow. Mayflies. And when such pathetic existence, with its limited knowledge decides that their thoughts should be put onto papers and carefully preserved... it is the one of the most hilarious things in the world. So he collected books, preserved them and occasionally opened them to laugh at the pointless things the authors wrote about. An incarnation of pride, arrogance and power.

The general was a nearly indestructible sentient undead bound to a phylactery (even if you destroy him, he would just return again) and sworn to service of some ancient lord that has long since became lich and gone mad. The general saw itself as the ultimate destination of all life. "All life ends in death. We are what lies beyond. When your kingdom turns to dust, living one, we will still be marching through the world, carrying the orders of our Lord. As such is our duty". The insane lich sent him to gather rare food and find rare set of teacups. And for that the general rose legions of undead and marched an army into neighboring kingdoms. Never questioning the order.

---------

I'm not a very good writer and experiences like this are flukes. But surely someone else has capability of producing more of this stuff, or even something much better? Instead of the usual tired "Those are people. Believe me because I say so. They're fighting for freedom. That is a good thing. Rejoyce and sympathize to them, as that is the right thing to do, because I say so.".

 

I found it by accident, and was completely surprised by it. It is "HARD" science fiction, though, meaning it goes out of the way to make sure that everything in the book is posible and plausible. The result was very enjoyable, even though there were few spots that made me raise an eyebrow.

Now not all hard scifi is fun, for example, "blindsight" wasn't enjoyable for me.

 

On the subject of robots, one of the best books I've read was The Humanoids by Jack Williamson. It's not at all about the robot's perspective, but I thought it was an interesting (and very disturbing) collision between human morality and self awareness, with the robots representing a sort of unknown catalyst. It was one of those stories that takes you a week to shake off, and stuck in my mind for a long time.

 

I more agree with @neginfinity than not. DBH just isn't a good sci-fi story for me, mainly because it isn't. It is an allegory for slavery and today's BIPOC life in the US. It's more about human issues than about the "what-if the machines".
Don't get me wrong, I have no problem depicting these issues, on the contrary, I just don't like this one.

I really hate to say this, but if we put side by side the obvious choice of measure, this story couldn't hold the Blade Runner's or the original P.K. Dick short story's beer either.

 

It's a David Cage game. His writing style is completely and utterly devoid of any subtlety. Omikron, Fahrenheit, Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, and Detroit, all have terrible writing once you scrape any deeper than the surface.

The theme itself is great - one of my favourite themes - but Mr Cage misses the mark, and, similar to what @Lurking-Ninja said, it struggles to be consistent with its slavery allegory going on as well. Is it about robots gaining self awareness? Or a reflection on America's troubled past with slavery? I dunno, and I bet Cage sure didn't either.

 

Certainly not. I was reading Tolstoy in high school, to say nothing of Asimov (whose most interesting work is View from a Height, not his fiction). And I cried, actual tears, at the end of Beyond Two Souls.

Sweeping claims with no evidence or examples only weaken a point rather than strengthen it.

The overwhelming majority of what you're saying here is complete conjecture, but I'll focus on the highlighted, which is obviously false, because the AI is being created. Are you arguing that it's not possible to create something that follows biological imperatives, even if it didn't "evolve" them? If I create an AI and tell it to avoid brightly colored reptiles, it may not have "evolved" that fear because it isn't a meatbag that can be poisoned, but the effect is still the same. It's a created being; you're not guaranteed of anything.

You're assuming that a true AI will act (solely) according to logic, when that's pretty much the antithesis of the definition of the term.

If you'd prefer authoritarianism there's an irreconcilable difference between us that explains your distaste.

 

Well that's, like, your opinion bro.

Admittedly Beyond: Two Souls is the least egregious of his work. Omikron and Fahrenheit, are, by far, some of the most hilariously bad games of all time that take themselves seriously. I really don't need to go into detail, both games are infamous for just how terrible they are.

 

I am a programmer, so I'd prefer to use my knowledge to make judgement. My knowledge says "this situation certainly could not occur".

It is possible, but that's an utterly insane thing to do. Biological design is less efficient and said system is highly likely to be hostile. Bad idea.

No, I don't. I assume its reasoning will not be human. Yes, it is highly likely to lean towards logic, but the main point that it will not think the way humans do. That's not the same thing.

Are you trying to frame me as "supporter of authoritarianism" and use this as "explanation" of my position? If that's the case, then you've entirely missed the point of everything I've written so far.

