The character of Sherlock Holmes, created by Arthur Conan Doyle, has been portrayed in many different ways in the past. Crimes & Punishments is the latest game from Frogwares and Focus Home Interactive that brings this iconic and peculiar figure to life. This is done with a stunning and faithful representation: his eccentric personality, his manners and, above all, the many remarkable gifts for which he is famous.
The new video follows Sherlock in a murder case involving a sailor, a whale harpoon and various suspects. Please note that while this video may hint at one of the possible conclusions, it is but one of many potential outcomes. Depending on how your investigation progresses, you will be able to accuse different guilty parties from among your list of suspects… and determine their fate: will you absolve them of their crime, or will you impartially enforce justice?
In this new Crimes & Punishments video, we can admire the great work Frogwares studios has carried out on Sherlock Holmes and the cast of characters who feature in the six thrilling investigations in the game. Motion captured animations, meticulously detailed faces, lip-sync, the interplay between actor and cinematic cameras bring all the dialog, interrogation and interaction to life.
Besides his eccentricity, Sherlock showcases in this video his extraordinary detective talents which you will employ and exploit to solve each case: his ability to connect seemingly unrelated clues to deduce facts, his talent for guessing a person’s life simply by looking at them, his skill to imagine and reconstruct a past event by observing the key details of a crime scene…. Last but not least, we discover the new in-game “deduction board”, which is none other than the very brain of Sherlock Holmes! Here, you will connect all the clues and information you have gathered and piece them together to establish facts, determine suspects and eventually find out who the guilty parties might be.
The decision by Frogwares studios to switch from the in-house engine to Epic’s Unreal Engine 3 enables a much richer, more immersive and detailed rendering of both the environments and characters.
In addition to the wealth of visual improvements the engine switch has enabled new investigation techniques to be developed and the game now offers 14 game mechanics. From the opening of each of the six investigations up to the arrest of the culprits and the moral dilemmas faced by the players, the new game mechanics convey the feeling of being Sherlock Holmes. Players will therefore be able to exploit the incredible gifts and talents for which he is renowned, such as his ability to guess the details of an individual’s life simply by observing them, or to imagine and reconstruct a past event by studying the key features of a crime scene.
Crimes & Punishments will be released on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC in Q2 2014. For more information check out the official Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments website.
