"Detroit: Become Human" is more about humanity and fellow-feeling than it is about androids

Which is weird, since you only ever play as an android throughout the game. All three main characters: Connor, Markus, Kara--not a single one of them are human. But, as the title of the game might suggest, they are sure as hell going to try. Slight spoilers ahead.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1222140/Detroit_Become_Human/, Connor standing in an android factory--probably kinda weird for him, huh?

I loved this game when it first came out; I'm a sucker for a narrative-driven game, and this one's got three different characters with a bunch of different possible endings for each of them. But of the three characters, the one that interested me the most was always Connor.

The fact that, in the world of Detroit: Become Human, androids began to pretty consistently deviate from their programmed behaviors (earning the title of "deviant" respectively) to the point where an android detective was required to hunt down deviant androids always seemed strange to me. If humanity sought to create a machine capable of doing the dull tasks of life that humans don't even want to do, why are we giving the machine a conscience? Because I guarantee they would want to wash dishes about as much as any other human being would.

Of course, the reasoning in-game was that if the androids were more human-like, they wouldn't be so off-putting to be around, and humans would get along with them better. Which is fair, since I'm pretty sure people have written horror stories about things that look and act almost human.

But the irony of it remains--an android has to dispatch other androids that have deviated because its his job. However, just as working on the police force can have lasting effects on humans, Connor starts changing, too. Depending on the player's decisions, Connor will start gaining agency--a conscience to think and feel for his fellow androids (and people, too). This is especially apparent whenever the player is picking options that aids or agrees with the deviant androids. Much to the chagrin of your human detective partner, Connor will become worse and worse at his job because he starts getting more and more confused about whether these androids wanting to be free of the system that caged them is a bad thing. He could be free, too, couldn't he?

Detroit: Become Human is one big fat conceit about civil rights, if that weren't obvious. Markus' story, one of the other main characters of the game, revolves around his liberation of androids as a free people (you literally go on a giant march/protest during one of the his chapters, so its pretty on-the-nose). While Markus' story takes on much larger of a scale (that eventually impacts the other two characters directly), Connor still exhibits this conflict in his own work. Connor, somewhat similarly to Markus, has a direct hand in the liberation of androids because he is responsible for tracking down the deviant (freed) androids--or not.

It's not difficult to see how these artificial conflicts could be applied to that of our world. On one hand, these androids just want to be free, to live peacefully--and on the other, the free androids are labeled as criminals, or defective. It's up to the player to choose whether or not the androids will be free. And maybe it's the in-game explanation of the androids design philosophy, but to me they always seemed about as human as the next guy.

There's a concept that's popular in romantic literature (ugh, seriously, again?) called "fellow-feeling." It's similar to empathy, but I do think there is some nuanced difference between the two. Empathy feels reserved for humanity alone. Fellow-feeling, to me, extends beyond the bounds of humanity and mortality, and encompasses the empathy of all living things, human or animal, organic or machine. This essence of fellow-feeling permeated my playthrough of Detroit: Become Human. Every action I chose was guided with these fictional robot's best interest in my mind. Because I did truly want these androids to be free, because I watched their tragic lives unfold (and seriously they had to put up with some bullshit) and I couldn't help but feel for them. But to me, it went beyond empathy--perhaps due to the medium of a video game, I felt like I were fighting alongside them. It was fellow-feeling, not empathy. And I think that makes the story special.