How should we investigate in Cyberpunk?

[Rawls]

How should we investigate in Cyberpunk?

Personally I think witcher senses in TW3 were an effective but overly repetitive system. I think it would be interesting to discuss our ideas for how we can investigate any mysteries that arise within the quests of Cyberpunk 2077. I think it needs to be intuitive and easy to learn, but try to avoid becoming simply push button ... follow trail ... find person / thing you're looking for ... fight or talk ... quest completed.

Your ideas on how to make investigation both intuitive and interesting?

 

[4meg]

Interesting question.

Unfortunately, due to the restrictions of being a game, a certain amount of scripting will be necessary. You will need to talk to npcs for information that will in turn lead you to other avenues of pursuit. The key is how to stop it from becoming - talk to npc A who leads to npc B who mentions clue F that shows location of npc Q. That's too linear. There will need to be some sort of subtle misdirection at every level to keep the investigation interesting, but not so impossible that you can't solve it.

I think a possible solution would be body language. Having to watch an npc's body language to tell if they are lying or not could lead to some interesting game play. If you miss the hints, you are sent on a wild goose chase, but if you catch the little tick or inflection or whatever, you could be on the right path.

In all honesty the idea of hard boiled detective type investigations in CP2077 could be a difficult thing to handle.

 

[Rawls]

I think a possible solution would be body language. Having to watch an npc's body language to tell if they are lying or not could lead to some interesting game play. If you miss the hints, you are sent on a wild goose chase, but if you catch the little tick or inflection or whatever, you could be on the right path.

Yeah having NPCs who lie to you was one of my thoughts too. Maybe make it so that with a high enough skill in social perception you can call them on it ... but otherwise it's left for the player to figure it out like in LA Noire.

As far as actual investigations go. Having items like tracks and broken flower vases and smells and the like as clues still seems like a good idea to me. Maybe you push a button to start "investigation mode." While holding that button you have five other buttons you can push for (1) sight, (2) sound, (3) smell, & (4) touch. I doubt taste would be useful in many circumstances, though it could be included too. When engaging that sense button, relevant clues may become highlighted.

I.E. you go into a room to check out where person X went. You start investigation mode and first click sight. You notice a highlighted broken bottle. You walk over to it and hit smell (you can tell it's white wine). You kneel next too it and engage sight again and notice some tracks of wine. You could click touch to get wine on your fingers to confirm if it's still cold or not ... etc etc.

This would make the investigation process more active and less passive ... which I think is good.

 

[Guest 4149880]

I'd like to see investigations with high tech gear, Batman Arkham style but even more so. Data configurations into a digital 3D recreation of the incident. These were my favorite parts of the game. And I could imagine Cp2077 going way more in depth with the detail.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EEUkcOPmXo

 

[AdamTaylor]

I would like to see something like how the Blade Runner game did it, where there wasn't just one linear answer to each investigation. Different clues could be present and interpreted in different ways, leading to different results. I remember my friend and I playing, and getting very different narratives as we followed up the same case. This is definitely important to making a game feel unique to each player.

I'd say that while there should be some more linear investigations to drive specific plot points, most should be variable. Randomized when encountered, and they could be further shaped by the player's actions. The player should have the ability to choose how to deeply to dig into any clue, and whether or not to omit specific evidence in order to push personal (or hired) agendas.

I'm thinking something similar to the Android board game. It's a game where all the players are various investigators and at the start of a case everyone draws a guilty and innocent card from a list of possible suspects. The cards determine who a player will try to make appear guilty and innocent, by planting evidence. As players investigate around the board and collect evidence, they draw tokens (that are -3 to +3 in value, along with a -/+5 token with special rules). Only the player who did the investigating knows what that token's value is, and they are placing it on the cards for the various suspects. So they could put a positive value on someone they want guilty, and negative ones on those they want innocent. All the players are secretly placing these tokens and at the end of the game the totals are added up (with each suspect having modifiers for physical, witness and digital information), which determines who actually is guilty and innocent. There are game options that will let players peek at a token, or remove or add extra at random and the like. And it's this unknown, with each player trying to figure out how others are swaying the evidence that really makes things interesting. A player wouldn't always just put tokens on the two suspects they drew (though if a player drew guilty and innocent for the same suspect, they're considered obsessed with that person and get double points for making them guilty), players generally spread out evidence to try and keep other players guessing.

