The Detail [only matters the first time]

The Detail: Episode 1 caught me on guard at first. A point-and-click adventure game in the tried and true "noir" style, centered around a middle-aged detective based in the urban city of Urbancitiesville and the people his choices directly impact as he struggles between the relief and regret of impending retirement.

Being only the first of five episodes, there is much to be said about this game that may or may not be permanent. There are interesting little surprises that you wouldn't expect to find in any point-and-click adventure game. The comic book art style is pleasing to look at, with little details such as phonetic sound effects spelled out behind a car speeding by on the overpass. There is a sparingly used mechanic in which you perform quick-time events to add a feeling of action to the more intense scenes. The soundtrack is appropriately melancholy, even if it does fade out a bit during the middle. The Detail also features, surprisingly, gamepad support. For people like myself with the keyboard skills of a Thanksgiving ham, this is a lovely little detail that didn't have to be added.

You could say that, for what it is, this game is worth the $6 it costs on Steam. "What this game <i>is</i>" isn't the only important thing. We must hold it to what it <i>says</i> that it is.

On a positive note, this game features multiple playable characters. This mechanic is not achieved by selecting a character from the main menu, but in the midst of gameplay. Without your consent. As a hardened detective with years of experience, your main character knows all too well what it takes to get a case solved. Sometimes this involves making crime pay in the form of community service, having informants do your spying on the cheap at their own personal risk. All well and good, until you suddenly find yourself controlling the character whose life you just made more difficult. Blackmailing someone to risk their life for your own personal gain has never felt worse than when you have to walk that person home and explain to their wife and child that crime lords might be sending him home with ventilation.

The game (so far) favors choices in investigation methods. You can interrogate suspects calmly and with professional rationale, or let the Knuck Brothers and Magnum P.I. do the talking. You even have the option of making deals to get your way. The featured appeal of this game is, literally, the fact that you can do things your own way and make whatever choices you want. If you choose to play through this game to the end, you'll see what that really means.

And therein lies the negative. In a game that boasts "multiple branching storylines driven by the player's choices", that little aspect is something we'll have to wait for in future episodes, if we see it at all. Your choices have the consequences of you making that choice. If you choose to hold your tongue and keep a steady head in digging for clues, you have the consequence of getting a certain ending. If you choose the path of Lieutenant Sith Lord, you get...the same ending. The things you said are different, but your character is no different at all. Characters still speak to you in the same way after your decisions are made. Some dialogue may be <i>slightly</i> different in the moment, but after three playthroughs with consistently different choices, I received the same exact ending each time. None of my harsh words showed any negative results. My gentleness under pressure went wholly unnoticed by the game in general. A game that promised branching storylines has so far offered nothing more than a detective story in which the pages are turned via Xbox 360 controller.

The Detail gives you the illusion of control at first; I sincerely measured my words on my first playthrough. I thought about the consequences of my actions and how they might change my future options. I wondered about the characters whose lives I'd been told were in my indecisive hands. All of these are good, until you play through a second time and find that it never mattered. Perhaps that's the real moral that Rival Games are going for: In the end, what you do or don't do has little to no impact on the world around you, whether in law enforcement or video games.

I might believe that were true for FBI and detectives, but I can think of several games that managed to do what this game hasn't.