I posted this in the Review thread, but since its more general thoughts I had about the game and not just about its reviews and is not spoilery at all I thought I might as well post it here:
Having played through the game once now I kind of understand the reviews a bit more and have an opinion on whats going on.
Heavy Rain presented a vision that was relatively new at the time and showed some promise, it was taken for what it was by reviewers and did relatively well critically.
But over the years these types of games became a kind of polarizing topic, where some people had problems with the base promise of the interaction, while others where fine with it.
Detroit seems to have moved past that point. Even though some people still voiced these opinions, I generally didn't read them in reviews. This is also because this type of game has become much more common in recent years, so continuously hammering them for the very premise of what they want to be really would just be a waste of time.
However, many reviewers seem to be unsure about what kind of standards to apply instead and as a result went with movie like standards resulting in a lot of high level criticism of the writing.
Without being disrespectful, though, I don't think they did a very job at that. Often, the criticism was as one dimensional and predictable as they accused the writing of being and in some instances seems to have come from a very condescending position.
Similar to peoples condescending reaction to the success of many summer blockbusters with cliché stories/characters and corny dialogue. (I'm not saying Detroit is like that.)
Before I played the game I assumed that Westworld would be a very good point of reference for writing and story telling to compare Detroit to. Similar topic, similar scope, similar expectations?
But it quickly became clear that this kind of comparison would be incredibly unfair. Detroit has to construct a story that reacts to player choice in countless realistic and interesting ways. It not only has to maintain a cohesive narrative, but it also has to make the player feel as if they have a meaningful and personal impact on the story with their decisions.
While the writing is very on the nose in some instances, the overall achievement here is incredible and easily makes up for these weak moments.
Detroit delivers on the promise of having a massive, interesting and incredibly branching story that can play out in fundamentally different ways depending on player decisions which are neither to arbitrary nor too predicable.(most of the time)
"Show don't tell" is easier when you don't want your players to make somewhat informed decisions on how the story continues. The very nature of this interaction the game is based on requires a lot of exposition and I wish reviewers would have delved into how well that worked and how it affects, enriches or hurts, the experience instead of the simple "oh it so much exposition, has David Cage never heard of "show don't tell?".
Westworld is good at "showing" instead of "telling", but in the story ark of Westworld the viewer is rarely in the position of being able to predict how possible decisions might affect the story going forward. Obviously the viewer in Westworld doesn't have to do that, but in Detroit players do have to do that, and if they were left in the dark about whats going on, these decisions would feel random and arbitrary and it would be bad.
While most reviewers touched on how real and important the decisions feel, I don't remember a single reviewer who talked about what that circumstance required from the writing and how good or bad a job Quantic Dream did at it.
Anyway, while the reviews are generally quite good, I think the legacy of this game will be much more positive than just "good".
I also think that most of the narrative criticisms reviewers made out will leave the majority of players entirely unbothered.
Coming from someone who always doubted Quantic Dream's vision of narrative and player decision driven cinematic games, I stand corrected and wish this game great success.
I actually used to make the argument(either here or back on GAF) that decisions always stand in the way of truly great stories, using The Last Of Us as an example, where the story only is as good as it is because it tells the characters story and lets the player watch but not interfere with the characters decisions. Imagine how decisions would have ruined that game: Press X to safe Ellie, press O to sacrifice Ellie. Fuck that. The Last Of Us' story only could've played out one way, otherwise the essence of it would've been lost.
And I still stand by that, but Detroit made me realize that this isn't true for all stories and crucial player interaction through decisions can enhance a narrative experience tremendously, even when it comes at the cost of maybe not telling the greatest story ever, to accommodate for player interaction.
