Despite the tragic war that is devastating their country, the Ukrainian developers of Frogwares are sticking with the development of Sherlock Holmes The Awakened, a remake of the first part of the adventure game series.
Sherlock Holmes The Awakened was recently funded via Kickstarter with pledges of €252,000. Ahead of the February 2023 release window, we caught up with Frogwares Communications Lead Sergey Oganesyan to find out more about the studio’s current situation and the game’s main features.
First of all, how are you doing amidst the war scenario? How would you rate your current development efficiency compared to the pre-war period?
Our team is doing what it can to find some kind of normalcy and routine. But we still have to adapt regularly as the situation of individual team members changes fairly regularly. One minute you’re in a meeting with someone, the next they’re having to move to a dugout because an air raid siren goes off. Or they need to set aside half a day to do something personal that under normal circumstances might take an hour. So, as you can imagine, the way we work and how long it takes to get things done has changed drastically. But everyone on the team is very understanding. We’re all in the same boat, so despite the horrific situation, it feels like this has all brought us closer.
Do you also have to make do with fewer staff than before, or did you hire new developers to compensate for those who were directly involved in the war?
We didn’t hire people to fill these roles. Everyone who fights or helps humanitarian organizations is still paid in full by us, and we’ve told each of them that their place on the team will be waiting for them when this war is over. So we adjusted our workflow in some places, and in other places other team members stepped in to fill that gap. The Awakened is also not a project that under normal circumstances would ever need to involve all 90 members of our team. So we couldn’t let the game overwhelm us and miss key people in certain roles compared to an open world game from scratch.
In your latest video you mentioned some new features of Sherlock Holmes The Awakened. Can you provide some details on those?
The most notable addition will be the madness puzzles. Given the theme of Eldritch, cosmic horror, we will try to create playable puzzles that give the feeling of mental decay.
Each puzzle presents a clear goal (i.e. open the metaphorical door to get out), but the rest is up to you to figure out. The puzzles get harder and more insane as the story progresses. In addition, Sherlock’s appearance will gradually change to reflect his deteriorating mental state.
The playable Watson is also a new feature that has been completely added for the remake. And then of course we’re essentially taking a lot of the mechanics that we created for Chapter One and adding them to The Awakened that didn’t exist in 2009. Things like focus mode, Sherlock’s ability to see additional clues and elements that can be useful in the investigation. The Imaigion mode in which we piece together the possible sequence of events into a key moment / clue in a case. The more complicated Mind Palace system, where we put all the clues we’ve collected together to try to create our final conclusions/theories. Essentially, we’re taking almost all of the mechanics from Chapter One in The Awakened and redesigning the existing puzzles to work that way. How the original game was played has been completely discarded. So even if you played the first Awakened, how you progress through the falls will be very different now.
They announced that Watson will be playable. What kind of differences will players notice compared to playing as Sherlock?
To be honest we’re still working on the exact details as we really didn’t have this project set in stone until we had the funding for it on Kickstarter. But one of our main motivations for a playable Watson is that it could really help reinforce the connection players feel when they see the connection between Watson and Holmes forming, which is an important part of our revamped story. By actually playing as Watson and not just having him as an NPC, the chance of you bonding with them even more as a duo will likely increase.
Surely there will be moments when you, as Watson, can choose how to speak to Sherlock. There are parts of the game where you as Watson have to help Sherlock get out of some sticky situations. And you’ll also be able to see certain parts of cases from a different perspective as you investigate as Watson instead of Holmes.
The next stretch goal mentions realistic physics for objects in the game. Could this be used to improve puzzles?
In some places they will add a bit to the feel of the puzzles, but since these quests already have a set structure and solutions, realistic physics never really had much room to affect them in general. Rather, the realistic physics system is there, which is what we would be working on anyway, and now we have a chance to implement it. For The Awakened, it’s more of a nice touch or quality of life feature that makes the game feel more modern.
How long do you think Sherlock Holmes The Awakened will last for the average player?
We expect the remake to be around 14 to 18 hours of gameplay, give or take.
Will this remake be a one off or do you plan to remake the entire Sherlock Holmes series over time?
It’s difficult to say. We decided to remake The Awakened for a number of reasons. We knew it was one of our favorite titles from the earlier Sherlocks. It works very well to simply continue our fledgling Sherlock arc in an interesting way. And we needed to work on a game with a structure, features, and story already established to make it easier for the team. So a lot of thought has gone into why and how we’re doing this remake. What will happen after that depends heavily on how the game works and when the war ends. But since we own the rights to all our games, the path to further remakes is entirely up to us and our fans, if they want it.
Since this game has Lovecraft inspiration, is it a bridge to your other IP, The Sinking City? Can fans of this franchise still hope for a sequel?
As far as stories go, the two are not directly connected. But if you’re a fan of The Sinking City and our take on Eldrich horror, then The Awakened should levitate your squid-god-loving boat, too. In fact, it’s considered by some fans and critics to be one of our best Lovecraftian stories of any game.
As for a sequel to The Sinking City, I think people should expect something along those lines from us again at some point since we own the intellectual property. If not by name, then at least a Lovecraftian-style open-world horror investigative adventure. We know the lore and people seem to really enjoy our creative approaches, so this isn’t a genre we’re likely to stray from anytime soon.
Will Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened support ray tracing on PC and/or next-gen consoles?
We did some preliminary testing but decided this isn’t something we can properly implement on top of all the other things we need to do if we’re going to hit our February 2023 release date.
Will the game support AMD FSR and/or NVIDIA DLSS on PC?
Some of our programmers have been playing around with both technologies since they are fairly easily accessible to us through Unreal 4. But they still haven’t made a final decision on whether we’ll have the time to properly test, implement, and QA any of these tools for The Awakened. Depending on our final testing, we might as well support one and not the other.
Considering using Unreal Engine 5 for your next game after Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened?
Our team is obviously in awe of what UE5 can do, and the goal is to eventually make the switch as we are Unreal Engine developers through and through. This is where our team knows best and where we have the most know-how. But moving to UE5 now for The Awakened isn’t a smart move. There will always be a learning curve and lots of experimentation to see what can be done now versus in the past. We just don’t have that luxury right now and we wouldn’t want to burden our team with something like that. We have enough unknowns and surprises in our daily life as it is.
Is there anything else you’d like to share about the remake?
I think the most important thing that comes to mind is how proud we are that we were able to make this game in the first place. The Russian invasion came at a time when we were in the early stages of developing our next game. The situation and the early stage of the project made it almost impossible to continue, so we had to put it on hold completely. From there we had to regroup, rethink and completely adapt how we work and what we do. As I said, we had had the idea for an Awakened remake floating around for a while, but in less than a month we were able to evaluate an idea and turn it into a viable and worthwhile project.
Thanks for your time.
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