Sherlock Holmes Awakened: everything we know about the Frogwares remake

The video game market has been hit hard in recent years by events that are not directly related to it, such as the pandemic and the war initiated by Russia. Obviously the Ukrainian teams suffer the most, FrogwaresAuthor of The Sinking City and various episodes of Sherlock Holmes.

As the team itself says, some of the developers are engaged with military or humanitarian companies, but not everyone can provide support in this way. What can they do? To continue to create and maintain the culture and economy of their own countries. That’s why Frogwares is working on a new game. February 2023: Awakened Sherlock Holmes.

To take a final step in development, the company opened a Kickstarter page and asked fans to help the team, support the game, as well as unlock some very interesting unique rewards, as well as add new content that the team could not do otherwise. afford it financially.

Now we can see exactly what kind of project is being developed in Frogwares e. What can we expect from Sherlock Holmes The Awakened?PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X | Planned for S and Nintendo Switch.

Sinking Holmes

Sherlock Holmes The Awakened is not a completely new project. actually a remake Your eponymous adventure, first released in 2006, acclaimed by critics and audiences. In this version, we played as a mature Sherlock who faces a new investigation somewhere between the classic Conan Doyle mystery and an HP Lovecraft tale.

However, this new remake will change various details of the original game, and we’re not just talking about the graphics. Obviously the latter will be completely recreated, but the Awakened will be repositioned in it. new narrative line most recently born with Sherlock Holmes Chapter One.

For those who haven’t had the opportunity to play Sherlock Holmes Part One yet, we explain in this episode that we have the opportunity to get to know a younger version of Sherlock who is not yet a great detective known in England (and beyond). This was part of the origins from which the Awakened would be created.

new game set in a few years Episode One: Sherlock and Watson are just housemates at 221B Baker Street, and Awakened will have their first case together. The adventure will serve to bond them and so it has been rewritten to add to this new narrative compared to the 2006 version. The key points of the mystery behind the game will remain unchanged, but otherwise we can expect many new features and a different experience.

worldwide

Frogwares explains we can wait eight main cases It will be solved in different settings with the addition of new side quests not found in the original game.

Adventure will revolve around one sectis run by a London elite that worships ancient cosmic gods typical of H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction and is haunted by a distant prophecy. Each case will allow us to analyze a crime scene, as is typical for the genre, and then give us the opportunity to explore a series of “semi-open world” maps that will also include events and side quests.

We’ll be able to relocate precisely to Victorian London, a Swiss psychiatric ward, New Orleans, Scotland, and the Louisiana swamp. Each environment would obviously be conditioned by the dark style one might expect from a Lovecraft work.

Sherlock Holmes The Awakened will therefore not re-offer the only true open world of The Sinking City and Chapter One; motivation, as noted by the developers, is the impossibility of working on a big world in the current conditions of Ukraine. However, we can confirm that lack of open world It’s not a real problem, because in any case it was the weakest and secondary component of the previous adventures.

Magnifying glass

By delving a little deeper into the analysis, Frogwares also presents a series of game mechanics it will return to Awakened. You’ll be able to recreate key game events with our imagination, interrogate suspects and ask them the right questions, use a concentration mode to find details, and use archives to find clues, starting with what’s been discovered. The Mental Palace will also return with new environment-appropriate graphics, where it’s possible to combine clues to reach conclusions.

All this is well known and is nothing new to fans of Frogwares’ research adventures. However, The Awakened will also introduce a new game mechanic: riddles of madnessIt represents our detective’s slow descent into madness as he approaches ancestral beings.

These puzzles are based on two key elements: complete despair and fear of the unknown, as well as a series of extraterrestrial settings. These puzzles will require some experimentation and the ability to think from traditional screens – it’s unclear what the team meant by these words, but it may be a pleasant surprise that gives Awakened its own identity.

Frogwares also stays true to its vision: the game will let you face the challenges minimize the aid. We will never be told what to do step by step, but we will have to independently find the next move: the goal is to make ourselves feel like real detectives.

Finally, thanks Kickstarter support, Frogwares has confirmed that a “metagame” feature will be added to the game. We’re talking about a system that awards points for completing quests and activities: these points can be used to purchase alternative costumes, sketches and iconic Sherlock items to collect in-game.

In case of reaching 160,000 euros (about 11,000 lost in 25 days, so possible), Frogwares will also add some chapters to Sherlock Holmes The Awakened. Dr. We’ll check Watson. The next goals of the campaign are currently unknown.