How to make the murder mystery solving genre appeal to a wider audience?
Hollywood has been trying with Agatha Christie's "A murder on the orient express".
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How would the video games industry do it? We all know Sherlock Holmes' games are a niche. Ace Attorney is the one that comes the closest to a wholesome murder mystery experience and the series has been going to shit since 3D.
Find a way to fix it for us.
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A Murder on the Orient Express is such a good book. Agatha Christie was excellent, especially in the first half of her career.
As for your question, OP, have you tried playing Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishment, yet? It's a really good game that I think should serve as the mold for future investigation-based games.
Anyone else played this? It's pretty decent.
It is indeed a good book. I love Arthur Conan and Agatha Christie in different ways. Conan's writing is comfortable and interesting, but it lacks in the "mystery". Agatha is the true mistress of mystery, and it is nice that you can at many times solve the murder before reaching the solution if you have the wits. Being experienced in that niche helps, since, as Sherlock Holmes would say, "there is nothing new under the sun".
A shame the movie did no justice for the book.
As for that game, I have played it and still think Ace Attorney is the definite experience. Let's face it, the investigation segments are an awful chore, and the best parts come from interacting with other characters. In Ace Attorney all you do is interact, and it is especially entertaining in court, when you cross examine witnesses and directly confront prosecutors and their theories. I wish Ace Attorney was the standard, to be honest.
(This is quite expected since Ace Attorney draws most of its inspiration from Agatha Christie, not Arthur Conan)
Cute boys
I enjoyed it, but the new character (the neighbor, forgot her name) got built up so much only to not do anything until the very end. So much wasted potential.
Their potential for being cute is huge indeed. In picture related you have, from left to right: Sherlock Holmes, the two main characters of the game, and the little girl, who is WATSON
I love Sherlock a lot, never played any of his games though, do you guys recommend this?
Also Jude law plays the best Watson, I love these movies and their modern take on Sherlock. They did it really well imo.
No fuck you. I personally found the solution to be somewhat unfair, but I was willing to let that slide because generally her cases are solveable and make sense.
I cannot fucking STAND that Poirot took the 'well he was an asshole so I'm just going to let the culprit get away with it'. He should have said "don't worry, no jury in the world will convict you and I'll testify on your behalf" but there absolutely should have been a trial.
CHRISTIED!
Sherlock Holmes' character is slightly inconsistent. If you read the first few stories that Arthur Conan wrote, it seems like the design is the best one. Once you get deeper though he gets to look more and more like a drug addicted autist that fits the modern takes.
Yeah, they ruined Poirot on the movie. I really hated it.
The movie starts great. Poirot states that "he perceives the world as it should be, and when things aren't the way they are meant to be they stand out like a nose in the middle of a face... no matter what someone tells you, there is always a right and a wrong, and nothing in-between". That was such a great scene. But then all it takes is one asshole dying for him to change his mind and realize his entire philosophy - which he carried for fucking decades of murder mystery solving - was wrong.
In the books, he was slightly less retarded. He presented two solutions and allowed the director to choose which one they'd use with the authorities. That was still stupid though and greatly reduced Poirot's character for me. In the movie, however, he was absolutely fucking destroyed and reduced to dust since he outright lied to the police.
Poirot should never lie. He's supposed to be Kant incarnate.
Mystery threads are very comfy
Is this designed by someone who has never read a Sherlock Holmes book in their lives?
Is this designed by someone who read them all?
There already is a good murder mystery game series, though
No mention of L.A. Noire?
>(This is quite expected since Ace Attorney draws most of its inspiration from Agatha Christie, not Arthur Conan)
Except AA's creator, Shu Takumi, is a huge Sherlock Holmes fan.
>(This is quite expected since Ace Attorney draws most of its inspiration from Agatha Christie, not Arthur Conan)
Nah, Takumi is a huge Holmes nerd but mostly based AA on episodes of Columbo
There really isn't. You posted one of the only decent ones. There's also the Sherlock Holmes games and that's it.