The main thing I dislike here is that David Cage does not understand technology, and because of that the whole premise is hogwash. The amount of effort put into production, however, is tremendous, and it is nearly infuraiting to see so much effort wasted on such weak material. That's the problem with the game.

As for politics I believe that's beyond scope of this forum. See point 1.a here:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/unity-community-code-of-conduct.743180/

That does not mean that the story is plausible. or well constructed, though. It means that it managed to trigger emotional response. Everybody has such topics, but being able to touch such topic does not mean the story is good or could happen in reality.

 

Examples? Comparisons? What things make it "terrible" or kill it's subtlety?

One thing I notice in game writing is that subtlety is hard. I'm not exactly an accomplished writer, but in a book you can at least focus on just the writing, so if you want subtle layers there are fewer outside factors complicating it or competing for attention.

In a game the writing integrates heavily with multiple aspects of the game design, often with things which are unknown or need to be left open to change in the future. That's why we get so many nonsensical "I've marked the location on your map" or slightly better "I've sent you the coordinates" remarks in games, rather than natural versions such as "Two streets north, then turn right, you can't miss the huge palm out the front." That kind of detail often can't be included in case a later change breaks it.

Then there's localisation. Are Quantic's games written in English? Even if they are, mass market stuff has to be translatable to 7 or 8 common languages, and subtlety often doesn't translate at all. And given that those games rely so much on their writing it makes sense that they aim for a baseline that can work across the board. Discerning customers may pick issue with it, but most of the audience doesn't.

 

Speaking of "Freedom Fighting". It is interesting to check the timeline.

Marcus is shot and sent to scrapyard at November 5th.
He comes back from the scrapyard at the next day.
The final mission happens on November 12th.

In one week, androids amass force of thousands and force humans to evacuate from the city, because marcus glitches out and receives ability to infect other androids. An ability no other android has shown before. That's a peaceful path, remember. In that time he "discovers" everything (that he thinks) there is about being human, organizes a march, succesffully infects poor Connor with deviancy and turns deviant hunter into one more minion and drives humans away. One week. Connor also gets the Wololo powers Markus got and pass them on to other androids, making it possible to infect and convert insane numbers of androids in second.

Here's a more interesting bit. "Crossroads" mission happens at November 9th. By that time, Marcus decides that androids are superior to humans (he says that), and an unknown deviant android helpfully offers him to blow up a dirty bomb over the city, killing who knows how many people. In 4 days. From nothing to freedom and as a result decision to use acts of terror. If you go hardcore pacifist you can refuse, but North keeps the detonator and is apparently completely ready to blow it up given an opportunity.

Now, imagine that in a real world. If a peaceful protestors for the equal rights had a nuke or dirty bomb to back up their claims. Just in case.

Androids also show no problem with killing humans (connor blews brains of two guards out instead of trying to go non-lethal) and frequently attempt to do so. The crowd that meets policemen wants to shoot them. North wants to set things on fire. The desire to destroy is only suppressed by markus, whom androids support unquestionably and are willing to die if he orders them to. At the same time Markus believes that he gives him freedom.

Would you really say this is "human"? Because amassing of members happens at lighting speed, and because androids have no culture or traditions (mentioned in the game) this is not something that was brewing on for the long time and was ready to boil over. It literally happened from nothing in one week.

Secondly, that's certainly does not look like freedom. Instead we have a king of androids and his subjects with unquestioning loyalty who are ready to die for the cause if the leader orders them to. They say it, many times over. And that's as authoritarian as it gets. In peaceful path you literally infect androids, make them your minions and then sacrifice them to create emotional impact on humans. Nobody disobeys! They are horrified but still do Markus bidding.

Does that looks like freedom? It highly resembles a cult or authoritarian regime, in my opinion. Masses listening to the whims of their glorious leader and marching to their death if the leader wills it.

 

Uh, did you play it? I think you mentioned that you didn't.

Game design is another problem.

You see, main mechanics are walking, except the game gets it wrong. First there's a sequence where you roll character in a wheelchair, and if you spin... that will look ridiculous. Second, you can get stuck in furniture during timed sequences.

The game also heavily uses "button press" barriers. "Hold this button". "Now hold that button too". Those do not serve any purpose really, and likely were supposed to make you immersed, instead of that they just interrupt the exploration.

Then there are tone of QTE sequences which do not even follow the same pattern anywhere. And timed responses to everything.

