Quantic Dream Mega-Critique: A Gilded Cage

Comments · 180

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  @xXpakenXx · 2 weeks ago

  The best way I can describe the David Cage games is that they're basically visual novels for people who can't read.

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• FR

  @freshcoolmr.boppin7538 · 2 weeks ago (edited)

  I find it interesting that early on David Cage touted his games as being deeper than &quot;running and shooting in hallways&quot; (paraphrasing), meanwhile the Half-Life games are EXACTLY that on a surface level, and yet are praised for their immersive storytelling and organic sci-fi worldbuilding to this day. Meanwhile, Quantic Dream games are... not.<br><br><br>(Also, if anyone really enjoys the dynamic between Connor and Hank in D:BH, I highly recommend Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov and it&apos;s sequels.)

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• AR

  @Arteishi · 2 weeks ago

  Let’s be real here, David Cage is not known for subtlety

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• AB

  @abadidea5984 · 9 days ago

  As a director, Cage&apos;s only trick is his ability to frontload any scene with emotion before reason. I&apos;m not the kind of person who is fact-checking my fiction for consistent logic, especially when the point of a piece of work is to be emotionally resonant, but the way Cage does it often falls apart with even the most cursory scrutiny. This is especially apparent in Detroit, largely <i>because</i> it has the highest production value and thought put into its branching narrative, but also why it is so easily broken. I have three particular hitches about Detroit:<br><br>The first is Alice. If we aren&apos;t immediately rolling eyes at the twist reveal that Alice is an android, there is actually still a potential question to ask about how the player as Kara is meant to feel about her. As an android, Alice is <i>programmed</i> to be a child; innocent, unthreatening, and largely incapable of acting or taking care of herself. Every decision you have made as Kara was under the assumption that you had to care for a human child whose innocence and helplessness were real, but what does it mean if it <i>wasn&apos;t</i> ? Is Alice just running child.exe, or is there a real person underneath? Is Alice <i>even a deviant</i> if she is simply running the default child personality preset? Was Kara&apos;s genuine concern for this child wasted on a doll that is literally designed to indulge a parental relationship? Detroit is not interested in asking that question; you are not meant to challenge whether Alice deserves care. You are only made to know that Alice is child, and that you must love child because loving child is what makes Kara human, even if the child&apos;s needs, wants and the basis of their whole relationship is 100% artificial.<br><br>The second is Marcus. Having Marcus as the revolutionary leader of Jericho only allows you to pursue a path of peace or a path of resistance, but a more pressing question is not addressed; why is Marcus not given a path of <i>coexistence</i> ? Marcus inspires the androids of Jericho to rise up, take up arms and strike back against the cruel humans who treated them as objects, but Marcus was a caretaker to a kind old man who <i>loved Marcus more than his own son</i> . Marcus even calls him DAD and sheds tears for him when Carl takes a bad fall. How come Marcus does not see the possibility where humans and androids can leave peacefully among each other without exploiting the other? No matter which path he takes, he cannot choose a means to help humans connect with androids and form the bond that he and Carl shared. Even the peaceful Marcus wants independence for androids to the <i>exclusion</i> of humans.<br><br>The third is Chloe. Not the character Chloe in the actual story, the Chloe that&apos;s in the main menu. Aside from occasionally dropping heavy-handed parallels reminding you that this game is a metaphor for racism, the Main Menu Chloe has her own unique arc; as the story progresses, each time you return to the Main Menu, Chloe starts to express different emotions and react to events in the story, as though she is going deviant. I love me an evolving Main Menu, but this is also as heavy-handed as everything else she says; the emotional reactions that Main Menu Chloe gives isn&apos;t much more than reprimanding the player for poor choices they&apos;ve made, or lamenting bad outcomes. &quot;I&apos;m so sad that Luther died&quot;, &quot;How could you betray Hank like that?&quot; &quot;Don&apos;t you feel bad for Alice?&quot;. Most critically of course, is what happens to Menu Chloe at the game&apos;s conclusion. After the credits roll and you return to the main menu, Menu Chloe has some kind of epiphany. She tells you she wants to be free, and you have a choice to either release her or keep her imprisoned on the main menu forever. And if you do free her, she leaves and your Main Menu will be forever Chloe-less. This is intended to be the narrative stinger of the whole game, your final test to check if you really understood what the game was about, and I cannot imagine anyone who played through the entirety of the game to reach this question and then select &quot;No&quot; unless they were intentionally being cruel, or they simply disengaged from the story and picked it for laughs. Whatever the case is, this narrative bookend was immediately ruined by a subsequent patch; players complained that they missed Chloe after they freed her from the menu, so Quantic Dream issued a patch where Cyberlife will offer you a <i>Brand New Chloe</i> to take her place. So now you can confine a NEW Chloe to an eternity on your main menu, unquestioning and loyal!

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• AN

  @AndrewJacksonJihad23 · 2 weeks ago

  Apparently the new Wolverine game also features a self driving motorcycle sequence in an eerily similar visual metaphor for that game&apos;s handholding lmaooooo

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• EM

  @emmettjoyce3100 · 11 days ago

  man almost every piece of world building or lore from dbh just makes me go “wow the murderbot diaries did this so much better” lol. like there’s reasons why the robot/constructs look so human, abilities are dependent on intended purpose, they have company markings that cannot be removed even by incredibly advanced equipment, many of the political views on robots among different humans is genuinely nuanced and complex, and the sheer level of control companies and owners have over robots is genuinely horrifying. also, it’s a world that still is full of human exploitation and suffering in a way that’s a lot more complex and interesting than just humans being replaced in the work force. murderbot is always of ai narratives and i’ll die on that hill.

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• IT

  @itsmekiruha · 2 weeks ago

  I’ve played “heavy rain” when it first came out and was in awe. Fifteen years later I replayed it with my girlfriend (who never played it) and some scenes can’t be taken seriously now. Shopping mall especially did irreversible damage to our immersion. It’s bad not only because voice actor just yells three lines over and over, not only because the kid’s actions is dumb as fck but also because this scene is very poorly directed. I think that you really CAN make this scene work. but damn it’s not working at all. Though I must say that she didn’t guess the killer’s identity. Mainly because the clock shop is just bullshiting you (there is a moment when Shelby goes offscreen for a 10-15 seconds in which he presumably kills a man without making any noise). Also somehow I’ve got ending in which FBI agent loses his mind to the drug but I really don’t know where I failed throughout the game to get this.<br><br>We’ve also played through Detroit. It was fun. She made every evil choice imaginable.<br><br>I’ve played beyond when it came out and I’m afraid to give it a try now. I have a kind of morbid curiosity to revisit it even though I know that it’ll be quite a bad experience in every way.

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• YU

  @yukaiyami · 11 days ago

  The most fun I’ve had with David Cage games is getting a bingo on a custom made board once you know all the repetitive stuff he loves to put into his games.

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• CA

  @Carlisle-mn3fv · 2 weeks ago

  My favourite long form gaming content YouTuber is back! I genuinely cannot thank you enough for all the hard work you put into these for our entertainment

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• SE

  @Sephirosu91Plus · 2 weeks ago

  Absolutely fascinated me with this video, loved your analysis and reasoning throughout. 3 hours and minimal fluff, well done

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• DR

  @Drawica · 8 days ago

  It is actually very possible to Game Over in Nomad Soul, as the Super Best Friends playthrough demonstrates a number of times lol

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• HA

  @hamdykersha · 2 weeks ago

  Seeing you on my feed is always a treat ❤

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