You can count Ghost Trick and Hostel Dusk, because even if they are not murder mysteries, they are also top notch mystery solving games. And that's it. There's nothing else, at least to my knowledge.
And don't even try to count Professor Layton, since their focus is on puzzles, or Danganronpa, since that's an abomination to the mystery genre.
>good book
>short as hell
You might as well enjoy novels for children. A novel is not a good novel unless it takes up your time. That's how great writing is measured
Not video game related. If you want the best detective story ever conceived in any medium, watch Signal. It's a Korean drama. It's about a group of detectives who are obligated to solve old murders and crimes before the the statute of limitation is run out. It's incredible, from the first episode to the last. Even if you never watched an asian drama, don't belittle it. Asians have standard when it comes to stories
You two are right but it is quite ironic that in the end Ace Attorney looks much more like an Agatha Christie story than an Arthur Conan one.
You are absolutely retarded. Sherlock Holmes' books are the most translated ones on Earth after the Bible. The first Holmes film was made in 1900, and since then he appeared in more movies than any other fictional character. There have been Sherlock Holmes stage plays, musicals, radio dramas, TV series, comics, graphic novels, cartoons, even a fucking ballet, and let's not forget the hundreds of pastiches about Holmes and Watson written by other authors to satisfy the demands of readers who want more. Holmes made the symbols of the magnifying glass, deerstalker hat and curved pipe become symbols of detective work.
There was once a survey that ended with the result that 58% of Britons surveyed believed Holmes was a real person. In comparison, 23% of them thought Winston Churchill was a fictional character.
And all of Sherlock Holmes stories were relatively small, most of them being less than ten pages long, enough to fit in a magazine. Small enough to have *all* stories fit in a ~1000 pages long book. And all that for you to come here and say that shit. What a fucking failure you are, user.
I completely disagree, being able to read through a Christie book in an afternoon is part of the whole charm. There's nothing wrong with tight pacing, especially when it comes to mystery.
It was probably the weakest Frogwares game. Chronicles and vs. Jack the Ripper are better.
>You might as well enjoy novels for children. A novel is not a good novel unless it takes up your time. That's how great writing is measured
*tips tophat* I agree good sir!
even if this is bait I have no idea how you can say this without feeling bad about yourself
They need to make more games like this.
Hey vee what do you think about my new Sherlock Holmes book? Had never read him before. I am still at the first story, "A Study in the Scarlet", but it has been amazing and I look forward the rest
I love the AA games and other similar mystery stuff but it sucks when they have little rewatch/replay value when you know whodunnit.
>You will never flatter Holmes
That's the exact reason why I insist designing Holmes like makes much more sense than doing some edgy autist.
Thanks, halfway through ep 1 right now. Seems pretty interesting.
LA Noire, Policenauts, Aviary Attorney, Firewatch, Condemned, Observer, Under A Killing Moon
Where did you manage to find it?
Complete ones are the best ones to have, the quality is pretty consistent and the lesser known stories are a treat because you've never even heard of them through cultural osmosis
Some site called drama fever. Don't think it has viruses.
Thanks, couldn't find it through the regular stuff
What makes a good murder mystery story?
What makes a bad one?
Oh, I guess it's unavailable here. Guess I'll look somewhere else or find a proxy.
Indeed. From my experience so far the reader does not get any chance to "solve" the mystery like they get in Agatha Christie's novels, all you do is watch Sherlock Holmes do it gracefully. It is still an amazing experience of course, and Holmes drops some very wise words, which I'll probably forget in a few days unfortunately.
I myself love a good locked room murder mystery. Nothing tops them. The problem is that once you get too much into it, you end up learning all possible solutions, and the only ones that surprise you will usually make use of a cheesy solution.
By the way, that's what makes it bad: cheesy solutions and gimmicks. Something stupid like "the detective is the real culprit" or "the culprit is a character introduced at the last portion of the story".
