LM: You said earlier that your choices in the dialogues have an impact on the game or the outcome. In what ways do your choices impact the game?

CB: It's basically whether or not a witness is going to clam up or help you anymore. You're going to have to come back later and hope that they are willing to talk to you then. And if you really blew it, they are less likely to talk to you. It's not like there is this huge super complex branching thing, where you were a little off here and then all of a sudden there's this other murder and somebody else has this completely different motivation. That just wasn't going to be practical. We did as much as possible to give players the feeling that it's not as if you only have one thing to do at every point. There are a lot of varied locations to explore and people to interview. If interviewing poorly shuts you down, you can go off and do these other things. It is not as if your progress is on hold until the game lets you continue.

EC: One of the things about Syberia that I know Craig and I both liked was that you could walk off the beaten path. You could go places that didn't necessarily lead anywhere important. Which I think we still have in this game, right?

CB: Yeah, of course. There is plenty of evidence and things you can look at, collect and run analyses on. You may not need to, but you can. Some players might be interested in that sort of thing. In the end we just tried to mix it up as much as possible.

LM: What's a mystery without a few red herrings?

CB: Exactly. Without those, it's basically just a TV show. Because then everything is just led down the path and that's it. We didn't want to be overwhelming with the red herrings. We didn't want to leave the player with too much to collect, so that your inventory was overwhelming. We still made sure that you could only analyze what made sense to analyze, not just every piece of trash lying around.

LM: Can you go back and redeem yourself with a witness if things went badly the first time?

CB: We never have the event where you lose the game because you didn't do well enough. Basically your progress gets "stalled".

LM: Are alternate endings possible?

CB: No, because the game is so complex, we didn't work in multiple endings.

LM: The music for past games was fairly limited to the trademarked Law & Order mini tune that plays whenever you arrive for the first time at a new locale. Are there more ambient musical pieces in this game

CB: We worked with a composer named Chris Rickwood. We knew we were going to have a lot more locations in this game than the previous ones we developed. We wanted to have a lot more music so people wouldn't get tired of the same few pieces. And he wanted to create compositions that would be "in the style" that Mike Post would compose.

LM: About the voice work, how was it working with the guys from the show?

CB: I flew out to New York to give direction. But when you are working with TV guys like Jamie and Vince, you are not really directing them character-wise because clearly they know their own character backwards and forwards. You are really giving them contextual information and guidance. Since they had so many lines, they couldn't always know what was happening at that point in the dialogues and the game. So, they might stop and ask you "Wait, when does this happen and what is going on in the scene?" I certainly wouldn't tell Vincent D'Onofrio how to act his part. But I was there to give the bigger picture.

LM: What was their reaction to seeing themselves in the game? Did they approve the renderings?

CB: They haven't seen the finished product, but they had to approve their own characters' look and style. I think it's very similar to what they might do while taping the show. It was interesting how many times Vincent would have these reads on things. It's not how I would think of reading the line, but in the show his character has the odd vocalizations or stammering things he does. And that's his character. Which is not at all what he is like in person. He definitely got into character. He hunches over and did all those Goren mannerisms while he read his lines.

LM: How inventory intensive is the game and how is that handled in the interface?

CB: We use a PDA based inventory. Your PDA is a multi-function device that handles the inventory, the in-game map, phone, and your log. We have your inventory categorized for you, witnesses stay in their section, documents, and regular evidence. It's fairly inventory heavy, but you do need to find things, of course. Some are relevant and others are irrelevant. I think the inventory is a central part of the game, but it takes a back seat to the interviews.

LM: In the prior games, you had the inventory set up as a tabbed device located at the bottom of the screen. How is it set up in Criminal Intent?

CB: When you click on something, you get a pop-up multi-cursor of things you can do at that time. The options are collect, look at, or analyze something. When you select analyze, the piece of evidence is automatically sent off to the crime lab or research unit. There's some similarity to what we have done before, but it is also a little different.

LM: Now the profiler, is it in the PDA or do you have to go to Goren's desk to use that?

CB: You have to go to his desk to use that item. The criminal profiler is the newest gadget. We didn't add more to the PDA because we didn't want to overload the interface.

LM: You seem to have a very wide variety of challenges in this game, like dialogue based challenges as well as more traditional ones. Can you describe some of the types of puzzling the player will run across?

CB: Because we are limited to the "real world" of New York and the police work, that definitely provides some logical constraints. We tried to be as clever and creative as we can. Where would a puzzle occur naturally? Meaning where would one fit logically, in terms of where do you need information and what can we do to make that information a little bit harder to get to. Even though we have some puzzles that we've done before, we tried to do a slightly different take on them for this game. We didn't want the same old stuff. No dropping in of a regular old slider puzzle and that kind of thing. We tried to create clever challenges that I haven't seen many people do before.



LM: You also have the hands-on detective work, using tools of the trade, evidence collection and that sort of thing, right?

CB: There's no question, you gotta look around. Even when interviewing people, you might need to find some relevant evidence there as well. You won't be able to progress until you find that item to ask them about.

LM: In past games, you had the court or judicial part of the show in the gameplay as well. The Criminal Intent game focuses purely on the detective's side of the investigation and case. Why is that?

CB: Because we have the profiler as a new component of the game. This is a new thing for you to do in the game, so we decided to take out some of the other stuff, like proving your warrant. Now you go to Captain Deakin's desk, and he's going to know what you did and didn't get done. So if you've made enough progress, you're going to get your warrant.

LM: How does the future look to you for adventure gaming in particular? Do you think people who want to create commercially viable adventure games have to use all the latest bells and whistles, go to full 3D? Or is there room for innovation within the more traditional model for these games?

CB: I think adventure games will always be here, though I am not sure we will ever see the heyday again, like in the LucasArts era — back when adventure games were king. But you will see them continue to evolve. I am curious to see Indigo Prophecy, for example. I saw Dreamfall at E3 and I was impressed. I don't think the point & click adventure game is going to be dead anytime soon. But the games will continue to evolve along with the industry. You can't just cater to hardcore gamers, either.

EC: It's safe to say that people want games that make them think, like in the Law & Order games. People don't just want to be observers of events. I think these kinds of games do that, so there's always a need for this kind of game.

LM: Another thing is that the core base that began playing in the heyday of adventure gaming is all grown up now. These aren't kid gamers. Criminal Intent has a mature rating, not so much because of violence but as you said earlier, because of the "adult themes" in the game. Do you think there is a growing market for adult-oriented games?

EC: It's not only that. There's an over-saturation of the same types of games and people are bored. They get tired of playing the same thing all the time. I think there's a point, with games like Criminal Intent… the good things about adventure games are in there, but there is also the added element of "direct me" action. I think there's a certain role playing aspect of games, where you can be a person you could never be in real life or play a role you can otherwise only dream about. Being a criminal profiler or a Sherlock Holmes type detective is a dream a lot of armchair detectives, television watchers, and Internet people have. These are a part of the community who are not typical gamers. I think that is what these games have to keep to make it.

LM: Any last words for the gamers and fans out there?

CB: We just hope that people will like the game we are putting out. We think the fans of the show and people who just like a good mystery are going to like Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

EC: I think if you always wanted to be a criminal profiling New York Detective, then play this game and be it. My thanks to Craig; it was really great to work with him. I was truly amazed at how he was able to take my dreams into reality.