[internisus]

In what ways has investigation been implemented in videogames? Not only in more obviously narrative formats like adventure and RPG games, but action titles as well. For example, it seems to me that it has become increasingly prevalent in FPS games since the System Shock and Deus Ex titles, up through Doom 3 and Condemned (my knowledge of the more recent games is very limited). To what extent can, for instance, the CSI-like investigative aspects of Condemned be described as investigative gameplay? Is it too railroaded to be taken seriously as such?

[duomo]

Well, it's another way to present a narrative to the player. Rather than cutscenes or communications from some overseer, the story can be revealed through the gradual discovery of clues. But, it could be made a bit less linear. A game based around investigation could have the player possibly go down dead ends in the case, and have to be very careful and observant in order to solve it.

[Intentionally Wrong]

Metroid Prime's the obvious example. The investigation the player does of the planetary circumstances is tied to the player's exploration; the mechanic is a simple matter of switching to scanner mode and scanning appropriate wall tiles. It's pretty good, since the investigation element is a little important but there's far more information available to the player who wants to find it.

I'll leave Deus Ex to the people who've played more of it, but it does strike me as a more RPG-like approach.

Anchorhead is the high-watermark for investigation in Interactive Fiction; the review I linked even describes the pitfalls investigation in games often comes up against:

[internisus]

It's pretty much always the story that's revealed through such clue-gathering, isn't it? It never seems to be related to both game and story.

But then, if you consider Silent Hill, you have to do some thorough rummaging to turn up the medicine sprays, maps, and boxes of bullets you need. I actually never found the hunting rifle in the first game. But we don't really consider that investigation, do we? Is that because the word investigation implies story-related findings?

Sticking with Silent Hill, what about the optional stuff involving the liquid? Might it be said that some of the newspaper clippings and other story clues you can read press you towards keeping your eyes open and thus help you to fulfill a gamist goal? Is this a good implementation of investigative gameplay that serves both gaming and narrative ends?

[Intentionally Wrong]

I'd say you could make that case, yeah. Silent Hill is kind of an odd case because it jumbles up the hidden game resources and story resources in the same way. That's something RPGs are trying to move away from--that sense of "I have to talk to every NPC in this town so I don't miss out if one of them hands out items!" Likewise the constant hiding of treasure chests around the outer bounds of the game world, which just draws attention to the world's artificiality. I find Deus Ex's approach of focusing game and story rewards in the self-evident obstacles of locked doors and skeptical NPCs more immersive.
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JSNLV is frequently and intentionally wrong.

[Gironika]

FFCC did provide you with a nice background of the story if you cared to take a look around, speaking of the Princess and a headband.
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[sad_genius]

There are several sidequests in FFXII that are nice examples of this - all the civilians around the city have a line or so of dialogue that pops up as you walk near them; most of this is scene setting - "I hate how the Empire bosses us around" or somesuch, but occassionally they reference otherparts of the gameworld - a character sitting in a notable place, a guard far away from his colleagues etc ... you can then go and speak to that character, who will often point you to another character or place in the gameworld - none of this is formalised in game, and all the mechanics of who you've talked to and what happens to them is "under the hood" but eventually, for following the whole, often long, strand, you get a nice little in-game reward of an item or whatever. Yakuza does something similar with its sidequests too.

[SplashBeats]

I was glad to see you couldn't talk to everyone in FF12. I always wondered why, in most JRPGs, everyone wanted to talk to me.

Internisus, have you played Snatcher? That game has an INVESTIGATE command!

[Ratoslov]

Part of the problem of making a game about investigation is that investigation inherantly involves a lot of drudgery. It's all about correlating pieces of diseperate information and seeing what comes out. So here's an idea to make things interesting:

You get a number of people you can pick up as assistants on a case, who you can assign to do work, or you can do the work yourself. (Work, in this case, means interviewing people to get clues out of them or examining piles of records to find the interesting part (i.e., puzzle games)) The investigation is timed such that it's impossible to finish it without handing off at least some of your work to the assistants. However, your assistants are unreliable and have biases, and therefore you need to decide which ones get which assignments. It may become necessary to go back and interview people who your assistants screwed up. (A late game case would have one of your own assistants be the criminal, and the only way to solve the case is to examine information that's marginally incriminating, copy it, and assign them to check it out.)

[RobotRocker]

You know, this thread fails without mention of Sam and Max. A game which the whole fucking POINT is investigation.

You could argue the same for the evidence gathering parts of Phoenix Wright as well.
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[aderack]

I suppose it depends on how you define "investigation". Metroid is a hell of an investigation game, for instance. Exploration is facilitated by investigation, and exploration is the big point. So.

Shenmue is pretty much built around investigation -- albeit investigation with absolutely no mechanical significance.

I know you're referring to games outside the point-and-click universe; still, Riven.

What investigation demands, really, is for the small to take precedence over the grand. The player has a vast number of options, and must filter out the noise to find a few things of significance, then determine the nature of that significance. This is a difficult model to implement, as it's inherently inefficient: the developer has to create reams of "junk" information in order to provide context for a relatively few points -- and then it must somehow draw the player's attention to the small and specific, in the face of the vast and general.

Though a neat model in theory, it is pretty hard to justify unless you really know what you're doing with it.

[v84j3gs2uc7ns4]

[sawtooth]

famicom detective club :/

is that how the phoenix wright/hotel dusk games go, too? just point and click and ask until something happens to advance the plot? I'd like a detective game that focuses on slow, deliberate investigation and lets you come to the wrong conclusion. Maybe even lets you put the wrong person in jail? Maybe not even let you know if it was the right person or not!

As for the dark cloud 2 invention system, I heard a really detailed design doc over aim once about the ULTIMATE ZOMBIE GAME, which had a really neat slap-things-together invention system. each item in the game would have a multitude of values assigned to it, and you could combine things together to make essentially improvised inventions to scale walls and travel faster, or to kill zombies with, depending on how and where you equipped it. Of course some inventions would just be useless (box of jelly donuts plus a wooden stick, for example), but that uselessness would be reflected through gameplay, rather than a set does-it-combine-or-not value.
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