My 'Detroit: Become human' phase is back so it's time for my thoughts.
I recently played dbh again and this time I focused more on markus.
Markus wasn't my favorite character before but now I'm older, more mature and finally have good taste.
When I went through the game for the first time I perceived the relationship between markus and carl as father and son. that's it. But now that I've played again I've noticed that it's not quite like that after all.
Yes Carl was always good to Markus and treated him like a friend and son, but I bet he was well aware that Markus "doesn't feel it".
For pre-deviant Markus, Carl was first and foremost his master. It is only deviant Markus who calls him 'dad' and sees what pre-deviant Markus did not pay attention to through his program.
I have a feeling that Carl may not have liked this master and slave relationship. After all, in the game we can see Carl trying to encourage Markus to do more like human things. he often asks him for his opinion on a specific topic, knowing that Markus' answer will probably be limited by his program.
Still, Carl was keenly aware that once Markus became more like a human, there would be no turning back. He would no longer be his domestic help. He will see more and feel more.
In fact, we see the real father and son relationship only at the end, when Markus returns to Carl's after attack on Jericho. Only then does Carl see him fully as a living being, unlimited by the program, and his son.
Carl knew that until Markus became a deviant there was no way he could even hope for Markus to see him as his father. Often in their scenes together you can see Markus smiling at Carl, but as soon as he turns away from him he adopts a neutral expression. I'm sure Carl also paid attention to this and recognized that he was unfortunately not dealing with a real human being, but a machine that is his slave.
When Markus finally breaks through his programming Carl sees in him who he always wanted to see in him.
Depending on the player's choice, Carl can see it dying or after Leo has been injured. In the latter, Carl is not even angry at Markus for what he did. He is frightened that he could lose both of his sons in that moment. He tells Markus to run away because they will kill him. (In the language version I played it sounded a bit more aggressive than in the original, which puzzles me a bit, so here I could be wrong lmao)
From what we can see in the game Carl has always tried to show Markus that how androids are treated by humans is unfair and he can change that. I think that if Carl hadn't "rised him" in this way Markus would have had more trouble breaking the software. In the game we could see Markus being attacked by protesters. More than once he was probably also attacked (I'm guessing mostly verbally) by Leo. The only thing these scenes differed in was that Carl in the scene in the studio forbade Markus to defend himself. This "order" went against everything Carl kept telling him.
Everyone rather knows why Carl ordered him to do so. After all, Markus is an android who could easily kill Leo. However, this was something inconsistent with what he taught him. Carl kept saying that such behavior was unfair and suddenly expected the same from Markus.
Did Carl do wrong at the time? this is quite a difficult question.
We know one thing, probably if not for this Markus would have continued to remain a machine. After all, we have seen leo's verbal attacks on markus before and he never looked like he wanted to do anything to him or treat him the same way. he was always calm and composed.
Maybe the very fact that Markus was then treated like a machine by someone who had always treated him like a human (or almost human) made him able to break his program.
Markus is a really interesting character.
And yes, I know it's just a simple game and most of what I wrote are just theories, because the game only shows a few days in the life of three androids.
I just like to analyze such things, and maybe someone had similar thoughts.
I also know that probably the creators didn't even think about it and it's just a loophole in the plot.
btw as now I returned to dbh I can write ff with characters from this game(Hank only platonically sorry), so if you want you can ask and I will try to write something interesting
