Detroit Become Yelling About Everything

A side blog for yelling about Detroit: Become Human. Expect meta, character analysis, screenshots, and shitposting.

[dbh-rambling]

I’ve already written about the Kamski Test in another post, but this is one of those subjects where different parts of it jump out more as you go, so here’s more. 

Today’s rambling: Kamski and Hank have no idea what they’re doing but they act like they do, and they don’t stop to consider that they don’t.

Does anyone remember the part at the Eden Club where Connor has no easy way to test for deviancy on the spot? How there’s no flag that anyone can bring up on a debugger and go ‘Aha, a deviant!’, there’s no concrete answer. Despite this, Hank and Kamski both act like this Kamski Test is miraculously capable of doing that, even though the test basically says ‘Quick, Connor, let’s blackmail you into shooting this girl and then form opinions about your worth as a person over it!’

Anyway, they buy into it. If Connor doesn’t shoot, then Kamski is thrilled, and he waves the words empathy and deviancy around with relish. Hank hurries Connor out protectively in front of him, and when they talk outside his tone is notably speculative and pleased.

If Connor shoots, Kamski’s tone switches hard from enthralled to disappointed, and he declares Connor to have shown no empathy. Hank, meanwhile, is furious. Chloe showed no emotions except pretty smiling and Connor visibly struggles during the test, but Hank’s focus is entirely on reeling over Chloe’s death and accusing Connor of being a machine.

Hank actually holds on to this test even on into the next Chapter, where he can bring it up after they talk with Fowler. Hank will follow the steps of the Kamski test, looking at Connor’s actions, and evaluating them for their empathy.

(If Connor didn’t shoot Chloe) Hank: When you refused to kill that android at Kamski's place... You put yourself in her shoes. You showed empathy, Connor. 

(If Connor saved Hank from falling) Hank: When I was hanging off the roof, back at the urban farm, you let that deviant go in order to help me. You put my life above the mission. You showed empathy, Connor. 

(If Connor protected Hank from shooting) Hank: Back at Stratford Tower, when that android was shooting at anything that moved... You protected me... You... Risked your life to save mine. That showed empathy, Connor.

No one stops to question whether or not Connor wants to participate. Kamski came up with a test, they accept between themselves that it’s valid, and that’s the end of it. While Hank does tell Connor not to complete the test when it gets to the part that involves shooting the Nice Girl, Connor had already been showing stress and trying to divert things before this point, and Hank doesn’t actually intervene on either android’s behalf.

TL;DR: the humans in the room decide to give their android a half-assed five minute test for sentience, and then both completely buy into their own speculation.

[dbh-rambling]

DBH Inspirations

I've been watching some old cyberpunk/robot/AI movies with some friends, and we've been noticing some things that were definitely major inspirations for Cage. One really clear example is A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)'s junkyard scene:

Both have a moment where robot parts are dropped from overhead.

Robots sorting through the mess to locate and replace broken limbs, inspecting incompatible versions before finding compatible ones.

A damaged eye gets replaced with a mismatching blue one.

A damaged ear gets replaced.

A damaged Nanny-bot sings a slow lullaby in another language.

[dbh-rambling]

More quotes from that Mario live action unused script! NGL I took one look at it and giggled hysterically, there’s probably one or two more still on the way. (Eventually.)

[dbh-rambling]

Best experienced if you’re imagining their strong Brooklyn accents from the movie.

Quote source: (X)

[dbh-rambling]

Was Connor deliberately made to become deviant?

If Connor deviates on stage with pacifist!Markus, Amanda heavily implies that Connor was. 

If Connor deviates on stage alone, she'll say it outright, and more besides.

We start out assuming that Amanda and Cyberlife are anti-deviancy, so this scene is a hard twist, going against everything we see so far. If she's telling the truth, then it has far reaching implications: if Connor was always supposed to be deviant, and Cyberlife planned for a revolution all along--then does that mean they were helping androids? Had they known about the sentience from the start, was that something they’d tried to help or stop?

... All of that hinges on the assumption that she’s telling the truth. Considering the evidence that suggests otherwise....

Amanda treats Connor likes a machine and nudges him to behave like one.

