8) Detroit: Become Human
Platforms: PS4
Release date: Late 2017
It’s safe to assume Detroit is bound for PlayStation in 2017, because Sony showed it off in their New Year’s celebration of games coming this year. The question is: will it be any good? Cage is a famed perfectionist who believes in the artistry of his brush, but like any virtuoso, he tends to overrate the power of said brush.
His best game, Heavy Rain, notably reined in the bloated supernatural excess that ruined the perfectly good Indigo Prophecy. But Cage didn’t learn from that because his follow-up title, Beyond: Two Souls, was a science fiction love story between a young girl and her psychic best friend. Utter rubbish.
If Detroit can play it straight and offer up a hardboiled detective story in the guise of Heavy Rain, this one will be amazing. It’s centered on cops and robots in a futuristic imagining of Detroit, with Blade Runner themes of morality writ large. Fingers crossed Cage stops trying to shoehorn mysticism into his games. The story — and characters — should be strong enough to walk the runtime on their own.