A new project has just been confirmed by Frogwares. Here, the developers have to deal with tough ground realities, and under the current conditions they might provide Sherlock Holmes The Awakened. The game is a remake of a previously released title, which, however, will get a whole bunch of improvements.
The Ukrainian Frogwares are facing a lot of problems caused by the Russian invasion, but the developers have to make money, so Sherlock Holmes The Awakened is being developed as far as possible.
It is a “full remake” and simultaneously a “significant rebuild” of the 2006 game of the same name. The game has only been released on PC.
But this will not be a simple remaster, as “no resources or code will be reused from the original game.” Instead, the developers are rebuilding the whole game from scratch using brand-new resources or some elements from Sherlock Holmes Chapter One which debuted last month.
“We’ll also be adding brand-new gameplay mechanics while reworking the original to expand the ways in which players will solve cases. Changes to the story and timeline mean that entirely new actor dialogues will be recorded. We’re also redoing the camera to make it feel like a modern third-person perspective game, redoing the entire user interface, animations, cutscenes. The list is long. It’s basically a completely new game, where only the story in the cases remains more or less intact.” said Jaroslav Martyniuk, Feature Designers Team Lead, Frogwares.
The list of major changes in Sherlock Holmes The Awakened includes:
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- All new graphics and resources made on Unreal Engine 4
- New and reworked animations
- A full redesign of the soundstages
- Extra gameplay mechanics related to the investigation
- Story will be rewritten to link the case from The Awakened to the younger Sherlock
- Enhancing the story of how Watson and Holmes became close to each other
- Minor plot changes in the investigations
- Additional side quests
- New English voiceover recordings and translations into multiple languages
- User interface overhaul
- Change to contemporary third-person perspective camera
- Additional features to ensure improved gameplay
Frogwares emphasized that they had taken on the creation of Sherlock Holmes The Awakened because of the war in Ukraine and the developers discontinued one new project because it is much easier for them to create a remake in the current situation:
“So we always wanted to do a remake of this game at some point, but the war forced us to do it now. By working on a title that has most of its content, scope and narrative locked in place after only a few weeks, we give ourselves a much more predictable and organized development cycle. And stability and predictability is exactly what we need now, when the rest of our days are so uncertain.” said Denys Chebotarov, producer, Frogwares.
The developers are about to launch a Kickstarter campaign to secure the final funds to create the title. Their first official trailer will be released when the campaign launches. Sherlock Holmes The Awakened is expected to hit PS5, XSX|S, PS4, XOne, Switch and PC.
