(No screenshots this time, sorry!)
Where it all began for David Cage and Quantic Dream
A while ago I
had the good fortune of playing Detroit: Become Human. It was the kind of game I
had always wanted to play. A choose-your-own-adventure which wasn’t completely
text-based; a narrative heavy game where I could make meaningful choices and
watch them impact the story; plus some quick-time events. Nothing too heavily
skill based, just make a choice and watch the story play out. Sadly, though, it
didn’t perform very well on my rig, so I didn’t think it was fair to write about
it because my experience was greatly marred by lags and stutters.
As for
Fahrenheit, I had my eyes on it since the days of the PlayStation 2. It worked
on the same principle as Detroit – that of choices and actions having a
Butterfly Effect. It had quite an interesting premise too: you find yourself at
a murder site, sitting over the corpse with a bloody knife in your hand. It is
quite apparent that you are the murderer but you don’t have any memory of committing
the crime. Shape the narrative by acting quickly and deciding wisely to uncover
the mystery behind the murder. For some reason, I couldn’t find the game to
play on my PS2 and it slipped out of my mind, subsequently, until I played Detroit:
Become Human.
Since I wasn’t
satisfied with how Detroit ran on my laptop, I searched online for similar
games and stumbled upon a familiar sounding name – Fahrenheit, developed by
Quantic Dream, the same studio behind Detroit. By then I had also noticed the
name ‘David Cage’ and realized that he and Quantic Dream were known for such choice-based
games, and Fahrenheit must have been where it all began for them.
A choice, or merely an illusion of one?
Having played
Detroit, I was expecting Fahrenheit to have a fair amount of replayability, but
other than a few different cutscenes here and there in my second playthrough,
the story largely remained the same. It had just one main plotline, with
multiple dead ends sprouting here and there. I guess that had to be expected
though; Fahrenheit and Detroit are games released 13 years apart, and to expect
the former to be at par with the latter is obviously unfair.
The story was
engaging enough to last one playthrough. The whole mystery of the murder, and if
it was really me who did it kept me hooked. It’s told through the perspective
of three characters – Lucas Kane, the protagonist who committed the murder (or
did he?), Carla Valenti, the officer in-charge of Lucas’s case, and her
partner, Tyler Miles. Brief insights are given from time to time into the
personal lives of the two secondary characters, Carla and Tyler, to make them
connect to the player while the narrative progresses.
Playing as both
the criminal and the detectives, I thought I could make one get an edge over the
other by deliberately committing mistakes on their part, but the game isn’t
meant to be played like that. It’s not a whodunnit but rather a
why-did-he-do-it mixed with will-he-be-caught elements. Although it is a
decision driven game, bad decisions have little impact other than ending the
game as soon as you take them, leaving what happens later to your imagination. The
story moves forward only as long as you make the correct choices, while some
choices do not seem to have any repercussions at all.
Why throw stones in the water if you don't get to see any ripples?
For instance,
there’s a situation where Lucas sees a boy drowning in a river. He also notices
that the policeman who was investigating the murder scene earlier is also
present near the river. The player has two choices now – save the boy, draw
attention to themselves and risk being caught by the police, or leave the boy
to drown and save themselves. On my first playthrough, I chose to dive in after
the boy and save him. The policeman recognized me and I was caught. At the
moment, I thought this was genius thinking by the game designers because in an earlier
scene, right after finding myself at the murder site, I had made the choice to
talk to the policeman, hoping to explain to him what had happened and thereby
showing myself to him only to be recognized later. Surely if I hadn’t spoken to
him, he wouldn’t have recognized me.
So on my
second playthrough, I did just that. I didn’t make any contact with the
policeman and fled the murder scene, but he still recognized me when
I saved the boy! There was a real opportunity here to propagate the effect of a
choice, but they didn’t do it and it took the fun of making different choices
and watching how they affect the story right out of the game. It also brought
the disappointing revelation that some choices/actions in the game were present
only for the sake of interactivity and that the story didn’t branch out far enough
to be considered separate from the primary plot. I later realized that after pulling the boy out of the water, I also had to make Lucas revive him following which, the policeman decides to let Lucas go.
What, then, creates tension between the choices and compels the player to make a decision? Obviously, it is to go further into the story, but it is also to keep the characters' psychological state at the optimal level. If it falls to the bottom, it is assumed that the character killed themselves and the game ends. If Lucas doesn't choose to save the boy, his psyche takes a hit and plunges down, and the game may very well end at that point.
It is, in
essence, just a movie with an illusion of choice, but it is still an interactive
movie in that it lets you interact with the objects in the scene – making coffee,
washing your face and choosing whom to interrogate and where to investigate.
Learning to catch one ball before juggling many
Although Fahrenheit
may not have multiple branched-out narratives, it manages to present the one
narrative that it has, pretty effectively. Quantic Dream must have looked to start off with a single narrative before foraying into the more complex realm of juggling multiple ones. The three main characters are
fleshed out well, and their voice actors have done a great job making their
dialogues sound closer to life. The scenes and environs have also been designed
aptly to convey the mood of the story. Scenes with Lucas are dark and gloomy as
he struggles with his psyche after the murder, with Carla we feel serious
as she presses on to solve the case, and with Tyler things are a bit more on
the lighter side.
There is a
bit of spiciness thrown in sporadically, and it feels fine and the player just goes
with it until this one bit towards the end. This particular scene (that I won't describe here) has
undoubtedly been forced into the story at the last moment in order to leave
room for a sequel. At least this is how it felt, it was too sudden and totally went
against the personalities of the characters. A steady build-up couldn’t have
done any harm, I feel, but since there wasn’t any, this particular scene ends
up being cringy and tasteless.
Quick time events mean missing out on the action
The rest of
the story is well-written, the suspense is good and significant facts are
uncovered at the right moments to move the story along. There are a few action
scenes in there as well, which have been masked as quick time events where you
have to push the analog sticks in the right direction at the right time. I felt
that this quick time thing did the action sequences more bad than good, because
the icons telling me where to move the analog sticks pulled all the attention to
themselves, hence having me miss out on what was actually going on in the scene
and who was beating who. The icons themselves are designed poorly and on a bright
and light background it is often not clear where the game wants you to push the
sticks.
Special
mention for the music which is enjoyable at times and complements the mood
well. Even the songs which are not original and have been licensed from other artists
are great picks. I especially liked the song ‘Santa Monica’ by Theory of a Deadman which I heard for
the first time through Lucas’s music system.
Is it a game? Is it a movie? No, it's Fahrenheit!
Playing the
game 16 years after its release, I tried not to judge Fahrenheit on how it
looked visually. I am sure it was one of its kind back when it released, with
the level of interactivity it allowed and how different it must have been from
the more common action-adventure, platformer, simulation or puzzle games back
then. Fahrenheit is not a game, it’s a movie, which is evident from the ‘Start
Movie’ option that greets players in the main menu instead of the more
conventional ‘Start Game’, and with a nice, suspenseful story it is sure to
give the player a solid 8-10 hours of gameplay and fun. But due to lack of any
replay value, it is only a “one-time watch”, as they say.
(Again, I apologize about no screenshots!)
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