Quantic Dream's David Cage offers insight into Detroit Become Human's E3 demo and narrative

At Sony's E3 press conference, Quantic Dream's brand new trailer for its upcoming sci-fi thriller Detroit Become Human showcased a dystopian world where high-tech androids and humans co-exist. Writer and director David Cage has now shed some light on the upcoming 'neo-noir thriller' in a new video posted on the PlayStation blog, offering players a breakdown of the intriguing E3 demo, the game's branching narrative as well as its cutting-edge graphics and animations.

Set in near-future Detroit, the game focuses on the relationship between humans and cyborgs where the androids have been used to take on most daily human tasks as servants.

"In this world, technology made possible the creation of androids that look, speak, and move exactly like human beings," Cage said. "And they have replaced humans in most of their jobs."

"When the story starts, some of these androids start to have strange behaviours. They start to disappear without any reason or even start being aggressive towards humans. It's as if they were overwhelmed with their own emotions."

Known for their particularly ambitious games with rich, in-depth backstories, the studio, Cage said, has faced a few challenges during the script-writing process of Detroit due to its long and complex story.

"Well, the script of Detroit is thousands and thousands of pages and it's really a complex script in many ways, from the very first scene, very first second of the game, you start to see things having consequences in the scene and maybe beyond the scene," Cage explained. "Of course, as you move on in the story, it becomes more and more complex."

At E3, the studio introduced a new playable character named Connor, a cold, clever and determined android who is driven by one primary goal – "completing his mission at any price".

Cage also reiterated that the every playable character in the game will feature a different story arc and perspective, presenting a player with a wide range of different possible outcomes determined by his or her choices within the game.

"We tell different individual stories from different androids and they start as separate stories, but of course, there will be a point where they will connect and interlace and tell you the big story," Cage said. "And it makes things even more complex for me as a writer, but hopefully more exciting also for the player in the end."

The developer also mentioned that they wanted to "push the limits with Detroit" using the game's new engine and showcase several new graphic elements to make sure the title is as visually stunning as it is intriguing.

"We wanted to push the limits with Detroit and have an engine that would offer us more features regarding cinematography in particular," Cage said. "So we wanted to work on realistic lighting, especially. So we developed an entirely new engine from scratch pretty much."

"We worked on skin shaders, we worked on hair shaders, eye shaders," he said. "We worked on translucency which allows you to, when you have a strong light behind your ear, see that your ear becomes red."

While he does note that every gamer may not be interested in the game's behind-the-scenes development mechanics and technology, he says he hopes they appreciate the final product.

"We play with all this technology and players don't need to care about all this because it's just interesting for geeks and developers," he said. "We hope that players, even if they are not interested in the technology behind all this, will like the result on screen."

Detroit: Become Human will be released exclusively for the PS4. A release date for the game has not been announced yet.