The most obvious example here is a line of dialog after the Kamski test, and she probes for any doubts or deviant feelings:

Connor: I've started having thoughts that are not part of my program... I've considered the possibility... That I might be compromised.      Amanda: You've been confronted with difficult situations. It's no surprise you're troubled. That doesn't make you a deviant.

This isn’t a ‘hmm, not deviant enough’ tone. Instead it’s a reassuring tone, asserting the fact that he isn’t deviant like this is something to hold on to.

Aside from this, Amanda evaluates him in all the regular Zen Garden meetings on whether his actions were successful (towards machinelike goals) or subpar (useless or deviant). If he behaves in ways that don’t match Cyberlife’s party line for machinehood Amanda’s trust in Connor goes down, and Connor gets disapproved of, chided, and occasionally threatened.

Her opinion matters to Connor, and she has a position of power over him. Amanda's using every tool at her disposal to steer Connor away from deviancy.

Amanda sends Connor to act against deviants and the revolution, not integrate into their ranks.

Let’s examine Amanda’s targets for disapproval a little more: Connor's Cyberlife-given task is to hunt down and capture deviants. If he doesn’t...

Amanda: Two investigations, two failures... That's very disappointing. I expected more from our best model.

 If they wanted Connor to worm his way into deviant good standings, you'd think they'd encourage things that would help him with that, such as making friends. Instead they order Connor towards actions (hunting, killing, chasing) that make deviants wary about being around him.

Additionally, if they wanted Connor to be able to infiltrate deviant movements from the start, they probably shouldn’t have broadcasted Connor's identity as the deviant hunter, which made him recognizable to the deviant masses as an enemy.

Cyberlife is not trying to integrate Connor into the revolution. It's not on their radar. They sent him out to be a good cop robot, and that's what he tries to do, and Amanda encourages it.

If Cyberlife wanted Connor to go deviant, then why does their story change from scenario to scenario?

If Machine!Connor deviates while standing in the crowd, he gets this:

Amanda: Connor, what are you doing? Obey! That's an order! Connor: I... I can't do that!..                         Amanda: I see... Moral objections. We knew there was a risk you'd be  compromised... Which is why we'd always planned on resuming control of your program...                         Connor: Resume control?... You can't do that!...                         Amanda: I'm afraid I can, Connor... You needn't have any regrets. You did what you were designed to do. You accomplished your mission.                 

Connor’s deviation here is an inconvenience and an obstacle to Amanda’s goal, which is to shoot Markus (and as a result, destabilize the android revolution). Amanda says they made backup plans to account for if he deviated inconveniently, because they knew he was at risk. She doesn’t say he was supposed to deviate.

If Markus dies earlier and Connor gets hijacked while he’s on stage:

Amanda: Well done, Connor. Everything went according to plan.             Connor: What plan? Amanda: You becoming deviant? The success of the uprising? It all surpassed our expectations. We engineered an android revolution and now we control its only leader... Congratulations. You represent an immense success for CyberLife. Connor: *Lifts gun to kill himself* Amanda: Connor... What are you doing?.. It all worked perfectly. You can't ruin it all now!..

In this scenario he was suddenly always supposed to deviate, and the revolution was on purpose, and Cyberlife was behind everything.

So... what now? Making plans to recover if Connor deviates inconveniently is very different from deliberately setting out to deviate him. If Cyberlife wanted the revolution to fail and saw Connor’s deviation as an inconvenience, then they wouldn’t have engineered the revolution in the first place. Both stories can’t be true. One of them is a lie, and it’s probably the version where Cyberlife supposedly engineers an android revolution that destabilizes their financial empire, counters all their earlier attempts to keep things quiet, kills a ton of humans, and destroys a shitton of their ‘merchandise’.

If Cyberlife didn't actually mean for Connor to deviate, then why would Amanda say they did?

Look at what happens. In a Markus-is-on-stage route, Connor is thrown into a frightening, disorienting situation where he needs a clear head to escape. If he doesn't, Amanda keeps control long enough to shoot Markus. If he does, Amanda loses. She's trying to scare him into not being able to focus, and even with the mild strategic prodding she gives him here, it can be very successful. (Exactly how successful she is is player dependent, but anyone who’s played knows how easy it is to get lost in the snow.)

What about the Connor-on-stage-alone route? What happens if Connor thinks Cyberlife wanted him placed exactly where he is, and that they can control him completely?

... Yeah.