If it's a game, you better have some damn good music:
youtube.com
I'm liking this so far because the mystery is good and the characters are fun, but god do Koreans like to have incredibly on-the-nose music and camera movements CONSTANTLY
Recommend me some Noir novels. Victorian era mysteries are amazing, yes, but I want to feel depressed and have a urge to light up a cigarette
Got any idea what pic related is? If not, you are in for a treat.
Not him but no idea
You want to play pic related. It is among the pinnacle of depressive murder mysteries with sympathetic villains, and I say this as someone who consumed thousands of pages of that sort of genre in books. Very easy to emulate, you are looking for "Ace Attorney Investigations 2", which is a spin-off series of Ace Attorney where you play as the prosecutor Miles Edgeworth. You don't need to play 1 or any of the Ace Attorney series to play this at all, though it would do good to know about the DL-6 incident beforehand, which you can easily read on the wiki, though it would ruin the climax of the first game of Ace Attorney.
I really repeat that will be one of the best experiences a lover of murder mysteries will have. If you for some reason are set on not doing it, this is often considered the best because (REALLY DON'T OPEN THIS IF YOU EVER INTEND ON TACKLING THIS) you solve a series of cases that appear to have one connection, including a presidential assassination, only to discover later that the president had long been assassinated and the one who had just died was a body double, and if that's not enough for a mindfuck, you end up solving all cases, but in the end you find they were actually connected and were all orchestrated by a single mastermind who basically managed to kill a bunch of people legally by manipulating others into doing it, and he has the greatest motive ever for doing this since the people he killed actually killed his father (who was the president) in the past and almost killed him too, but as a lawfag prosecutor you still manage to find a loophole and send him to the death row anyway, that's probably the craziest and most well crafted murder mystery experience I've seen in years
This is such a wild ride from the start to the end, it reminds me of 2010 when things had a soul
I'll check it out, thanks user!
Don't fucking tell him to look up DL-6 in the wiki, that case despite looking solved in AA is only truly solved in AAI2, should he do that he'll get spoiled hard
You don't absolutely need to know DL-6 to play AAI2, you simply won't feel the impact and magic of playing as Gregrory at the third case
Isn't the new HD Tex game also supposed to be pretty good?
I didn't really find Condemned to be captivating as a murder mystery and Observer felt wrong to me.
I'm that guy and yes, I've already played that amazing game. The characters like Debeste and the final twist really made it a Miles better than EXTRATERRITORIAL RIGHTS SIMULATOR. You have great taste, user
Could Sup Forums even solve this?
>open DL-6 page to check it
>it actually reveals almost all major plot twists of one of AAI2's best cases
well fuck me sideways, and fuck whoever wrote that
There's an interesting interview here, with Shu Takumi (creator of Ace Attorney and Ghost Trick) and Jiro Ishii (director of 428 and producer of Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors). It includes some talk about what makes a good mystery game, the use of narrative tricks, and such.
Really, when it comes to Ace Attorney, I'd always recommend to play in release order. I think that makes for a better experience than skipping around to get to a specific game, even if it's a highly praised one.
There is no order, you can pick up any game at any point, they do their best to reintroduce every single character all the time, even Phoenix himself who is the protagonist in all of them except Apollo Justice.
But I can't imagine fully enjoying AAI2 without knowing about Kay's past (which requires playing AAI) and Miles' past (which requires AA), so I recommend the user at to check that first. It's not a deal breaker though. These two definitely don't have sympathetic villains though, it's more like villains you want to smack in the face. The AA games that have sympathetic final bosses are only T&T and AAI2 really.
Should Godot be considered a villain, though?
DL-6 has the greatest setup ever. It starts with everything you can possibly imagine to be one of the greatest murder mysteries ever.
>father, son and random man in an elevator
>blackout happens
>elevator gets stuck for hours
>when power is back the father is dead
>there is a pistol on the floor and gunpowder on the kid's hands
>whodunnit?
Too bad the solution is fucking cheesy and the very example of how to NOT write a murder mystery.
2 is literally the only choice that makes sense.
3 has a knife and no fork.
4 has two forks, yet no knife.
