Detroit: become human questions

[GhostDragon841]

Okay, so yesterday i beat detroit become human. It was an amazing game, but even despite the fact I got what I think is the good ending, I still have a few questions. First: who the heck is Amanda? Where is she? Does conner have a secod body in her garden place? How is it that he is able to just be there all of a sudden? Second: so alice was an android? Im confused, uf she was an android how come nobody noticed until now? Did todd know?

 

[Zireael]

Some of these details are heavy on spoilers so I'd recommend putting them in tags just in case, but I loved this game so I'd be glad to try and clear things up for you!

Spoiler: Amanda

Amanda technically isn't "real", or rather, she doesn't have a physical form. When Connor rendezvous with her it's basically contained within his consciousness, if that makes sense. Since Connor is an advanced Android working for CyberLife, he has immediate access to contact with Amanda who handles his work on pursuing the deviants, through I guess you could say their own exclusive network provided by CyberLife. As far as Amanda's origins go, if I remember correctly she was one of the first AI that Kamski designed, being modeled after his mentor. You can see a picture of them together in Kamski's apartment, though the Amanda in that picture is his mentor, and not the AI that Connor interacts with.

In the same vein, the garden that he meets Amanda in doesn't exist either, it's just a visualisation contained within Connor's consciousness that serves as their meeting point between his research. Whether it has any symbolic meaning, I'm not entirely sure, but it's a simulation that is at least capable of various weather effects as we witnessed with both rain, and later snow when Connor cuts his ties with CyberLife and Amanda entirely, should you choose to make him a deviant and he survives.

Spoiler: Alice

The way I see it, I'm sure everyone knew that Alice was an Android, even Kara to an extent, but Kara refused to believe it. Kara's story is based on the concept of artificial intelligence gaining feelings towards anything with sentience, and in her case she obtained shreds of maternal instincts, in that she loved Alice no matter what she was; human or Android. I think it's possible she erased the idea of Alice being an Android from her mind because she wanted to validate her existence as almost human, but in the end she ends up showing more compassion than most humans by being able to love unconditionally. Her story was definitely the most emotionally driven one so I think you could really draw multiple conclusions from her realisation as to what Alice is, though I think I remember Luther saying specifically to Kara that she did know, she just didn't want to believe it. Afterwards he reassures her that her love for Alice is what essentially brought her (Kara) to life, and that's what it means to be alive; having a purpose and something to live for (Alice).

Todd absolutely knew that Alice was an Android, since he bought her to replace his own daughter.
I won't go massively into details in case you wanted to see it yourself, but if you confront him as Kara at the bus station that takes them to the border then he'll explain his reasons for getting Alice in the first place.

Hope this clears up some of your questions! It's been a while since I played it so my memory on the details is a little fuzzy, but it's also a story that has many different theories, so it's largely open to interpretation of what you believe is the answer.

 

[Romaki]

CyberLife can just create new Connors how they please, if you get Connor killed his story just continues with a new model. There's a confrontation with Hank where the same Connor version gets sent to trick Hank and there's a very clich? "who's who???" twin scene. In the garden scene that you mention, Amanda shows a Connor 2.0. He's bulkier and his eye color was changed from brown to blue. It's kinda weird that he's there when the garden place is literally just a Kamski program he will eventually exit out of in one of the endings, it's not like CyberLife can just send Connor a virus to get him to behave. So they shouldn't be able to haunt him with his replacement. I think this is definitely something the writers didn't really think through.

Kara sees the android magazine in her first section. You the player can see glimpse of it, but it's not the same model (because it has lighter hair). Kara then has a moment where she just stares blankly into nothing for like 10 seconds, it's where she decides to ignore this fact. This was before her deviancy, so I think her programming told her to ignore everything that would go against her commands (like Todd saying take care of Alice, feed her, etc). She reaches deviancy when Alice is in danger, she's told to care, but it escalates to her becoming deviant when she's in danger. She then makes the choice herself to ignore the fact and stay her mother. She tells herself that Alice needs a warm place to stay, even when she knows she can just turn off Alice feeling cold (shown in another scene). Luther knew she was an android and wanted to tell Kara multiple times. It's really really really weird that Rose didn't know though, she literally touched Alice's forehead and then proceeded to make her human food anyway. I can't imagine that the projection of skin on plastic feels the same as skin. The game literally lies to you to give you the illusion.

Todd knew she was an android. She used to have a LED, but it was removed (either on purpose or through accidental violence). There's a painting where she bleeds where her LED was. Alice drew herself with red blood because "she wants to be like other girls".