Murdered: Soul Suspect is a game that I can only describe as pretty good against the odds. It's not the greatest, some parts feel unfinished or scrapped, it has a good story that I would also rate it mature, but some disappointing combat.
Development
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First thing to remark here is that the idea of this game came from the publisher, Square Enix, came with the idea to the development studio, Airtight Games. Square Enix was directly involved in the development of this game, which is a bad idea in most cases; but why is that, you may wonder?
Well, Square Enix is a Japanese publisher, and Airtight Games were an independent American development studio; the concepts around ghosts from 2 different cultures collided, and both sides came to the table with their own pre-assumptions about the subject, wasting a lot of time on getting over them until they came to a common vision.
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The problems didn't stop there, as every story has more layers, the studio lost its creative director and has 14 lay-offs 3 months prior to the release of the game. Sometimes, it's just part of the development, but not in this case, because the studio closing just one month after the release of this particular game. Seems like Square Enix weren't happy with the outcome, critics calling the game mediocre at launch, which kinda was for the $50 price tag. However, Square Enix still posted a $33 million profits in that quarter, while Murdered: Soul Suspect was the only notable release.
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Story
The main character is basically killed in the prologue, by the serial killer the game goes around. Being a detective, he can't move on, leaving the killer free to do as he pleases, so he becomes a ghost with "unfinished business" in the real world.
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You then proceed to learn what is the meaning of being a ghost, trapped by its own mind into a ghost world until you are ready to move on to the afterlife.
Location
The game takes place in Salem, a small city where nothing ever happens... kind of. The location helps out in a lot of ways, being a semi open world between key locations, because you don't even have a map, or fast travel. The size of this open level helps out and annoys you at the same time. Seeing the buildings from the real world and from the ghost world at the same time, the level becomes a puzzle, and you have to trace back your steps to get somewhere like a key location. Fortunately, the game shows you where the next part of the story is taking place, but if you want to explore, revisit old locations, you're on your own.
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There is also an explanation for the ghost buildings and objects from the ghost world. Each location or group of objects represents a place where someone suffered a grave death, one that they could not get over, someone is still caught in the ghost world until they can move on.
Here the game could've been more permissive and allow you acces in more building around the map, not only the ones related to the story, some open doors and windows would do, no need for the animated transition between locations that exists, even through it's a very nice touch. Still, more locations for side quests would have been better.
Collectibles
There are 242 in total, and you have to collect them all before the end game if you want that 100% completion. More exactly, the Museum level is blocked if you proceed to the Judgement House, and there isn't free roaming around the city after finishing the story.
The good thing is that the collectible progress is saved on a different file from the story progress, so you don't have to get to a checkpoint to save them. The bad part is, even through it's on a different file, it's bound to the playthrough; meaning that you have to replay the entire story if you missed something.
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As you can see, there are multiple types of collectible, all of them spread throughout the game.
- Ghost Abilities - Not missable; Discovered as the story progress
- My life - Missable, tells the story of the protagonist, each has a cutscene
- Info About my killer - Missable; different articles about the bell killer, tells you more info about your killer from the media perspective, one of the interesting ones
- Julia's Thoughts - Missable; tells the relationship between the protagonist and his dead wife from her perspective, can be but in half if you ask me, I gave up reading each one after the first 20 of them.
- Rex's Thoughts - Missable; Your brother-in-law thoughts about you
- Truth About Baxter - Missable; your rival from the police force, more context would be spoilers
- Profiler's Memories - Missable; the profiler memories are cutscenes, pretty important for the detective perspective of the story, if you want to figure out who is the killer before the game tells you
- Ghost Girl's Messages - Missable; in fact the hardest to find in the game, as you have to reveal them before collecting them
- Ghost Stories - Missable; one per location, cutscene telling the story of a crime, murder or something else, that happen in that location; you have to collect a certain number of the same item to reveal the story; tbh, this is my favourite collectible.
