Intellect or Psyche for first playthrough?

[technoir]

Which one is more interesting? I don't want to pick both since I don't want my cop to be a complete geek.

Also, is Inland Empire (and the other wackier skills) worth investing in for story purposes, or does it just produce a bunch of lul-so-random non-sequitur "humour"?

[Amygdala]

Inland Empire is the most important skill in the game imo, to the point it gives you a lot of freebies even if you don't spec into it. If you're lucky you can have your tie talk to you and the esoteric things that it causes to happen give huge hints, foreshadowing, and long interesting conversations.

One example is talking to corpses and the inanimate is governed by Inland Empire. Obviously they're not actually talking, but by your brain putting itself in the shoes of the corpse and presenting it to you as another character you can get a lot of info. Also you can find out things that should be secret even to you, but it's extremely cryptic

High psyche for sure. The physical 2 are less important imo, but they do have good personalities

[Du-Vu]

Physique is kind of the most evil statline but Shivers and Electrochemistry pair well with Inland Empire. If you want to know more about the physical world than the internal, Visual Calculus and Logic + Perception, Reaction Speed, and Composure basically makes you into Sherlock Holmes.

I'd say Psyche is probably the more interesting for a first playthrough, though, yeah.

[wildnike]

PSY is by far the most important skill category in the game, as nearly every one of its skills are prime candidates for attention in the game no matter what "type of cop" you play as.

Amygdala already explained IE's importance. I'll tackle the others, save Suggestion, since I don't think it's that important.

Volition governs your morale health, and is gives you almost as many "freebies" into your PC's character and "what to do" as Inland Empire.

Empathy helps unlock some unique Thoughts Cabinet material and will often act as a balancing agent for typical choices. And it's just heartwarming.

Authority gives you a lot of hints into other characters. Important for some key skill checks as well.

Espirit De Corps is rather unique in that it doesn't often help you directly, but gives you an insight into another dimension of the world.

[technoir]

Alright, I'll go with Psyche and Physique. I already played around with a high FYS character in the hostel and liked all the pent up aggression and self-destructiveness it produces (like going ballistic on the poor cafe manager), and from your responses it sounds like PSY content is more than just random wackiness. Thank you everyone!

[Leoscar]

I'd say PSY. It's both useful and fun.

[BaronVonBunghole]

When I played, I gave my character a lot of Intellect. I ended up being a pretty heartless bastard just for the sake of the investigation.
I ended up solving pretty much the whole main mystery, but I feel like I missed out on a lot of cool stuff in the world because I didn't invest in Psyche.