Something similar would be awesome to see in Cyberpunk. Make investigations less about a linear story where you're just collecting all the evidence scattered about and more about finding specific clues and determining how to interpret them. What information do you bring to light? Who do you share it with? What spin do you put on the things you find?

 

[0248991]

Hi,
as gameplay, maybe it would be cool not to hint objects of evidence at all.

You just walk into room, where murder happened, you can see mess, blood, damaged things, etc... and no concrete actions provided by quest - just some larger "milestone" of quest.
e,g, - "find murderer however you want" instead of "go, pick, see, catch, talk, end of quest, exp +100".

There could be mechanisms in the game, that allows for inspections of things and environment;
e.g. zoomable, rotateable inventory as in skyrim, where you actually can see something is wrong with objects, etc...

Of course, implants could also help:
e.g. blood analysis, heat traces, criminal database of people, ...

But I imagine as i read through suggestions,
many people want something like very real open world game with many possibilities and consequences,
this is gonna be very hard to do, and very hard to do AAA style,
if you present yourself as one of the best developers in the world.

 

[4meg]

Murders should be devilishly hard to investigate. This is a cyberpunk future so you could expect a victim to have up to the second back ups of their senses. Perhaps chipped into their head. Solution. Remove head and take it with you. While this would make your investigation harder, it wouldn't be beyond all reason.

The other thing is that there will be much more surveillance footage available. AI support would make finding relevant footage much easier, so if it is a premeditated murder precautions would have to be taken to avoid detection. Scramblers perhaps. You will have access to a much stronger arsenal of tools to investigate crimes, but so too should the criminals have much more effective tools to commit them. Usually police/detectives are playing catch up with criminals in this regard.

 

[0248991]

You will have access to a much stronger arsenal of tools to investigate crimes, but so too should the criminals have much more effective tools to commit them. Usually police/detectives are playing catch up with criminals in this regard.

I would not prefer to have completely overscripted scenarios, which (generate-lly) "evolve" (by algorithm) depending on player's actions,
requiring investigations of everything to bits, intellectually "chasing" the bad guys all the time, etc...

In my opinion, "everything" should be "more scripted" than in witcher 3 in overall, but not to point, when if you fart, you will destroy all of your evidence
It should be more about finding key evidences, think of bit, eventually do some action and that's about it.
More of original stories, interesting quests, some funny or unexpected situations - make every quest count and not to fill hole on the map.

People are people and kill even simply for simple/impulsive reasons and players also probably don't want to focus 100% all the time.

 

[lord_blex]

I'd rather have them not be about looking for clues. if they are highlighted then what's the point, and if they aren't it gets annoying after a while...
the investigation scene on the jedi planet in kotor comes to mind. the whole thing took place in a tiny area with like 2 clues and I was utterly confused the whole time. it was great.

 

[BjornTheBandit]

Would be interesting if you could arrive at an incorrect conclusion because you have a really cheap pirated language implant and got a bad translation that led you to a tool shed instead of a pool shed

 

[kofeiiniturpa]

The witcher senses, weren't really a homerun by any stretch of the term. It had no mechanical intrigue of any kind for simply being a "follow the marked trail" feature that required neither player skill nor character skill.

The concept of portraying the PC's senses is sound, though. The character might hear. smell, taste and feel things the player has no idea about, he might even see things that aren't immediately visible to the player. I think these should all be applied to gameplay and tied to the characters relevant skills (INT + awareness/notice). Like... pressing a button to zoom in (representing focus) and then checking for stuff in the scene (any scene) and then subtly highlighting them if the check passes, even adding items to the scene that weren't visible before. It doesn't need to be all about "investigating" either, but simply about percieving the world in more detail than what meets the eye.

As for "investigating" itself, I'd take a page from how the old point'n click adventures were played -- Police Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Sam&Max Hit the road, etc. Searching the scene and items and figuring the puzzles out -- and apply the RPG mechanics, scene specific skill tests, and the afore mentioned "perception of the world" stuff to it. Have the investigative situations be more about puzzle solving (if the PC is capable) than just a narrative crutch like the witcher senses.

 

[Suhiira]

The "problem" with including such character senses mechanics in a game comes when a player is given zero clues when to use them.
A good example of this is the ability to find herbs/ore in DA: Inquisition. You wind up constantly spamming the "Sense Hidden" key and that's a PAIN IN THE ASS.

 

[kofeiiniturpa]

If the player feels like he has to spam the mechanic to get absolutely every bit out of it that's possible, it's his problem.

