Planned for release later this year, Sherlock Holmes Chapter One is the next adventure game from Frogwares to follow Sherlock Holmes, this time set many years ahead of the previous stories. The early build available for this demo begins with Holmes returning to the island city of Cordona to pay respects at his mother’s grave and find closure. He’s not traveling alone, but is accompanied by his best friend Jon–not John Watson, but a new character who has an important role to play in this story–and quickly finds himself investigating new mysteries.
The theft of a diamond at the hotel where Holmes is staying kicks off the preview build and introduces the player to the game’s numerous investigation features. Questioning witnesses and searching for clues are both valuable ways to gather evidence, and evidence you’ve found can be “pinned” to your screen in order to ask characters about it or search for specific clues related to it. I found that element to be a little tedious; I would have much rather had a dialogue option to ask an NPC if they’d seen a particular man instead of needing to pin the evidence related to that lead and then talk to the NPC. It made that aspect of the investigation feel a bit less natural. However, it lost some of the tedium when a later tutorial revealed that you can also quickly cycle through evidence to pin it instead of opening the menu every time.
At certain points, you’ll need to investigate a particular crime area and focus on each relevant part to gain new information from the scene and Holmes’s deductions. Additional evidence can be gathered by eavesdropping on NPCs, which consists of a short sequence in which you’re presented with a list of phrases and must pick out the relevant ones. Holmes can also concentrate to better search for clues, through a feature that isn’t quite “detective vision,” but instead highlights objects and information based on what he’s currently looking for. This includes revealing details about NPCs you look at. While that’s a neat mechanic, I wish it included an explanation of how he knows some of these things. I’m sure it’s meant to be a nod to his observation skills, but some of the details revealed in this way feel implausible for him to guess just by a look.
Once you’ve gathered evidence, you can use Holmes’s Mind Palace to connect pieces of evidence together and draw conclusions from them. Interestingly, sometimes evidence can lead to multiple possible conclusions, and you need to decide which is correct. The end of my investigation resulted in a choice that I assume will have ramifications later down the line, so it will be interesting to see how decisions factor into the game’s story. After the conclusion of the game’s first major case, the story continues until you’re given a smaller quest that introduces another feature–wearing disguises. I don’t know how much of a role disguises will play in the full game, but the variety of options handed to me in the preview together with the unlocking of a clothing store suggests it might be a significant aspect.
Now, the performance took a massive hit once I entered the open world city, but this is a known issue since the game isn’t optimized yet. It should be greatly improved by the time the game is ready. I didn’t spend a lot of time walking around the city since there wasn’t much to do yet, but it has the potential to be an interesting place to explore. In my brief journey through, I unlocked fast travel points and also had a chance to buy a newspaper detailing the case I’d solved earlier in the story, which was a nice nod to my progress.
I have to admit, I was skeptical about the idea of a game starring a young Sherlock Holmes, but I like what they did with him. Smart, sarcastic, and supremely confident in himself, he was the highlight of the game for me. Is that how a young Holmes would act? I don’t know, but I’m fully on board with it nevertheless. (I’m less enthused, however, about Jon’s decision to nickname him “Sherry.”) The focus on Holmes’s past and investigation into his mother’s death, together with the role filled by Jon, makes it seem like this will be a more personal story at its core. The actual overarching mystery of the game is only lightly touched upon here, but the character focus has me intrigued and interested in seeing more. Although some of the investigation elements felt tedious, I’d say Sherlock Holmes Chapter One has the potential to be an entertaining mystery story and an interesting new twist on the famous detective.