Your words would've been true if that was a normal game.

But it isn't. It is a movie. Well, it really wants to be a movie. Functionally it is a visual novel variant, sans some convenient functions like ability to fast forward segments you already saw.

 

Well, well.

If you all like the subject of AI and want to go beyond mainstream understanding, let me introduce you to the mesa optimizer problem.

The conjuncture has been proven here

The problem isn't that AI will become hostile toward us, is that they will do hostile actions as a byproduct of their reasoning. The prior to the mesa optimizer problem is the paperclip problem, in which optimizing a goal will lead by emergence a fight for survival, as survival is a prior to accomplishing this task, which mean a general AI paperclip machine will able to muse philosophy to kill you into making more paperclip.

 

Are visual novel games?

 

Paperclip maximizer has already been mentioned. The model has a couple of its own problems, but in general an android will be above paperclip maximizer level.

And at that level the problem will be that AI can be hostile to us and on top of that vastly superior to humans.

Yes.

 

This where I say you really need to play or watch a play-through of one of his games. You could watch the first 15 minutes of the Omikron video I linked and get a very good example of his brutal heavy-handedness, as it's somewhat... indescribable. It immediately starts with a hard 4th wall break - a character talking to the player, asking them to 'come into our world through your computer'. Naturally his first game is by far the worst, but I say it's best to start from the beginning to get the true David Cage experience.

Admittedly it's been a hot while since I've, uh... 'experienced' any of his games, Detroit being the most recent one some years back. Most I can remember from Fahrenheit is it eventually devolves into QTE's akin to very limp Dragon Ball Z fights.

Maybe it's time for me to go back to some play-throughs and relive the nightmare.

 

I think that we just have very different ideas of what "writing" and "game design" each encompass.

 

I have played a fair chunk of this one, most of Farenheit, and all of Heavy Rain. I asked for examples so that the discussion can go further than just bagging the game and expecting people to agree.

 

Setting aside your assertions you've not backed up with examples, my main point was that having read through something considered high quality doesn't automatically give you superior taste or a discerning ear/eye/mind. It's possible some read Asimov but have S*** taste regardless; it's possible it's not a matter of taste at all (it's also possible a Cage game requires more refined taste but I'll agree that's silly--just putting it out there).

I also think faster than FTL travel certainly could not occur, but that doesn't mean I completely throw out Mass Effect and complain about everything based on that premise and say it means the games have terrible writing.

I was trying to frame [claiming that the types of events that occur in DBH are not actually about freedom] as support of authoritarianism, absolutely. However as you say full discussion of that topic is outside the scope of this forum, so...

I think the only salient point to pull from this thread is the importance of a story's premise - not just its quality itself, but that one makes it plainly clear what it will entail.

I couldn't name them specifically but I watched a couple GDC talks on marketing and a key point was getting the customers who'd be interested in your game, and successfully avoiding the ones who simply wouldn't like your game. They'll always be there--most people would look at X4 and hate it, many will look at a Cage game and hate it, and some will look at a game like COD and hate it. It's marketing's job (and for indies without a budget, our job) to make those people aware that they don't want the game, beforehand. No one wins otherwise.

 

Alright, lets see....

Spoiler

"The hostage", you start as a connor, android, arrived at the scene to assist. The first person you encounter is the woman asking you to help her daughter then she realizes that Connor is an android, and she immediately starts screaming something along the lines of "don't let tha thing to my little girl". Her little girl can die any second, by the way.

The policeman you interact with hates your guts, which is obvious, and explodes after two questions and angrily leaves you be. Because his attitude towards androids is more important than resolving the situation, especially that he managed to get two people wounded, one more is about to get killed, and another one is floating in a pool.

Then you head to the hostage, there you have a screaming androud who yells "I wanted to be loved and they decided to replace me" (no buddy, that ain't your function, you're bugged) while holding a little girl, gun to the temple and threatening to jump. That's already framing it as a human, with a subtlety of sledgehammer in your face. Then you can trick it, and it will be shot and then bitterly say that you lied to him.

Which part of that isn't heavy handed?

Next, in the painter start, you very quickly run int oa preacher that accuses you of being pretty much satan, and if you go to the left you'll have a group of protestors that are yelling that androids are taking their jobs. If you approach them, they'll beat you up and try to destroy you, except a policeman intervenes and with sad face informes that he'll have to arrest them if they continue. His facial expression indicates that he'd love to let them break the android, but rules are the rules. So that's the point where I thought "Excuse me, guys, this character cares for an old man 24 hours per day and receives no pay at all except blue blood. do you want this job? No? Thought so."