Obviously the content that might or might not be revealed should generally be of minor importance. Stuff that can be missed out on. The more contextual uses of the mechanic should be self evident.

I haven't played DAI, nor will I, but it sounds like collector grind. That's not something I'd expect from Cyberpunk.

 

[AdamTaylor]

I'd say if they're going to give us a "find the clues" sort of mechanic, rather than the usual "Press X to highlight" system, which honestly defeats the whole point, they should leave it up to the player to investigate things.

Let the player examine the crime scene and choose what items to focus in on. And the player would be to choose what is and isn't important. Those choices should advance the investigation storyline. So a player can look around the room, maybe find a mug on the floor, pick it up, rotate it, and decide if it's relevant. Maybe they'll flag the liquid inside for analysis (which could or could not have any relevance to the crime). Some things would naturally be obvious picks, like a weapon or blood pool or footprint, while others would be found by more attentive players. A case should be solvable with a bare minimum of evidence, while getting more should reward the player in some way. But as I mentioned with the Android reference, the player should be able to choose what evidence to flag as relevant and report, and what to hide, steering the investigation as they wish.

To aid the player however, instead of just hitting a button and making everything that's potential evidence glow, why not base it off their stats and skills? Give the player an option to "think about it". Maybe a journal entry or a button which will have the player basically think to themselves about what sort of things they should look for. These clues would be based off the player's stats/skills as they would relate to investigation (basically similar to how D&D would use spot/detect trap/etc checks). They higher the relevant traits, the more clues the player would give themselves about what to look for. So someone who's got low skill with investigation would comment to themselves that they should look for signs of a weapon, where the crime was committed, point of entry, etc. Basically the very basics of checking out a crime scene. While someone with high skill will get more tips, like looking for common items out of place, checking to see if a murder scene has signs of robbery or not (maybe the suspect stole something specific or left clues that they were searching for something). That sort of thing.

This way, the better the player's character is, the more tips they are given as to what to focus their search on. This way a player isn't just instantly shown all the evidence as it glows about a room, but rather is left to find it themselves but can get clues as to where to look and what to look for the better they get at investigations, to help make sure they're not missing out on stuff.

 

[AdamTaylor]

The "problem" with including such character senses mechanics in a game comes when a player is given zero clues when to use them.
A good example of this is the ability to find herbs/ore in DA: Inquisition. You wind up constantly spamming the "Sense Hidden" key and that's a PAIN IN THE ASS.

I agree. In games like Dragon Age, it becomes a matter of spamming the button constantly as you travel to make sure you're not missing stuff. Which is just tedious and pointless (just make it all highlight be default in that case).

A better use of a "special vision" or highlight mode would be how the Batman Arkham games used detective vision. You generally knew when to use it, because you were specifically looking for things. But you didn't need to just run around with it constantly on as most places wouldn't have anything you'd need it for.

 

[Suhiira]

If the player feels like he has to spam the mechanic to get absolutely every bit out of it that's possible, it's his problem.

You misunderstand, in my example the player must spam the mechanic to get anything at all out of it, that's the game designers problem.

 

[kofeiiniturpa]

You misunderstand, in my example the player must spam the mechanic to get anything at all out of it, that's the game designers problem.

Yeah, it seems I did.

My angle was from an case of optimal implementation, not from DAI type spamming.

 

[Guest 4149880]

Maybe we can get some old Splinter Cell scanner style device for that fine tune touch. Its all about those high tech toys.

 

[animalfather]

 

[Cherokeedog]

I'd say no matter what you do, some actions WILL become repetitive. Say you have a tool to see blood traces. You WILL use it on EVERY murder scene. Since the game is a sci-fi, you could have a better or worse quality of this tool and it can have more or less abilities (for example - tool that also gives you blood type, as opposed to tool that doesn't; you could then collect evidence and take it to be analyzed).

So I think the secret of having memorable investigations lies in handcrafting a cool story for each case AND delivering it in a memorable (immersive) manner (like having a voice-over while reading notes, or seeing what happened in a room by watching some ghosts moving after investigating, having cut-scenes when you discover something important, etc.). Once again, since it's a sci-fi game, maybe you can partially reconstruct the scene (Andromeda style), freeze it, see what's missing and take action to fill in the gaps. Still, you'd end up once again doing this on every occasion. Maybe we just need these methods to so cool that we'd not get bored of them fast.