Interrogation reveals 2019 release for Windows, Mac and Linux

Written by Jack Allin — April 20, 2019 at 10:52

Getting a criminal suspect to crack under pressure isn't nearly as easy as TV makes it look. In indie Romanian developer Critique Gaming's upcoming Interrogation, players will find that out firsthand, needing all their conversational wiles if they're to bring down a growing terrorist organization. 

You are the lead detective in a special task force created to confront the threat of The Liberation Front, a rapidly expanding terrorist group that wants to "violently dismantle social order as we know it and to rebuild it from the ground up." It is your job to strategically manage your team's resources and "interrogate terrorists and regular people alike. Each has their own story, their own secrets, their own motivations." Using a "complex conversational simulation system," you will need to solve challenging dialogue puzzles by "psychologically manipulating realistic suspects." Each interview can be "approached in several thousand ways," but your choices have consequences and "every line you say can make or break the interrogation," so choose wisely as the fate of the entire city is in your hands.

In order to create a noir-type atmosphere, Interrogation is presented in a gritty hand-drawn black-and-white art style. Even the "movie-like" interrogation sessions that form the bulk of the experience have been achieved by hand-drawing "every animation by rotoscoping over 1000 photos of over 40 actors." These actors portray "complex, psychologically realistic characters" in a story that promises to tackle contemporary issues such as "political radicalization, abuse of power and mental health" on the way to one of three different "world-defining endings."

Most of the gameplay centers around authentic-feeling conversations in which players can ask questions and press suspects on "contradictions and tensions in their statements." But you'll also find that "understanding their backgrounds, and thus their motivations, is key in choosing whether to approach this task through intimidation, guile or empathy." Not only does this task promise to get harder as the game progresses, you'll also need to "carefully manage a limited budget, skillfully allocate missions to your agents and be cunning in the way in which you talk to the press, politicians or even other members of the police." 

There is currently no firm release date for Interrogation just yet, but the developers are aiming to launch on Steam for Windows, Mac and Linux sometime in the second half of this year. In the meantime, you can follow its progress through the game's official website.