It is quite obvious that 3 exchanged a fork for 3's knife. Then used it to kill the victim because the quran said so.
She stabbed herself
*smells the woman's mouth*
*lies on the floor*
*measures imaginary footprints*
*tastes ashes*
*spergs out*
Elementary, my dear Watson! It is quite obvious that the maid did it!
3. The victim died in the women's bathroom
What is the solution?
BUT WHO WAS PHONE?
Just add Waifus
Make it subtly Lovecraftian
fuck, True Detective is such a fucking video-gamey title as well...
I find some of titles' climax cases to be ultimately fantastic but fall flat because of Takumi's moralizing.
At least Orient Express foreshadows it enough with all the medical evidence of the half hazard slashes etc.
Now The Murder of Roger Ackroyd? There's a bull shit solution.
To easily explain this, refer to the victim (the father) as Gregory, the kid as Miles and the random man as the bailiff.
Initially it all points to the kid having done it but they all agree that this is an absurd solution to the case, so they actually seek help of a spiritual medium who can contact the victim's spirit and ask him directly who killed him.
They do that, and the Gregory's spirit claims that the bailiff did it. So the police actually uses this as evidence to convict him in the trial. His lawyers end up claiming that they were in an elevator stuck for hours, which reduced oxygen concentration, and the lack of oxygen killed some of his brain cells and led to brain damage, which made him kill the guy, thus pleading temporary insanity. Not fucking kidding. The judge swallows that and the bailiff gets to go away with no sentence.
Many years later another murder happens and while investigating it they find a parrot that kept repeating "Don't forget DL-6! Don't forget DL-6!", and some events lead them to question the entire solution to that case. The bailiff held responsible for DL-6 becomes the main suspect in another murder case and you end up finding he was the murderer. He reveals that he is not actually retarded and just pretended to be so for years (literally pic related, taken from the game). He swears he did not kill Gregory in DL-6.
And the prosecutor you are facing at that very case is Miles, the child that was at the elevator. Miles reveals that it is true and that he is actually the real killer. He supposedly killed his own father because of a mistake. Miles claims he saw the bailiff man assaulting his father, so he pulled his gun and tried to shoot him to save his father, but ended up hitting his father instead like the dumbass he is.
But the case does not end here.
You believe Miles did not do it, so you defend him in court. In the end you find a whole bunch of stuff.
First of all, Miles is a prosecutor, but his father was a defense attorney. At that day, he was facing Manfred von Karma, the world's greatest prosecutor. By "greatest" I mean someone who always gets a guilty verdict, regardless of whether the defendant is innocent or not. Manfred was perfect in every way. As I was saying, Gregory was facing him that day, and he had managed to earn Manfred a penalty, which god Manfred absolutely mad since that was his first time in 19 YEARS OF PERFECTION (that's a meme) he ever got a penalty.
And through very stupid events that are just a bunch of deus ex machinas connected, you find that Manfred is the real killer.
Yes, he is not even inside the fucking elevator initially. It is a bullshit solution. Here's how it rolled out.
Oxygen in elevator starts reducing. Bailiff man attacks Gregory. Miles picks up a gun from the floor and attempts to save his father by THROWING THE GUN AT THEM instead of shooting it (don't ask me). When he throws the gun, the impact makes it fire, and the bullet flies through the elevator's doors and hits FUCKING MANFRED, who was outside taking care of his own business.
Manfred lets out a scream of pain and gets fucking mad. The power immediately comes back and the elevator's doors is open. He sees Miles, Gregory and bailiff, all unconscious from lack of oxygen, and a gun on the floor. He picks that gun up, shoots Gregory and walks away.
It is stupid. Ace Attorney's standards are usually infinitely higher than this.
I realize that the games are designed so that it's not necessary to play other games to enjoy them, but they have always built on each other in the continuity and mechanics, and there are some over-arching plots than span multiple games. Investigations in particular calls back a lot to the main series with elements that are designed for fans to enjoy. I think the trilogy is the core of Ace Attorney and that it's most ideal to play the first three games in order before branching out to other games that are based in their setting.
