The Sinking City - Frogwares Interview on Whats Next

[Silver]

@Wccftech Frogwares was interviewed about what they are working on now after the success of The Sinking City.

Let's talk about the game for a while. Your 'City Generator' tech demo was quite famous ahead of the release. With the benefit of hindsight, are you satisfied with this approach used for The Sinking City? Do you plan to use it again in the future and if so, are there any specific improvements you're looking to make?

We are happy with the approach, for several reasons, mainly because we simply wouldn't have been able to create the atmosphere of a Lovecraftian town on this scale without the tool. It's just not the same if your world only had 10 streets. It was a technical achievement for us, a small team being able to make a full-scale city. This was a very clear example of needing to innovate in order to actually get the job done.
However, we've realized the tool's shortcomings too and we're now working to improve it to create much more varied surroundings in future games. To give you an example, we've really altered our approach to how we create street environments, interiors, etc compared to what we did for The Sinking City. We looked closely at the players' feedback and as a result, this is one of the areas we want to focus on. We're now aiming to make each street and building feel more unique, and as a result, to make the city feel more authentic. All while still being able to benefit from some of the time saving the tool initially gave us.

[...]

Are you planning to keep your next project open world or perhaps you'd rather go back to the segmented level structure seen in your Sherlock games?

With the tools that we have, and more importantly, with the experience that we have gained, we do want to continue to explore this concept. Our goal is to create the ultimate open world detective experience, or the best detective experience possible.
Now, when it comes to the size of the open world relative to its content, this is of course something we will continue to work on and optimize, based on the feedback that we received. In an age where you regularly see players complain about "open- word fatigue" we're now more accepting of the idea of quality vs quantity.

On that note, Frogwares fans want to know whether you're going back to Sherlock Holmes (as teased in a recent tweet) or perhaps continuing with your intriguing Lovecraft-inspired setting. Is there anything you can share yet?

I can confirm we are working on something, but we are not ready to reveal what it is. What I can tell you is that fans best know us for our detective games, and this new game will fit the Frogwares profile - a story-focused detective adventure with minimum hand-holding. But is it going to be Sherlock, The Sinking City 2 or a new IP - that I, unfortunately, cannot say just yet.

More information.

 

[JDR13]

Hopefully it's a sequel to The Sinking City. I enjoyed that one despite the flaws.

 

[Winterfart]

Yep same here. I wouldn't mind revisiting Oakmont with a new character.

 

[Irien]

I loved most of the recent Sherlock games, and went in with high expectations for Sinking City since I also enjoy the Lovecraftian theme.

Ironically, the weakest part of the game (for me) was the open world city that they make such a song-and-dance about in the interview. It made the world "flabby" and a lot of the time I was just following the map, not looking at the surroundings etc, just looking to unlock the next fast travel point.

The investigations and stories were great, and overall I enjoyed the game (and, surprisingly, the DLC really expanded/extended the game nicely). However, the investigations were often contained in small zones (eg. houses/warehouses) which were copy/pasted (presumably because of the effort of making the city).

Conversely, Sherlock games used smaller spaces, but unique/individual to tell their stories. I would have *much* prefered slightly larger unique zones and buildings rather than a large city with a bunch of needless filler content (cough, red-zones).

Also, gun combat has no place in lovecraftian horror if you can avoid it. The irony of this is that Sherlock games were largely combat free, which would work so well with horror!

 

[stealth]

So The Sinking City was a success? It did look interesting but I didn't really follow up on it after seeing GameSpot giving it 3/10. I see other reviews in general are more favourable, so maybe I should give it a chance.

 

[Winterfart]

3/10 is really harsh.
The game sure has issues but that gamespot journalist has some too.

 

[JDR13]

Imo, Gamespot is one of the worst gaming sites out there. They have a long history of giving favorable reviews to AAA titles regardless of how good they actually are, and they generally crap on anything that's lesser known or indie developed.

In short, they shine light where the money is and throw shade where it isn't.