- Salem's History - Missable; certain monuments telling past events from the city, commemorative items for the victims of
- Witch Trials History - Missable; tells different methods the withes were condemned to death
Gameplay
We can separate this into basic categories, because some things are more polished, some could be more interesting, and some could get redesigned entirely, too bad there's nobody to do that.
Interactions with the world
Right in the prologue, the game presents a mechanic with a lot of potential. You have to guide your hand or the body part that you interact with to a certain position.
After that, another cool mechanic is aligning your ghost body with the one that you're trying to possess.
I remember when I started playing this game, thinking, "this is a cool one". Unfortunately, as I did until I revisited the screenshot's folder, the game forgets about this mechanic entirely. It just disappears after the first sequence and the possess mechanic becomes just the press of a button, you don't even need to be close to your target, a 5m distance is enough.
Possesion abilities
The game didn't want to let you do too much while possesing a human, but influencing thoughts, seeing through the person eyes and reading minds really help the investigation.
But, it's not all lost, because the prequel to the Stray game can be found here. You can actually can posses cats to travel between floors over certain obstacles that, as a ghost, you would pass through.
Teleporting
The teleport gives the game a little bit of diversity in the gameplay, unlocking some areas, but I ended up using it just to travel faster, as I found other ways to get into some of the areas that required this ability, the level design wasn't at its finest.
Finding clues
It's a detective game, so this is a key mechanic, that actually received more attention than others, but unfortunately is unfinished...
I watched some interviews from before launch and the badges were supposed to reward the player, each clue correctly interpreted should've given you more experience to upgrade your powers, and each wrong answer would lose a badge for that clue. But, the mechanic is more or less scrapped, the badges don't influence the gameplay at all, and you just receive the powers without the need to upgrade.
Using clues instead is one of the most polished in the game, you need to find the right answer that can be concluded from up to 3 clues, and in some cases the order of the events from the clues matter, so it's not just trying every clue until you guess the right one.
I've seen some comments regarding this specific mechanic that is rapidly getting boring, but, dude, you play a detective game, what are you expecting? God of War? I'm sorry to tell you missed the essence of the game (you're dumb...in more specific words).
Combat
This is were the game disappoints. In the ghost world there are also demons that hunt the trapped souls to devour them. The power to exorcise them is just thrown at you without an explination, you just can suddenly do it after a tutorials.
You can't fight directly as the enemies will kill you instantly. If one sees you, your only chance of survival is running and hiding by possesing someone or the path left behind by an alive person.
Still, getting rid of demons isn't that hard as you can sneak up behind them and start exorcising, which is a quick time event that lasts a few seconds with a controller. There are also have some crows with you can interact that will distract the demons, so you can sneak up more easily.
The disappoiment isn't in the combat per se, it's really interesting how they designed this piece, forcing you to come with a strategy each time you encounter demons, so you have enough time to exorcise a demon and hide before another sees you. But, it's a little bit repetitive, and you only have up to 3 demons in an area. There are a lot of hiding spots spread around, especially in the city, and...oh well...you don't have a single enemy in the entire city. With about 20-25 enemies in the entire game, and the way of killing them still feels repetitive, maybe it's not a good approach. In the end it's just wasted potetial.
Side quests
You're not alone in this world, there are other ghosts trapped the same as you, most of them in denial that they have actually died. And you can help them to move on by solving their cases with what can you find around. No crime scene, since some of them died long ago.
There are other ghosts around the place, that don't necessarily have a case to solve. In my perspective, they were scrapped instead of being shipped unfinished under the pressure of the deadline.
The game pushes a lot of suicide persons amongst the ghosts, that wanted an easy way out, but which now are trapped by guilt.
Final impression
The story is a good one, really unexpected by the end, and still have some polished mechanics focused on the detective part. But if we are honest, the launch price of $50 was a rip off. The game needed at least another year of development to be a complete AAA experience; bits of incomplete systems scrapped off before shipping shows it all. Right now the game is $20 at full price, and I would say it's fair, but it's often on sale under $10 on Steam.
Info
Images without source are captured during gameplay.
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