And by the way, you might be wondering why the spirit medium was wrong and why Gregory's spirit lied. Well, he did not know who the killer was, since he was unconscious while he got killed. He just lied to protect his own son. That part is the one that makes sense. What doesn't make sense is how the killer being apparently retarded (as they thought initially) makes the solution somehow invalid and destroys the honor of the clan that channeled him.
Woah
>kid attempts to save his father by throwing the gun instead of shooting
>gun fires upon impact
>bullet flies through the doors and hit Manfred
I can't even begin to imagine that
You know, it kinda reminds me of this case
en.wikipedia.org
look up the 4th paragraph in that section
I hope they don't fuck up the third movie. Second was still enjoyable but went too exaggerated.
The best part is that it is MANFRED of all people. It could have been any random bailiff, it could have been some janitor, it could have been anyone, but it was fucking Manfred of all people
Not that guy, I just want to explain that there IS some context for all of this, even though it is retarded plot-making designed to push a theme.
Remember this was a game that they didn't know would even leave Japan, so as far as "what are guns," Japan explains that.
Also, the whole thing with the bailiff was pretty much supposed to be a jab at defense attorneys that get their clients off in dishonest ways but because Japan is Japan and hates you if you were even suspected in a crime he had to pretend to be retarded for years after the trial and his wife left him (Deus Ex machina no. 1 is, and you can probably guess this, but the parrot is named after his ex-wife).
Don't forget DL-6!
Don't forget DL-6!
still sends me chills
Oh yes, the infinite step ladder discussion
NEWFAGS, THE LOT OF YOU
>And through very stupid events that are just a bunch of deus ex machinas connected, you find that Manfred is the real killer.
Oh, but why omit this? That's the best part of the entire case!
You somehow find out that the pistol had two bullets missing from its chamber. It is the first time in the entire case the police decided to question how that is possible if Gregory only had one bullet wound.
And that's my favorite Ace Attorney moment. The judge simply asks you where the second bullet is. You can present any evidence or person to answer that question.
And to answer it you simply fucking select the prosecutor you are facing, Manfred.
Everyone stares at you thinking "what the fuck, Manfred is not even related to the case", and you just run a fucking metal detector on him to find that there is something metallic in his shoulder, which he unnecessarily confesses to being the second bullet.
The logical gaps are so gigantic, it makes it so funny.
...
Don't forget that the reason that most of the court looks at you like a lunatic is because the only reason you even have to suspect Manfred is because he was acting like an asshole every time you got near the DL-6 case and teasing his involvement in your private investigations.
It's one of those cases that's a wild ride while you're part of it but starts to fall apart the more you actually assume the logic.
>Maya, Gumshoe, Miles, Apollo
>Athena, Kay, Trucy, Phoenix
Fuck I have no idea which side to pick. Having to choose between Miles and Trucy is awful but I'd probably pick Maya's side. I mean, Phoenix is cool but not a deal breaker, and Athena and Kay are annoying (although cute). Maya's side on the other hand has MAYA, GUMSHOE AND MILES, these three are absolutely amazing
Just like the last case of all Ace Attorney 2D games.
AA (as explained already)
JFA (why would Matt let Shelly hold the fucking tape)
T&T (every single thing in it)
AJ (Kristoph is retarded)
I've just started The Grand Turnabout
is there something in this case that'll make me go "Holy shit this is whole game is fucking amazing" or should I already be feelin' it by now?
I'm holding out because it seems like this case is gonna be a part two of the previous case, and I know last cases wrap things up, but justine's patience with debeste, and the reasons she has for giving you shit stretch my patience and disbelief so fucking thin that I currently feel like they -really- weigh the game down.
Doesn't help that justine reminds me of my current boss, ugh.
I played and loved this game.
Has anyone played this one? HD is one of my favorite games ever. I fear this not holding up to its predecessor, or ruining Kyle's character.
fuck off /lit/
it's a good game.
bump