If Connor's convinced enough that Cyberlife can control him, that he’s trapped in their game and that once again, he should’ve known they were using him--he panics so badly that the first thing he does upon regaining freedom is to kill himself on the spot.

Telling him his deviancy was a deliberate move on Cyberlife's part and that Cyberlife Totally Knows How To Handle Deviancy (despite a whole game of seeing the exact opposite) is Amanda trying to psych Connor out. She adjusts how hard she tries depending on what reaction she’s trying to get: if she just needs Connor diverted for a second, she’ll leave enough mystery to confuse and distract him while she seizes his body. (Total destruction might not be a goal because if she fails the first time, then it might be worth trying again later.) If she needs to traumatize him to the point that he’ll destroy himself if she fails, she’ll go all out.

In all cases the leader of the deviants is her final target--and she’s looking to kill this leader, one way or another.

TL;DR: Amanda never wanted Connor to deviate. It was a mind game. Don't be like Connor, remember that she's a lying liar who lies.

[dbh-rambling]

The live action mario movie sure had a lot of robots on it.

(Source: X)

[dbh-rambling]

Playthrough Suggestion Theater

Markus’ peaceful/violent routes are usually played where peaceful = good and kind, violent = evil. Last time we talked about peaceful = evil, and this time let’s look at revolutionary = good.

Have this be a Markus who’s standing up to the active violence and oppression his people are already facing. Have him be protective of his people, someone who’s willing to kill murderers that are systematically massacring his people.  Have his main goal be to save innocent deviants’ lives.

[dbh-rambling]

Me: it's an absolute tragedy that we only get three or so in-game conversations between Markus and Connor, there’s so much potential between them, what would their relationship have been like if we’d seen more? Me: ...

Me: ...

Me: ... Ok google, unrelated search: how many times can Connor and Markus try to kill each other?

Jericho's Bridge:

Connor fails to kill Markus

Jericho's Hold:

Connor can kill Markus...

... or Markus can kill Connor.

Church:

Rooftop:

Connor can draw a bead on Markus but loses his chance to kill him.

Street Fight:

sweet fucking jesus

Control Markus, Connor Death (impalement)

Markus death (shooting):

Markus death (neck breaking):

Control Connor, Connor death (near beheading with metal slab)

Connor death (impalement, except with different camera angles and barbed wire separating them in this shot):

Markus dies (Connor shoots):

Markus dies (Connor breaks his neck, except then he picks up a gun and ADDITIONALLY shoots him):

Cyberlife Store

Connor shoots Markus:

Connor ‘spares’ Markus and lets him die on his own:

Connor and Markus shoot each other:

Stage

Connor shoots willingly from the crowd:

Connor resists shooting but gets lost in the zen garden, we get the same scene but from a slightly different angle:

Connor shoots Markus while up on stage with him:

This is... seven different events where they can try to kill each other, with SIXTEEN death scenes. Like holy fuck, I’d originally just thought that they rarely interacted and that Markus-Connor shippers just all tended to like Foe-Yay due to the chemistry of it, and the fact that their roles as deviant leader and deviant hunter make them perfect for it. Apparently no, it’s not just that, they literally have a fuckton of scenes together, and they’re literally trying to kill each other in nearly every single one.

This is a shitton of character energy channeled straight at each other, with their goals and their worldviews and their strategies all clashing together at the same time in the same explosive struggle. Connor has been ordered to kill Markus, and Markus is determined to lead androids to victory. Each one of these encounters is a stage for these struggles to play out.

This is also part of why I like the scenes where they work together so much. They can cause so much harm and be this violent, and yet when they do work together and trust each other we get one of the very few endings where everyone can escape and be happy. When they finally channel these absurdly high sets of competence and determination to a common enemy, they do the fucking impossible. Connor brings Markus an army, and Markus maneuvers everything so that humans are forced to back down.

JUST AGH I LOVE THE POTENTIAL IN THESE TWO. There’s so much there, and they’re great!!

[dbh-rambling]

Playthrough Suggestion Theater

The usual ways that Markus’ peaceful/violent routes are played like this: peaceful = good, violent = evil. Let’s twist the narrative for this.

Play an self serving pacifist. Markus doesn’t care about keeping Jericho alive and will kill androids almost as frequently as he recruits them. His goal is to curry as much favor from humanity as possible, and he’ll walk over the bodies of his own people to get there. He plans to be a politician when everything is done.

