E3 2014 wasn't the first time we sat down with Sherlock Holmes' latest adventure. Frogwares has been developing adventure titles starring the world's most famous detective for years now, and Crimes & Punishments has been in development long enough for us to see it at two consecutive shows. The development time is being put to good use, however, as the game appears to be shaping up nicely.

Even though the game looks generally the same as in 2013, we were walked through a different case this time — a grisly murder in a Roman bath. Crimes & Punishments was described to us as being 90% investigation and 10% action, so a lot of effort has gone into making the investigative aspects of the game deep and engaging. As we surveyed the crime scene, we could explore the room and look up close at several key areas — the body itself, the switch that controls the steam in the sauna, and more. Looking at the body then let us get more granular, by examining the victim's head, arm, fingers, and of course the appetizing pool of blood beneath the poor sod.

We once again got a demo of "Sherlock Holmes Vision," appropriately named, as it's similar in spirit to the Detective Vision used in the newer Batman titles. Enabling Sherlock Holmes Vision allows you to see things otherwise difficult to discern with the naked eye. In the case of our demo, it allowed us to spot a key hidden in the pool of blood under our victim. The logic behind this is that as a master detective, Sherlock Holmes often sees things normal people don't. So it's not exactly a "super power" as much as a way to give us lesser mortals a taste of the enhanced perception of our favorite detective. As long as there's a good balance at work here and people can't play the game perpetually in this mode (ala Batman: Arkham Asylum), it seems like a worthy feature.

Once you start questioning suspects, Holmes' observation powers are again at play, allowing you to inspect every aspect of a person, from the buttons on their overcoat, to beads of sweat on their forehead as they become nervous during questioning. It seems as if this information is simply presented to you context-free, but it's up to you to determine the worth of each bit of information. Once you have sufficient evidence and suspects, you can piece them together in a "brain map" of sorts. As you connect the proverbial dots, each one illuminates to indicate a connection. Only sometimes will nodes illuminate red, indicating a less likely connection. Generally speaking though, the game allows you to make your own decision, right or wrong. And that's the most fascinating aspect of the game to me.

As each case has a multitude of potential outcomes, it all boils down to player choice. With each case, you're free to choose what to do with your suspects — believe one person's story and let them go, or go with your original instincts and arrest him. The game will never pop up a dialog saying "nope, that's not right, try again," instead allowing you to make whatever decision you want. Upon the end of a chapter, you can opt to replay it and make alternate choices if you choose. And if you really want to spoil the surprise, you can opt to see who the real criminal was. What I find fascinating, though, is that you can just keep playing, whether or not you happened to arrest the right guy or not. I'll be curious to see how the story plays out based on these choices.

The only part of our demo that was a little frustrating was one of those "10%" action sequences, as we attempted to walk across a pond on a trio of tightropes. It took four of us multiple attempts to make it. That means either the controls need a little fine-tuning before release, or, potentially, we're all terrible at gaming. Either way, we’ll find out when Crimes & Punishments releases this September.

"You see, but you do not observe."
-Sherlock Holmes-

Frogwares Studios has been making Sherlock Holmes games for twelve years now, and Crimes and Punishments (yes, it is partially inspired by famous Russian literature) is the seventh such game. The developers are passionate and knowledgeable about the mythos begun by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and carried on after his death to the present day, in which Holmes enjoys an unnaturally long life without any of the usual side effects of undeath. In this 3D graphic adventure, the player steps into the shoes and mind of a middle-aged Holmes as he takes on a series of eight investigations.

For the first time, Frogwares has adopted the Unreal Engine 3 to render London in greater detail, and the game features twenty locations both indoors and outdoors, from the poorest districts of the city to the richest. There doesn't seem to be much of an emphasis on exploration, but the environments are detailed and crisp, and the atmosphere feels authentically historical. This is all part of making the player feel like Sherlock Holmes, which is one of the developers' main aims.

When examining environments and objects (which can be zoomed in on and rotated), the player can call upon Sherlock Holmes Vision, which highlights and reveals details only a masterful detective would notice, such as the lack of dust in a rectangular shape on a shelf, which implies that an object once rested there. When interrogating suspects, the player can interrupt speech and connect clues mid-dialogue in classic Holmes fashion. We also saw a segment in which several phrases appeared on the screen as a visitor approached such as "chains rattling" and "ninth step missed." These represent the details Holmes notices that others might miss, and we saw him identify the approaching inspector just by these few quirks.

After clues are collected, Holmes goes to the Deduction Board and connect clues to deduce a conclusion. Depending upon how the player connects the clues, he can absolve or condemn various suspects, and each case has three to five different endings. The player is free to manipulate the clues to see various options, but the final result will have consequences that may appear later in the game. There are also a variety of different endings to the entire game, and although we weren't given an idea of how the eight cases might come together in a loosely connected narrative, it was hinted at.

Crimes and Punishments' open-ended approach to morality is intriguing: there isn't necessarily a "correct" choice for each case. The player is free to create a narrative of his own, but Frogwares hopes to make it feel like Detective Holmes' story as well. The ten to fifteen hour game time should ensure that the game doesn't overstay its welcome and could provide the conditions for a tight story. Fans of the late Sir Doyle's hero can look forward to what ought to be the best Holmes game yet.