The theme of "Detroit: Become Human" is near-future science fiction.
In the real world, the development and changes of technology and social forms complement each other, just like the technology of GPS positioning alone, it affects all aspects of everyone's life and profoundly changes people's way of life.
If in the future world, black technologies such as neural connections, anti-gravity devices, controllable nuclear fusion, and ultra-long-distance transmission appear, then any one of them may bring about earth-shaking changes in real life.
Among a large number of black technologies, which one appears first and which one appears later may have a completely different impact on the real world and transform the social structure into a completely different look.
This is what is meant by the so-called "distorting the technology tree".
Many movies and TV series with sci-fi elements are just new wine in old bottles, and the future they create is completely unconvincing, because the technology tree is too crooked. For example, in a certain movie, the technology of a certain Kanda is so advanced, but the social system is extremely backward. When facing the invasion of aliens, the leader actually goes into battle to fight the enemy in person, which inevitably makes people feel very absurd.
For a story, it doesn't matter if it is not rigorous, the key is to see what it wants to express and what it wants the audience and players to experience.
From this point of view, the theme of "near-future science fiction" is a more controllable choice.
This kind of "near-future science fiction" means that in a short period of time in the future, a little progress in a certain technology will have an impact on human behavior and social forms. In the case of keeping the overall data unchanged, only a small variable is taken to explore some deep-seated social issues.
"Detroit: Become Human" is like this. Strictly speaking, this is not a future world, it's just a world that just happened to skew the technology tree. Compared with the real world, the only technological leap is bionic technology, and everything else remains the same as it is now. Transportation, housing, guns... are not much different from modern society.
This is exactly what this game explores: once artificial intelligence and bionic technology appear, what impact will it have on our society.
Most people's doubts about this game mainly focus on two points.
First, this is obviously a huge leap in productivity, but why does it exacerbate social injustice
Second, why does artificial intelligence have to look like a human being
In fact, both of these points can be explained. This is a matter of opinion, but it cannot be said to be the fault of this story.
First of all, the huge leap in productivity does not mean the early arrival of communism. During the industrial revolution, many workers smashed machines because they thought machines took their jobs. This is a real event in history. The leap in productivity and the liberation of labor does not mean that everyone can enjoy its fruits. Just like multinational corporations have grabbed a lot of profits, benefiting the top capitalists, while workers in developed countries are facing the dilemma of unemployment.
The reason why the workers in the lighthouse country called for the return of their jobs is because their life was actually not as good as it was in the 1960s and 1970s. At that time, they only needed one person to go to work and they could maintain a house and a car. As factories moved to places where labor was cheaper, these workers also faced unemployment and their lives went from bad to worse.
True, productivity has increased, but the immediate beneficiaries are the top executives of big companies, capitalists and politicians. For the middle class of society, it is indeed a good thing to be able to buy bionics for a small amount of money, but for the bottom of society, bionics will cause them unemployment, which is also a normal phenomenon.
For manual workers, such as delivery guys, courier guys, workers, salespersons, etc., if such cheap bionics appear, they will inevitably lose their jobs. And after losing their jobs, what can they do
As for placing hope in the social security system... This is a relatively wishful thinking. The capitalists are making a lot of money. If you want to steal money from them to support the poor, will they be happy? The Beacon Country was originally a "rotten" capitalist country, and the big consortia controlled politics. If you want to take money from the capitalists to establish communism, you are thinking a little too much.
For these big consortiums, it is none of their business whether the poor live or die. As long as the poor do not rebel or revolutionize, and when social conflicts are not intensified to the extreme, they will not be willing to spend so much money to maintain society. stable.
The time point chosen by "Detroit: Become Human" is the time point when bionic technology suddenly appeared and rapidly changed society. It can be said that the entire Detroit is not fully prepared for this transformation, and the various chaos reflected in the game are actually These are the pains of transformation.
Second, why does artificial intelligence have to be human-like? Because the fantasy that human beings can understand most about artificial intelligence at this stage is human beings themselves.
Because human beings are the most advanced intelligent life that we know so far, if there is some kind of intelligent life that is higher than human beings, such as Trisolaran, then artificial intelligence may be made to look like Trisolaran.
If there are two housekeeping robots for you to choose, one is the robot Wall-E, with crawlers and mechanical arms; the other is Miss Kara, which one do you choose
Obviously, the latter represents a more advanced form of artificial intelligence, which is... exactly the same as human beings, difficult to distinguish.
Strictly speaking, "fully controllable artificial intelligence" is inferior to "artificial intelligence that is as uncontrollable as humans". If humans are going to develop the most advanced artificial intelligence, it must almost certainly be uncontrollable, otherwise it does not deserve to be called "the most advanced artificial intelligence".
Of course, one of the problems with "Detroit: Become Human" is that the world doesn't seem to have any pre-tech points for bionic people.
For example, Luthor was developed to carry heavy objects, Kara was developed for housekeeping, and some female androids were developed to meet special needs... These androids should have been made a long time ago, because there is no There is no need for such a high level of artificial intelligence, let alone make their thinking become like humans. Wouldn't it be better to be a professional robot for things like lifting heavy objects? Why be a big tall guy with a black face
Regarding this point, you can say that it is a bit far-fetched, but it is still the same sentence, the near-future sci-fi shows the future world of "distorted technology tree", you can completely understand that people in this world just skipped the front-end technology , directly filled with the technology points of the bionic man.
The loopholes in the setting are the choices that have to be made in order to tell a good story. The important thing is not these details, but what the story wants to tell us and what we can learn from it.
It's a touching story, and that's enough.