Murdered: Soul Suspect Is, Er, Announced
This whole industry is bonkers. Launch trailers are released days ahead of launches, there are trailers for trailers to announce release dates, and pre-order packages for games that are barely off the whiteboard. So perhaps I'm becoming inured to it all when I barely bat a beautiful eyelid at an "announcement trailer" for Square's Murdered: Soul Suspect, for which there was a teaser trailer in February.
It turns out this is a very extended version of the teaser, which was clearly cut from this all those months ago. Quite why it's taken until now to show the original is not clear, but it could well be the brief glimpse of in-game footage at the very end.
As we already knew, the game asks you to solve your own murder. The new trailer makes this a bit more clear. It seems you were thrown out of an upstairs window by a hooded figure, and in your state of unconsciousness appear beside your own body to watch Mr Hood shoot you seven times in the torso. At which point, ghost.
The dead man, Ronan O'Connor, is inevitably a "detective with a chequered past". After being killed he enters the limbo of Dusk, and can only get out once he's identified his killer. Which he's going to do with a bunch of supernatural powers he now possesses. In Salem. It's great to see a new IP, no doubt. It's just, if only any of the words in the previous sentence didn't feel wholly inevitable. But at least he's not hunting down the killer of his wife and daughter, I guess, as narcissistic a theme as it's become instead. Ronan can read the minds of the living, and influence thoughts and actions of those still corporeal, which certainly sounds like a lovely idea.
Describing itself as an "action/adventure", how it will be played is unclear at this point, but I suspect some LA Noire themes. Although I hope to goodness that unlike Rockstar, the team at Square will have played ANY adventure games ever, and not make the tortuous run of idiotic rookie errors that plagued Noire. At this point, Square are keeping useful details about how the game will play to themselves, so we must only hope for the best.