A Quantic Dream Star Wars Game Is A Terrible Idea
David Cage should not be allowed near Star Wars
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There is a great disturbance in the Force, and I have felt it – David Cage is rumoured to be making a new Star Wars game. In a classic example of a withered finger of the monkey’s paw curling tight, the Star Wars license that EA recently surrendered has apparently been given to Quantic Dream, the team that brought you androids sitting at the back of a bus. It’s just a rumour right now, and we need to stress that. Nothing has been confirmed. It might seem a little trigger happy to be writing this article then, but I suppose I’m writing it in the hopes that someone somewhere, with a brain and an iota of influence on this decision, reads it and decides “You know what, maybe this is a bad idea.”
You might be sitting there thinking “I enjoyed Detroit: Become Human,” and look, I’m not going to be mean to you. Moment to moment, it’s fine. Connor’s a good character. The puzzles are decent. It looks spectacular. But before we even get into all the other controversies with Cage and Quantic, there are some pretty glaring issues with Detroit.
Most of you who enjoyed it probably think of it as a trite but interesting look at the Civil Rights movement, told via androids. As well as the back of the bus, there is the android uprising in which you make a clear ‘Be MLK’ or ‘Be Malcolm X’ choice, civil rights slogans, a version of the Selma march, and Chloe – who ends the game by asking for her freedom – even directly quotes Martin Luther King. What you might not know is that Cage is adamant that the game is in no way, shape, or form supposed to be an allegory for civil rights, or for racism in general. It’s just a bunch of stuff that happens. It’s weird that Cage decided he should be the one to tell a ‘what if Black people but robots’ story, but it’s even weirder that after telling it, he continues to insist he did no such thing.
Detroit: Become Human is an average game that tricks you into thinking it’s a good one through pretty graphics and… well, I was going to say through a handful of good characters, but honestly, there’s just Connor. It’s desperate to undercut its own pseudo-powerful moments too. When Chloe asks to be freed at the end of the game, fans complained that they missed her – this clear stand in for domestic servitude – and so Quantic brought her back. A different Chloe, but still Chloe. Went down to the Chloe shop and picked up a new one, you see. Can you imagine a studio so willing to sell out its own themes for a brief moment of popularity in charge of Star Wars. I suppose that’s exactly what Rise of the Skywalker did, so maybe this is meant to be.
Of course, because it’s Cage, Rey or Leia or Jyn or whoever the leading female character is will need to be put through some fairly graphic torture for no reason other than spectacle quite early on. Some people like Quantic Dream, and to an extent, I get it. If you keep your head down, don’t listen to Cage, and prefer quick twists and constant excitement over stories that cover their plot holes and build their stories over time, the studio makes decent enough games. Heavy Rain, despite being bizarre in its scene choices, illogical in its twists, thoroughly unpleasant in its character development, and leaving several red herrings completely unexplained, was enjoyable enough. The more I think about it, the less I enjoy it, but I understand why some people think they’re okay – the bar should be higher than ‘okay’ for a narrative Star Wars game, especially with The Mandalorian and The Bad Batch kicking Star Wars storytelling up a notch.
Then there’s the bigger issue of ‘should Quantic Dream even be making games at all?’ David Cage is one of the (hopefully last) auteurs in gaming, is accused of saying both “in my games, all women are whores” and “at Quantic Dream, we do not make games for fags.” Unrelated to these statements, Quantic has also been accused of cultivating an abusive and crunch-heavy workplace where misogyny and homophobia were rampant, and Nazi imagery and pornography were paraded around by a senior staff as little more than a playful joke. Though Quantic won its court case against the French newspapers that broke these allegations, many still have doubts over the company given Cage’s previous statements.
The studio’s games are not adverse to similar scandals either. During the promotion of Beyond: Two Souls, nude images of Jodie, played by Elliot Page, were leaked from a shower scene. Though Jodie’s body was not visible for the players, QA had a free camera. It was later confirmed that the body was that of a double not of Page, but it still constituted a major leak that, tied to Cage’s remarks and general depiction of female characters, suggests a lack of care and oversight.
Star Wars is a franchise teeming with strong female leads, and if we’re getting a narrative adventure game – a great direction for Star Wars to go in, by the way – it needs to be with a studio able to treat these characters with respect. Even if the game ends up creating its own characters nestled within existing Star Wars lore, they need to be loyal to what Star Wars is – i.e. they should not be “whores”. Whether or not Cage actually said it ceases to matter when you look at his gratuitous use of nudity and torture for female characters – it is very clear that if Quantic made a Star Wars game, the women in it would be whores. Regardless of how good you think Detroit was, that’s a major issue.
In general terms, I think it’s fair to say critics overthink games, and players underthink them. It’s why players think journos just whine about everything and why critics can sometimes talk derisively about players demanding the same bland shooter over and over again with no regard for creativity or crunch – just give game now. The truth is somewhere in the middle, but it’s because press and players are sometimes at such opposite ends of the spectrum that Quantic is so divisive. If you overthink Quantic, you will hate every game it has ever made. If you underthink Quantic, the flaws pass you by and you get a twisty story with, in Detroit’s case at least, stellar graphics. That means Quantic Star Wars could be the most divisive game ever to launch. Please, single executive with a brain reading this, don’t put me through it. Please.
Link Source : https://www.thegamer.com/quantic-dream-star-wars-game-terrible-idea/