Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, and Detroit: Become Human coming to PC via Epic
JASON!
You all called me paranoid, said David Cage wouldn't dare, insisted it would never happen, that the "threat" I spoke of was a joke, but it's true: Quantic Dream are bringing more games to PC, starting with 2010's Heavy Rain, 2013's Beyond: Two Souls and 2018's Detroit: Become Human. After years of PlayStation exclusivity, the Indigo Prophecy studio been lured back by Epic Games Store exclusivity. Yup, Quantic's three most recent games are coming to PC this year but only on Epic's scloosie-hogging store. Today at GDC they also announced they've persuaded big games including The Outer Worlds to switch to Epic exclusivity too.
Epic been splashing a whole lot of cash to lock up a number of big recent and upcoming releases inside their half-baked store with its half-baked Launcher software, which frustrates me, but enabling Quantic Dream is what risks causing me to lead a boycott from atop a horse riding through Paris in the nip screaming blue murder. And that's before we even get into reports of abusive working conditions at Quantic.
So! Heavy Rain is a murder mystery about various folks tracking a psycho killer (qu'est-ce que c'est), a game which undercuts itself in a ludicrous way and is best known for the ha-ha-hilarious bit where your kid gets 'napped and you roam around a shopping centre mashing a button to scream his name. Promising at times, inevitably fucks it into the bin as all Quantic Dream games do. Epic Games Store page is here.
Beyond: Two Souls is a game about Ellen Page being an angsty teenager and psychic soldier for The Man, then something something on the lam something something native Americans something something Page's lawyers threatened legal action after discovering Quantic Dream had skirted around the actor's 'no nudity' rule by creating a full-body nude model with her head on top. Store page is here.
Detroit: Become Human is a near-future sci-fi story about androids in a monstrously clumsy allegory for racism, which Cage has the gall to insist the game isn't about at all nuh uh. If it really is meant to be about humanity and not all the racism parallels and histories it draws from, then that's worse because its insight into humanity is somehow even dimmer than its views on racism. One of its protagonists, cyberlad Connor, is a sweet little plank of wood but oh god what a chore the rest is. AND the most irksome part is that the game establishes Connor can lick objects to analyse them, then doesn't give us the option to lick everything and everyone at any point. CONNOR, LICK HANK. Store page here.
While these will all launch exclusive to Epic, Epic did today also announce plans to start selling keys through the Humble Store too. That'll just hook into Epic and their Launcher but hey, I suppose that's double the odds of games going on sale - the only way I can condone buying Quantic Dream games. The exclusivity deal lasts one year so they could potentially be on more stores in 2020. The threat cannot be contained forever.