After debuting with a first-person adventure in Mystery of the Mummy, Frogwares has done third-person games ever since, including Silver Earring. Why the switch back to first-person for The Awakened?

Originally we wanted to do a third-person adventure as in 80 Days, but with possibility to go to the first-person to look closer (the camera being 3 meters high in third-person, and only 1.8 while standing in first or 0.9 when crouching), but after the first gameplay test, we understood we needed to permanently switch to first-person to look closer. So we made the decision to be in first-person and stay there, as it is more immersive, and with all the dialogs the game has, I believe we see Sherlock enough.

Part of the draw of a Sherlock Holmes game is having such a recognizable character and being able to watch him in action. Isn't some of that benefit lost by having him be a first-person player character?

All the important character actions are in cinematics so we don't lose Sherlock's presence at all. Using first-person is more immersive while you're playing, and it really helps the atmosphere, as you will see in the Psychiatric hospital, for example.

The website refers to The Awakened as "a true symbiosis of two technologies specific to adventure games: WARP (used in the first Myst or Amerzone) which allows first-person movement in pre-calculated decors; and 3D surroundings, which allows the character to be controlled and to become a spectator of the adventure." Can you clarify how each is used in conjunction with the other?

In the WARP system (as in Mystery of the Mummy) you are immersed but you move from node to node — nice but limited. The 2.5D (such as the Silver Earring) allows you to see your character and to move widely but you remain a spectator of the action. Real-time 3D allows you to have immersion and freedom of movement, while still playing only with the mouse. It is a good mix for adventure, but it is not new, as Under a Killing Moon used it ten years ago.

I've seen many references to sanity and reason being challenged (and whose wouldn't when confronted by Cthulhian terrors?) in the game. Will you be using any special effects technology to reflect a character's changing psychiatric state?

No, this is more the player sweat that we are considering here. I'm quite confident your own face will have some strange twists at least twice in the game.

Did you give any thought to making this a multi-platform release? There aren't many adventures on consoles, and you're one of the few developers willing to work in real-time 3D.

We are not very interested in consoles. The console business is the best means to destroy creation and enslave developers to work for a publisher's marketing team. So we'll focus on PC; at least that is democratic. But we are now finishing Sherlock on DS, which will be released in 2007.

The DS, that's great! Other developers are also branching into the DS, and we're very encouraged to see it being supported as an adventure platform. So will the handheld game be mainly a direct port of the PC version, or will there be any changes to the story or gameplay?

Well, the DS is a nice platform — funny, intuitive, and easy to handle, so it is the best (or maybe the least worse) choice among the consoles. The DS version is a port of the PC game, but we are not doing the port directly. A Quebec company is handling that.

You've had some hit-and-miss experiences with publishers in the past. This time around you've been dealing with Focus Home Interactive. How's that relationship worked out for you?

Focus Home is a fantastic team, the best publisher a developer can dream about: honest, serious, paying, and interested in the game, even playing them. They build player communities around their titles when they can, and are building an international brand today. We can't go wrong with them.




With The Awakened nearing completion, you must have a pretty firm idea in mind for your next project. Anything you're willing to disclose yet?

Sherlock is facing another nemesis. Indications of who are in The Awakened. We're also working on a new game based on Dracula.

Dracula, nice! I'd have thought given your track record that we'd be due for another game based on Jules Verne. Is that an avenue you're still interested in exploring? What is it about Verne that you find appealing as a game developer?

No, we gave up on Jules Verne. Enough steam punk and art nouveau; we'll stick to Sherlock. As a game developer and artistic director, I loved to create these machines, architecture, and the whole parallel world of steam machines. But on the other hand, we are a big developer and the main books of Verne have been exploited now and the brand is not as successful as we hoped. And 80 Days was a painful experience. It was necessary to let us move from 2D to 3D, but painful because it was a long and difficult process to create the game, and because we made the mistake of crossing genres and failed commercially to fulfill players' expectations. It remains one of the most beautiful games I see even today, but it lacks the interaction level we had looked to achieve.

When are we going to see a totally original Frogwares title? Have you got any concepts in mind?

We are doing it now. But I can't speak about it yet.

That's something I really look forward to seeing one day, so I hope you get the chance to follow up on it. But for now there's Sherlock to look forward to, due out next month in the UK. Thanks so much for taking the time to speak with us, Waël. Any last words to leave with our readers?

Thanks to AG readers and to you Jack for the interview.