Morning Discussion

Over the last month or so I've been re-watching The Wire, which in my opinion is one of the best TV shows ever made. Watching the series got me thinking about the serious lack of police investigation in video games.

One of my favorite concepts in a video game franchise this generation was the tools players can use in Condemned. While it all holds your hand a little too much, I loved the ability to act like a real, "natural police." (Did I miss a game that simulates this concept? Let me know!)

Other than adventure games where the core gameplay hinges on a piece of this idea or tactical titles like S.W.A.T., so few games allow the player to solve the mystery. Ordinarily we're rewarded for getting from Point A to Point B with a cutscene showcasing the mystery being solved for us.

The Wire might be a bad example in video game terms because it's a little too realistic. Throughout the entire series, the police only fire their weapons three times. Three times in five years and it's all the same person, and in each instance that person does it out of fear or stupidity.

Basically, I wish more games allowed me to be a detective rather than an action-hero with a badge. What video game concepts do you wish made it into more titles?

Xav de Matos was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

From The Chatty
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    July 23, 2010 5:07 AM

    Yeah Xav, I remember liking the CSI tools as well and thinking how cool it would be to actual have puzzles built around these things that you work out and so on. That would have been a lot of fun if that was a genuine half of the game, and the hobo-beating was only the other half.

    I think the most interesting thing I'd like to see is some kind of sophisticated, genuine system for interacting with people, where the conversations develop linearly, but you guide the way your player character acts in terms of body language and tone and whatever, so that you get different responses from the NPCs (ie more or less useful ones). Alpha Protocol did this in a rudimentary sense and DX3 seems to be doing something like it as well, but what I want is far far larger.

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      July 23, 2010 5:52 AM

      I'm currently enjoying SWAT 4 because the key game mechanic - arresting people and getting points for NOT killing them - makes for a tense and satisfying experience (though very frustrating when it all goes wrong). It's the perfect antithesis to your usual FPS where one man takes down 1000 people in constantly respawning waves; here a single idiot who wants to take on the cops can mess up your plans and take you down.

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        July 23, 2010 6:15 AM

        Beanbag Shotgun + Yelling = Win

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      July 23, 2010 10:49 AM

      I even played the CSI games hoping it would give me that "detective" feeling. It's mostly a hidden object finder.

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        July 23, 2010 11:04 AM

        It's sad that no one has really tried to tackle this, but it is an incredibly hard thing to do. Not only do you need to create the crime scene, but a lot of detective work is interviewing and behind-the-scenes type of research into a person's life and activities. I could not imagine how hard it would be to design such a game.

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          July 23, 2010 11:09 AM

          I could see it done well with an RTS (Major Crimes Lt) sim component combined with a first-person investigative mode.

          Aka, assigning detectives to cases, assigning beat cops to do canvasing, getting the right tools and equipment for your division, then switching into FPS mode to do the actual CSI-type investigation to process a scene before returning back to the sim mode to have the CSI team work on the evidence while detectives do investigative work.

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