The Detail – Episode 1: Where The Dead Lie
This is what the website says:
“The Detail is a new adventure
game from Rival Games that takes the player to the streets of a
crime-ridden city and into the shoes of Reginald "Reggie" Moore, a
veteran detective grown frustrated with the lack of justice, and Joseph
"Joe" Miller, a former confidential informant now dragged back into the
life of crime he barely escaped.
The player will need to
investigate criminal activity, scenes of murder, arrest suspects and
interrogate them for information, all while trying to navigate the
pitfalls of an underworld where every choice holds consequences”.
It also says the game features
this:
-
Dramatic narrative tailored by the player's choices
-
Detailed crime investigation based on realistic police procedure
-
Graphic novel art style crossed with TV police drama narrative
- Deep
mystery and multiple subplots in a modern American city
It
doesn’t mention the graphic style, which not only looks like a comic
book but plays like a comic book, and makes this a whole lot more like
an interactive story than a game. Not that there is anything wrong with
that, but just be aware of what you are going into.
There is no voice work
whatsoever, and everything is conveyed via the visual and the speech
bubbles. You click to move the bubbles along, and to “turn the page”,
further adding to the “book not game” vibe.
Comic like it might be, but
there is nothing comic about the events. Some events might not be to
your liking, or the language, so be aware. While the style took away a
little of the grittiness, I thought that it did give off a suitably
grimy noir feel, aided admirably by the colour palette.
While I quite liked the style,
it is inevitably “flat”, and it did act as a barrier to being engaged
with the characters. I felt like I was reading about them, not playing
with them, and the couple of hours it lasted didn’t help.
There are analogies drawn with
the recent Telltale games on the website, indicating the choices you
make affect the way the story unfolds. If that is so, then I will play
again, as it’s the only way to see the impact. The choices are generally
in how you respond to a situation – for instance, when confronted with a
criminal do you cut a deal, arrest him, or walk away – and at no stage
did I make a “wrong” choice, in as far as the story didn’t progress. It
pressed relentlessly onwards, and I don’t believe I happened to make all
the “right” choices, so it will be interesting to see what happens when
I make deliberately different choices next time.
Having said that, a game where I
can only appreciate the full value of the experience by playing it again
is a bit of a conundrum. Which brings me to my next point.
While I was required to make
choices, there were no clues as to whether what I had done was pivotal
or otherwise. The Telltale games have a little pop up that says
something like “Bill will remember that” which indicates what you just
did has had an effect, and that is both a positive and a negative. The
upside is that I never really liked those Telltale messages, as they
took away some of the mystery behind the impact of my actions. Had the
butterfly just flapped its wings in a way that would cause chaos down
the track, or had I merely stepped on a bug; I didn’t really know, but I
did know I had just done something that was likely to not be innocuous,
for the mere fact that it had told me about it. The game didn’t tell me
about every choice I made, so why this one, if not that it was
meaningful.
I could of course be entirely
wrong about the whole thing, but that is how it played out for me.
As mentioned, there is none of
that in The Detail so I never knew whether what I had done was anything
other than what it appeared to be. Which meant it avoided the Telltale
effect, but also meant I had to take it on faith that I was actually
creating my own path through the game. As I said above, the game just
moved on, whatever I did, which ended up making it feel like it didn’t
matter what I did. Further, while offering the choice itself was, in
itself, suggestive of a possible consequence, the story didn’t play out
in a way that resulted in me having to confront those consequences at
any point, which in the end made the choices almost feel illusory.
Which (and somewhat perversely I
confess) made me wonder whether Telltale was right all along.
Another issue I had was that the
sense of distance from the events I referred to before, meant that the
choices I made never felt like “what would I do” but “how can I move
this along”. This further fed the lack of overall engagement, and so we
went on.
There were some minimal
detecting puzzles, sifting through evidence to find the right bits and
pieces to move on, but they are few and very gentle. Toggling the
hotspots can make it even gentler, both in the puzzling and the
exploring. Like the Telltale games, puzzling is not really the point.
If this was all there was, it
would be a stylistic, not at all unenjoyable brief interlude to an
afternoon, but perhaps not much else. I may however be jumping the gun.
This is only Part 1 after all,
and while some events have been completed we are really setting things
up for what follows. How engaged can I be having only met the characters
two hours ago, and it is conceivable that all my choices may very well
come crashing down on top of me down the track. Which if they do, might
make this rather good indeed. That alone is enough to bring me back, and
to refrain from passing any further judgement until then.
Except that I do I have to
mention the slightly moralistic nagging.
Like the Telltale games, at the
end of the episode I got some statistics about how many people had made
the choices I had made. I also got what I felt were somewhat
condemnatory judgements about some of them. It’s not my game, and the
makers are entitled to do whatever they want, and I might even share the
views, but I paid my money to play it as a game, and in that context I
think I am entitled to do so without such commentary.
GameBoomers Review Guidelines
November 2014
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