HomeNewsChronique Des Silencieux
This point and click detective game has Alan Wake 2 beat on its most important featureRed string theory
Red string theory
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Pierre Feuille Studio
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Pierre Feuille Studio
After spending hours poring overAlan Wake 2this week, corkboards full of photos, red string and important little clue nuggets have definitely been on my brain. Alas, Remedy’s horror-fuelled detective ‘em upkeeps its problem-solving a little too much at arm’s lengthfor my tastes. Every piece of evidence you collect has its own set place on the board, for example, and heck, even the thrill of joining the dots with a set of pins and string is taken away from you, as its deduction work is all swept up in a wave of automation.
Chronique des Silencieux - Story TrailerWatch on YouTube
Chronique des Silencieux - Story Trailer
The demo itself is a little bit buggy at the moment (even in the space of a lunch hour, I had one attempt crash irreparably and another freeze when I brought up the menu screen), but the proof of concept seems sound. Set in France during the 1970s, you play Eugene, a naive amateur sleuth who rocks up in Bordeaux looking for his uncle Flavio. Alas, after tracking down his place of residence, you find he’s been locked up for beating up a local thug, and just like that, you immediately get embroiled in all his sordid business dealings.
What follows is a lot of interviewing, uncovering new lines of investigation and topics to quiz people on, before retreating to your notebook to get your detective hat on. There are a couple of stages to Eugene’s sleuthing - first is the connections stage, where its excellent wibbly string physics make themselves felt. There’s a fair amount of information to sift through, admittedly, especially when you’ve got a dozen-odd topics you can ask people about, and multiple perspectives to match them with. It made me appreciate just how clean and elegant Phoenix Wright’s four-to-five sentences are in its court case scenes, and I suspect that without a bit of further guidance in Chronique Des Silencieux, wading through it all may become a bit of a problem further down the line.
Still, the actual act of spotting the contradiction, holding down your mouse to land the first pin, and then dragging the other end to sink it into the testimony or piece of evidence (whichever way round you decide to do it) is very satisfying, and I like how the string sags and straightens as you wiggle it round the screen.
Image credit:Pierre Feuille Studio
Really, though, I’m mostly here for the lovely twang of those red strings. This is how you do evidence boards properly,Mr. Wake, so I hope you’re taking notes for youreventual DLC. As mentioned above, I do have a couple of concerns about how easy the whole thing will be to parse and sift through once you’re dealing with bigger swathes of information, but for now, I’m quietly intrigued. If you’d like to give Chronique Des Silencieux a try, itsdemo is available on Steam right now.
