Tying a weapon to a murder, murderer and by extension the crime

[Hyomoto]

This is one of the weakest aspects of the game. Even if the person is holding a weapon that matches the profile, there's no way to actually tie it to the murder. Sure, a lot of circumstantial evidence, but we seem to only need to prove the accused owns a cutting implement, not that they murdered someone with it. I assume this is one of those things that will improve over early access, but it's worth discussing.

Namely that motive and method are important parts of building a case, and here we have a world where neither matter. I was able to turn in a poisoning case on the flimsy evidence of a single fingerprint from a coworker being present on a business card near their corpse. I realize we're living in a dystopia but if *that* is strong enough evidence to secure a conviction, I'm not sure why I can't just point to anyone who knows the victim.

I honestly had no idea why they killed them, and no leads. I found a receipt for some pest removal that included poison they bought, but turns out the victim also purchased the same service. If that's a link, it's equally likely they poisoned themselves. So yeah, never found a weapon, never found a motive. They touched a card left next to the body, but since they worked together this is hardly evidence.

It really seems like fingering the killer should be the least valuable part of the case, and finding proof should be what city hall is interested in. You should require some minimum of evidence to support your claim. As it stands the game knows two things, that a murder happened and who did it. So it really only requires you to give it a name. But if we're a detective we should be proving a murder happened, it seems like in this dystopia city hall would be quick to write these things off as suicide.

[Luna]

Yeah you'd really think that they would want more conclusive proof before putting away someone for murder.
That said, this game is ambitious as hell so I imagine they're going to try making the other facets of the investigation deeper as development progresses.

As for motives, I've noticed that there are different *kinds* of murders that can point you towards a different set of suspects. When they leave a cryptic message on a business card it can indicate that the killer is someone the victim worked with and wanted to take out a corporate rival. If you see hearts and a message like "X and Y forever" it's typically a stalker case and you'll find bits of a description and where the victim had seen the killer in the days leading up to the murder.

Until that aspect is more fully fleshed out though, I do like trying to tie all the evidence together myself even if it's not required. Filling out the evidence board and seeing yarn link from the crime scene all the way to the suspect is just so darn satisfying.

[derLoko]

Definitely agree.

I was really overthinking my first case and was pretty sure that my main suspect is being set up by the real killer. I gave the poor guy 50$ and he just lets me go through all of his stuff while watching TV? No way. I never found solid proof or a real motive (and it really isn't in the game atm). Turns out city hall is perfectly fine with my half-baked investigation.

But I was wondering if that's what the devs are going for - the game is called "Shadows of Doubt", after all. Maybe there are some plot-twists coming?

[Maya-Neko]

The road map shows 3 big update, of which the 3rd one is about murder cases. i guess we've to wait until then, though i wouldn't expect it to be hyperrealistic. In the end it's still a game, so it needs to stay solvable for those, who doesn't want to study criminalistics. But a least some motives might be nice^^

[Graknorke]

for that last bit you're not actually putting together evidence to put the perp away, you're just a civilian informant telling the enforcers what you are pretty sure happened. the more details you give the easier you make it for them but they're not expecting you to have a forensics lab or anything. ruining people's lives for spurious reasons is part of the vibe

[SpaceMuffin]

I think it would be cool to add blood/dna analysis to the game, you can match the blood on a weapon or item to the victim. There are already blood types for each person, and blood stained weapons is kinda how they figure these things out irl. (Guns will often have blood particulates on/in them especially in cases of same room acts, knives are just no brainer)

[Soft Toast]

It's not really our job to do anything that the resolution form doesn't ask, we are Private Investigators, not government/corpo supported detectives.

[Hyomoto]

Originally posted by Soft Toast:

It's not really our job to do anything that the resolution form doesn't ask, we are Private Investigators, not government/corpo supported detectives.

Well, City Hall won't let you resolve a case with any *random* name. In fact, they penalize for giving them the wrong one. So the issue isn't the resolution form doesn't ask you these things, it's that it doesn't make sense for City Hall to expect you to turn in evidence that a) a murder was committed, and b) the name of who did it without proving a) that a murder was committed, and b) the person did it. Part of finding the murder weapon is proving it's the murder weapon. That's on the sheet, the game just doesn't actually have you do it.

Originally posted by Luna:

Until that aspect is more fully fleshed out though, I do like trying to tie all the evidence together myself even if it's not required. Filling out the evidence board and seeing yarn link from the crime scene all the way to the suspect is just so darn satisfying.

I totally agree. I find myself doing the extra work because that part is fun, not necessarily because the game requires it and I suspect most people would say the same thing. I'd be surprised if this isn't part of what gets fleshed out.

Originally posted by Maya-Neko:

The road map shows 3 big update, of which the 3rd one is about murder cases. i guess we've to wait until then, though i wouldn't expect it to be hyperrealistic. In the end it's still a game, so it needs to stay solvable for those, who doesn't want to study criminalistics. But a least some motives might be nice^^

This is why I think it's worth discussing. Adding more murder types isn't quite the same. The game, as is, without further changes could support a lot more types of murder. People could get murdered in basements and on rooftops. However, I would argue that even with the case types we *have* that the linking bits are the part I hope to see the most development on. Once you've solved certain murders you've solved all of them, the random details don't actually change much. "Dead body with a business card, pull a print go to the office and we're done. We found our killer."

All of this is why I think that second part is important. Changing nothing else, the reason that case *is* so simple to solve is because we're not really required to figure out why or how they murdered that person, just figure out whose fingerprint was on the business card left at the scene.