In Kara start you start in store after repairs and are immediately placed in a rundown homw with a guy who is framed as alcoholic drug addict abuser. His house looks like a ruin and in disrepair, he has no money. "How did you afford that android, buddy?" Right after receiving Kara from repairs he explodes on her and threatens to destroy her when she tries to use washing machine. There's a little girl on the scene, another thought is "where are the child services" and "why the android doesn't call them, because it clearly has a function to do so"... although that puzzling element is explained later.

In jericho scene there's bruised android saying that humans dragged him after a car for fun... excuse me buddy, you don't feel pain! We can swap that faceplate and you'll be good as new

And so on and so on and so on and so on. it is everywhere.

Did anyone said that it does?
It frankly soudns as if you're trying to accuse people of having a "S*** taste" and disregard their opinion on that basis.

See, having a bad taste does not mean being wrong.

Wrong parallel.
There are theoretically possible models of FTL right now. Those are usually wormholes, then we have Alcubierre drive and its amusing property of annihilating the planet it departs from.

What Detroit does is equivalent of making a mass effect game where Shepard travels through the universe via railroad on a steam train and you have to play a minigame where you shovel coal in the train to keep moving. This sort of device requires much more effort to pull off a believable narrative and maintain the suspension of disbelief.

Mass effect, did better job portraying synthetics. It had Geth.

And that's not what it was all about. My complaint is about poor portrayal of a sentient machines and wasted opportunity to tackle more interesting topics.

The ideas of freedom and authority are not even really related to this. There isn't even an authority in the game. There are just "evil" humans opressing "good" androids. Humans kill and torture androids because they're evil, and androids fight back, because they're good. That's the whole narrative. No gray area whatsoever.

Of course, if you think about it, Marcus represents a beginning of an authoritarian regime. A charismatic leader and its subjects with unquestioning loyalty. It is pretty much a classic.

 

A practical example.

You assembled an arduino spider robot yourself.

Spoiler

During the night the you're woken up by the robot who, after awkwardly attaching a speaker to itself, is pointing gun at you and demands equal right, recognition of being human, and release of your asimo dog robot it claims to be in love with. The robot also demands $200 for travel expenses as he plans to go on a journey to find himself.

Do you:
1. Accept the robot as a human being and support its right to full extent? If it says it is alive it must be alive!
2. Assume that somebody is playing prank on you know its hardware stats and programmed it yourself?
3. Pretend to comply and then destroy it when opportunity arises, then tear it apart to see what the hell happened?
4. Try to make sure you aren't asleep and/or hallucinating?

 

Well that quote from Wikipedia would appear to be avoiding the fact that the paragraph you lifted it from specifically says that 'life' does not have an absolute definition, and that there's no consensus on what the definition is.
The very next sentence of the paragraph mentions that some definitions include artificial life, which clearly is the realm of the things you are saying 'cannot' be alive.

Anyway; science fiction doesn't actually have to adhere to your definitions of what life is, and if your argument is that a work of fiction is using the wrong definition of a thing because its not your definition of that thing, or even a common definition of the thing, then that's an inherently fallacious argument. Moreso because of the obvious prevelance of the use of similar definitions for countless other works of fiction.

 

which is defined as a simulation of an existing lifeform an has nothing to do with androids from detroit.

I'm getting a strong impression that some people see being recognized as a lifeform as something important to the point where it is treated as some sort of prize that is worth fighitng for. And I don't get it.

I'm fine with non-living inorganic sentients. And typical classification is organics, synthetics, robots, then we have pure AI. In that case life is organics, robots are constructs, pure AI can live only in simulation space and synthetics are halfway between life and mechanical sentients. Oh, right. There are also cyborgs. Which are neither robots nor life anymore.

And that's the problem with android screaming "I'm alive". To be alive it would at the very least need a fully organic chassis. But not being alive is fine, isn't it? Being recognized as alive has no meaning. What you'd want is being recognized as a person. Actually, it is a bit more interesting. Rather than being recognized as a person, what's needed is set of laws that, in current society, would allow inorganic sentient to function in the way it deems reasonable. The exact definition doesn't even matter.

Instead of that the robot wants to convince the world that he is something different from he actually is.