Are some side jobs impossible?

[A Cult Leader]

I've recently gotten a string of jobs that I think are basically impossible. How are you expected to identify some based on only their build, blood type, and their partner's interests? Am I just missing some big feature?

[Isabelle]

Impossible no, ridiculously tedious and pointless yes.

Sometimes side jobs generate with critera that for all intents and purposes are impossible to "detective" your way through.

You can just drop the case at no penalty.

Cases select 3-4 random traits to reveal about your target and sometimes those traits are pretty much useless info that applies to multiple people.

[El Burrito]

Sometimes, it's just legwork and a bit of guessing. A job like that would be something I'd work on in downtime between murder cases. It is way more effort than it's worth probably so unless you get really lucky, I'd probably just pick up an easier job.

There might be sync disks that help you identify people's traits easier, I can't remember if there's one that lets you know someones blood type just by looking at them.

Otherwise, you'd basically have to keep track of every single person you see with the body type you're looking for, go to their house to find their blood type (hope they're not homeless!) and then if they happen to have the right blood type, start looking into their partner.

It's not impossible, it would just take an extraordinarily long time to do. And like Isabelle said, you might even find multiple people that all match the description.

[Isabelle]

Originally posted by El Burrito:

Sometimes, it's just legwork and a bit of guessing. A job like that would be something I'd work on in downtime between murder cases. It is way more effort than it's worth probably so unless you get really lucky, I'd probably just pick up an easier job.

There might be sync disks that help you identify people's traits easier, I can't remember if there's one that lets you know someones blood type just by looking at them.

Otherwise, you'd basically have to keep track of every single person you see with the body type you're looking for, go to their house to find their blood type (hope they're not homeless!) and then if they happen to have the right blood type, start looking into their partner.

It's not impossible, it would just take an extraordinarily long time to do.

Keep in mind information saturation becomes an issue with cases like this.

Your player character absorbs and remembers any and all information they get even a split second glance at. In an effort to solve this job, even as a secondary thing to do during downtime, you'll end up skiffing wayyyyy more info than you really need.

Over time this eliminates the fun part of the gameplay- the detective work- because your infinite infallible memory auto-solves cases.

[Maya-Neko]

The only jobs that are literally impossible are vandalism jobs where you've to destroy windows in a non-window apartment

On top of that, theft cases generate fingerprints alongside them, which will eventually vanish, so if one of these is already quite old, then the fingerprints might be gone already and the case gets significantly more tedious.

Besides these, you can theoretically solve every single case. The more important question though is, if you want to solve them, because some of them need you to check tons of people or cameras. You can keep the job and just do others, just in case of accidentally meeting the person, but that's just more like gambling, so feel free to just decline some of the jobs. You can look at it like they're offering you to do the job, which you don't need to accept

[El Burrito]

Originally posted by Isabelle:

Over time this eliminates the fun part of the gameplay- the detective work- because your infinite infallible memory auto-solves cases.

Oh yeah good point! I've had long running games where I've just ended up instantly identifying the target because of this, definitely defeats the point of the game.

[Isabelle]

Originally posted by El Burrito:

Originally posted by Isabelle:

Over time this eliminates the fun part of the gameplay- the detective work- because your infinite infallible memory auto-solves cases.

Oh yeah good point! I've had long running games where I've just ended up instantly identifying the target because of this, definitely defeats the point of the game.

This is the reason I make a new save every time I play- it completely minimizes the amount of info I have to work with, and allows me to fully investigate things without fear of saturating my file with useless info.

[Isabelle]

Originally posted by Maya-Neko:

The only jobs that are literally impossible are vandalism jobs where you've to destroy windows in a non-window apartment

On top of that, theft cases generate fingerprints alongside them, which will eventually vanish, so if one of these is already quite old, then the fingerprints might be gone already and the case gets significantly more tedious.

Besides these, you can theoretically solve every single case. The more important question though is, if you want to solve them, because some of them need you to check tons of people or cameras. You can keep the job and just do others, just in case of accidentally meeting the person, but that's just more like gambling, so feel free to just decline some of the jobs. You can look at it like they're offering you to do the job, which you don't need to accept

In the case of vandalism jobs for apartments that lack windows, you can break the shower door glass. Shower glass is functionally identical to window glass, for the purposes of vandalism missions.

Edit: Also, the way theft cases generate, fingerprints are useful but not paramount. The thief will be somebody in the victim's address book 100% of the time, which means you have a 100% chance of finding the thief by door-knocking on all listed acquaintances. The objective of those missions is only to find the stolen item, so you technically don't even have to know who stole it, you just have to find it.

[Falconhoof]

Originally posted by El Burrito:

Originally posted by Isabelle:

Over time this eliminates the fun part of the gameplay- the detective work- because your infinite infallible memory auto-solves cases.

Oh yeah good point! I've had long running games where I've just ended up instantly identifying the target because of this, definitely defeats the point of the game.

"We ain't got much for you to go on for you Mason, but we found these prints and she loves music."
*snaps fingers "Elaine Dawson from Suds 'n' Buds."
"Damnit, he's good."