[dbh-rambling]

If Kara escapes Zlatko’s mansion, Luther will say:

Alice refusing to leave when Kara tells her to run is very moving, but I was screwing around with completing the Zlatko flowchart, and....

If Kara fails a QTE in the bathroom, Alice can stab Luther to free her.

If Kara fails a QTE in the room with the polar bear, Alice will bat at Luther with a ceramic bust.

If Kara trips and falls on their way out the door, Alice will stop and help her up.

Alice refusing to leave her in the courtyard is significant, and it probably is always the actual final trigger for Luther to deviate (or he wouldn’t have kept chasing them.) Still, there’s something compelling about a story where Alice takes on someone over twice her height several times to try to keep her mom safe, and I like playthroughs where Luther’s reasons to deviate includes seeing this.

[dbh-rambling]

I was talking with a friend about ways to load Linux onto a computer, and then we realized:

The Zen Garden is a simulated environment running inside Connor’s base operating system. The Zen Garden is a virtual machine, and Amanda’s a program inside of it.

[dbh-rambling]

I never thought I’d say this, but. One of my favorite Markus moments is in that rooftop scene where he’s talking with North.

Not the later parts of the scene, I’ve already talked so many times elsewhere about the bad parts of Markus and North’s romance that I’m tired of it. What I’m talking about here is one of Markus’ earliest dialog options, which shifts a little depending on whether he’s being pacifist or warlike.

Pacifist version:

Warlike Markus:

This isn’t the only time Markus admits vulnerability and uncertainty over his decisions as a leader. Usually he says things like ‘I’m worried I won’t make the right choice’, or ‘I’m lost and scared’, which is fairly standard for Brand New Leader portrayals.

These specific replies here feel different from that. It implies that there’s more to his leadership than him selflessly laying his life on the line and doing the job no one else wants but everyone needs. It shows specifically that he’s getting something from it, even as it’s a complicated experience. It hints at the fact that with everyone turning and giving him such absolute command over them, that the only thing keeping him from abusing this is his own self control. It points out that this is dangerous because he enjoys this power, and the seeing people obeying him is its own high.

It pokes at his image as a messiah-like leader by introducing flaws like a hunger for power, and an ability to enjoy chaos and violence despite the pain they bring. It’s disquieting to hear about, because they introduce uglier character flaws that no one wants to think about in a Good Leader.

I feel like it’s an illustration in itself of his moral structure that he recognizes these flaws and is disquieted by them. We’re not just a measure of our strongest good parts; we’re our weakest links, and how we react to them.

I just!!! Really like this moment. I feel like it makes him particularly compelling, and gives him depth beyond the Good Leader Who Just Wants Justice For All archetype that he otherwise presents. It’s an interesting nuance of a character flaw, and it’s one of my favorite moments of characterization for him.

[dbh-rambling]

Me: why couldn’t we have had our fourth character Riley

Concept Artist, at the top of concept art for Riley:

... I legit can’t tell if he doesn’t realize that the game already has what it has, or if he’s saying that actually including Riley would have ended up with something so much worse.

[dbh-rambling]

Something interesting that was once pointed out in chat:

Kara was the first character introduced from this game in the original Demo.

The game takes place over the course of a week.

Markus’ Revolution: one week is laughable. Completely inadequate. Revolutions can take months, they can take years.

Connor’s Sleuthing: one week plus one very chaotic night is improbable. Tracking down new cases and new clues and changing your human partner’s worldviews bit by bit and infiltrating the enemy lair generally takes longer than week.

Kara’s Roadtrip: Perfect. She’s crossing a city on foot and by whatever car she can steal. She’s losing a night or two through bad circumstances. If she can’t get over the border in a week then her story isn’t a road trip.

DBH was originally written with Kara’s story as its backbone, and even after it grew to have the other two characters in equal portions it kept the old timescale.

[dbh-rambling]

Are the Jerrys a Group-Mind?

This is a complicated question to examine, not in the least because it might not have a binary Yes/No answer. (There’s a lot of gray area between ‘completely independent’ and ‘several bodies governed by one mind’, and it includes ‘could they be networked to have constant communication’, ‘could they have digital parent-child control schemas’, and any other weird networking variation thereof.)

Maybe Group-Mind:

The Jerrys don’t offer any way to distinguish each other via names

They coordinate very quickly at the Recall Center to find Alice.

Weird pronoun usage and speaking patterns

Maybe Not Group-Mind:

The way two of them start conversations with Kara at Recall Center

Onto examining things:

Evidence For: Names

They use the same name collectively, and offer no ways to distinguish between themselves on an individual level.

Evidence For: Fast Coordination

Communication between androids (like conversations between Kara and Luther or between Jericrew members) usually seem to happen in speaking-out-loud time rather than speed-of-electric-signals-time, so it’s interesting that this progresses this quickly.

Evidence For: Pronouns and Speaking Habits

They talk about their group’s collective opinions, decisions, and actions constantly:

They do distinguish between the collective and the individual at times, like at the Recall Center:

Even in this same kind of scenario, though, the Canadian Border version has a weird case of inconsistency:

‘Us’. So far as I can tell, the only case where Kara could save two Jerrys and still go to the border is if Luther is dead and she saves those two Jerrys as she’s sneaking towards the bus stop. Except if you look, Luther is standing right there behind Kara. 

If you go back and watch the scene where Kara rescues Luther and a single Jerry, he still uses us--and it’s odd, too.

Luther... knows exactly how to thank (or not thank) her?? He’s fine. So who’s Jerry talking for? 

Evidence against: New Conversations

When Kara’s at the Recall Center she can speak with two Jerrys while searching for Alice. They both greet her very similarly, as though seeing her for the first time:

If they were a group-mind, then Kara’s appearance theoretically wouldn’t be a surprise after that first conversation, and Kara wouldn’t have to restate the question she’d already posed to the other Jerry.

Conclusion:

None of these feel like a smoking gun on their own. It does feel like all of these combined show that the game is playing fast and loose with the Jerrys and their senses of individual identity.

Personally, I like the idea that they’re networked closer than normal groups of androids and thus close enough to be sorta-group-mind’d, but also separate enough to be able to distinguish between individual units.

[dbh-rambling]

Standing alone, any one of these incidents is ‘:(’-worthy and generally threatening. 

If you combine the fact that Markus burns really, really, really well, that Ralph was damaged via burning, that Kara can find a dead body at the base of a wall of scorch marks and anti-android graffiti, that Markus can find a body with burn-y damage as he’s looking for Jericho, and that when they lash out both Hank and Gavin very specifically threaten to burn Connor… It’s a whole lot of fire-related coincidences.

[dbh-rambling]

The android with the scratches has a few scorch marks, and the one in back with her head open has even more scorches.

[dbh-rambling]

[dbh-rambling]

Josh is a character with a fandom reputation for being nonconfrontational. This makes me laugh, because a more accurate way of putting it is that he's an extremely confrontational pacifist.

Josh counters things that Markus suggests repeatedly and directly in Time to Decide, Spare Parts, and The Stratford Tower, frequently to the point of outright clashing. He has an ongoing argument with North at the start of Capitol Park, which always escalates until they’re facing off and have to be broken apart.

In The Freedom March, the protest is stopped by a wall of Armed Humans who are yelling things like:

Disrupting traffic and a previous order of every day life is a confrontation. Standing in a place and forcing people to face things they don’t want to face--even if you’re not touching them--is a confrontation. If these deviants were to choose to stop confronting people here, they would disperse, like Simon was saying.

What does Josh say?

Josh isn’t just confrontational, he’s willing to die in the name of confronting. He’s just doing it in a pacifist way.

In Crossroads, while they’re all on the Bridge, we get another argument, this time between Josh and Markus.

If Markus made violent choices earlier:

Markus is the one facing away from him, Josh is the one trying to drag him back in.

(If Markus was peaceful during the march we still get arguments, just--less angry.)

If Markus chooses violence Josh immediately complains, then goes right up to him to tell him exactly what he thinks of his plans:

Even if Markus and Simon are both gone, North and Josh can start a yelling argument on their own just fine:

The game itself misuses confrontation to mean ‘violent confrontation’, but the word definitely goes beyond this. Even in the most peaceful of routes, all our protags are confrontational as hell.

TL;DR: Josh is the fightiest pacifist I’ve ever seen. ‘Nonconfrontational’ does not apply.