Adventure Gamers - Forums

Midweek Puzzle

Just like last week, today I’m also going to put focus on a puzzle type that I personally love and feel is underused in adventure games, though I know it is not everybody’s cup of tea. (But then again, what is?)

The problem with dialogue puzzles is that they are actually very difficult to get right, and there are in my opinion only very few games that has managed it - One of those games is Culpa Innata!

What makes them so tricky is that unlike inanimate objects, people are suppose to remember and react to what you say to them, so calling someone on the phone and for the tenth time in a row try to convince them that you are their long lost son, restarting the dialogue from scratch every single time like the previous nine calls never happened - that simply doesn’t work!
Sure you can pull the death/reload or “that actually never happened” trick, but that is also not ideal and you can only do it so many times before it gets tiresome.

On the other hand there also has to be consequences to failing the dialogue, otherwise it is simply not a puzzle. You can’t just continue the game like everything is perfectly fine, if you never actually got that crucial information from the witness, or have the witness give you the information regardless of what you say.

So the big question is, how can you have people remember and react to your previous dialogue, while at the same time have consequences to failing the puzzle without having dead ends in the game?

Well Culpa Innata came up with a quite ingenious solution to that conundrum.
The game uses a kind of real time gameplay, where everything you do takes time, and you have only a limited amount of timeslots a day, before you need to go home and rest. On top of that you can only visit a suspect/witness once per day, and as they are busy productive citizens who’s time is far too important to spend answering your questions , then you are also only allowed to ask them a limited amount of questions per visit.

The effect of this is that it forces you to really put some thought into what questions you want to ask them, what subjects they can reasonably be expected to actually know something about, and focus on that instead of just asking every single question that pops up in the dialogue list. And if you manage to do this, you can get all the necessary information in just a few visits, fail at it and you can easily end up spending 10 days or more interviewing the same people over and over again.

Another thing I also like about these interviews, is that people will remember and react to your previous visits. So if you keep bugging the same person over and over again, they might start to get annoyed and threaten to report you for wasting their time, or they might get offended by something you had previously said, and in order to get them to talk again, you might need to sweet-talk or intimidate them, before they will answer any questions.

It is not a perfect solution. The reason for these limitations is a bit far fetched, it is after all a freaking murder investigation and it doesn’t feel quite right to have this kind of straitjacket on your investigation. Also if you get stuck, then it can be a bit frustrating and very time consuming to reinterview everybody in hope one of them has some more information you can use. But it is still one of the best solutions to this Gordian Knot of how to make good dialogue puzzles, that I have seen.

The screenshot I have selected is however not from any of these interviews


Continued in next post ->

(OMG I can’t believe I have to spilt this into 2 post, I can totally understand if I get some TL;DR)

Instead the screenshot is from what is really a kind of side-quest in the game.

The thing is that in this utopian world union, there is only very little crime, and violent crimes like murder is pretty much unheard of, so murder investigations is not really Peace Officer Phoenix Wallis’s day job. Instead there are a large number of immigrants from the rouge states that wants nothing more than to become productive model citizen in our utopia.

Before that can happen they however first have to go through an indoctrination process a schooling process, where they are brainwashed learn what it means to be a productive well adjusted citizen in utopia, leave their previous life behind and deal with whatever issues they might have as a result of having been unfortunate enough to have been born in the primitive part of the world, and as the last obstacle before they can be let loose in our glorious society, they have to pass an interview conducted by one of the Peace Officers - in this case by our protagonist Phoenix Wallis.

The victims applicants are tied up to a computer, that not only works as a lie detector but also monitors other aspects, and it is the computer that decides if they are worthy of citizenship or should be immediately deported, our job is simply to ask the questions.

The first of these security screenings are with Dr. Patel, a doctor from India with a somewhat violent past. That is however not an automatic disqualification, not as long as he has sought proper psychological help for his condition and has left that part behind him, but the game does hint very heavily that he is not suppose to pass. I however completely messed up the interview and asked all the wrong questions, and as a result of this he was granted citizenship.

I expected that the game would somehow tell me that I had screwed this up, and that I would have to restart the whole interview, like in so many other games with dialogue puzzles - But that didn’t happen, instead I just got a “I’m not sure he was really fit for out society” remark from my boss, and the game continued.

The reason I loved these security screenings is however for another reason, a reason I might add that isn’t obvious and took me a little while to discover. There is a rather large discrepancy between both the official explanation and how Phoenix herself perceives these screenings, and how they actually work. According to Phoenix she is just the objective interviewer that asks the questions and it isn’t even her decision, but the computer that decides if they pass or not - but that simply isn’t true!

The truth is that you can manipulate the result to show whatever you want!
Everybody has something to hide and everybody has weak spots, so if you like someone then you can give them an easy time simply by avoiding all the hard questions, dislike someone and you can always force them to either lie, or say something that is cause for deportation.

In the case of Dr. Patel I accidentally gave him an easy time, but there was a later screening with a girl from Lebanon (I believe), where I took a great pleasure in manipulation the result in this way

She was a complete airhead that only cared about shopping, partying and having as many meaningless sexual encounters as possible, in other words a model citizen that by all right should have been allowed to enter. I however took an instant dislike to her, and like a heat-seeking missile I quickly homed in on her weak spot, like a pitbull I locked my jaws on her soft part, and like a mad dentist I kept drilling into the exposed nerve ... until I finally got her to say something that was reason enough to fail her


A couple of final notes: A sequel was planned but was unfortunately cancelled, unfortunately because the game does end on a bit of a cliffhanger, or perhaps more accurately open ended.

The game has also been made into a novel, that is actually quite good and not just a retell of the story in the game.

This game was super good. The mediocre graphics kinda turned me off initially but I really ended up getting absorbed in the game world (I spent like 3 nights in a row just playing it) and was utterly disappointed when they canceled the sequel. Even the graphics grew on me, and the facial expressions are rather good even.

Now THIS is a post

Iznogood - 17 June 2015 10:52 AM

According to Phoenix she is just the objective interviewer that asks the questions and it isn’t even her decision, but the computer that decides if they pass or not - but that simply isn’t true!

The truth is that you can manipulate the result to show whatever you want!

Sounds like a really interesting concept, something like this was missing in LA Noire.

The thing is that some people really dislike Phoenix as a protagonist. I think she’s actually one of the best ones out there. She starts as a government drone, and she has a firm believe that all the rules and regulations are for the best. Surely she initially does believe that those interviews are an objective way to classify people. But as the plot goes forward and she uncovers things, she actually starts to question her beliefs. I’m not sure how much variation there can be in different playthroughs as the player chooses many of her actions and that whole side(under?)plot can be skipped.

I think it was possible to fail every interviewee. I certainly remember digging up some dirt about Patel, making him break down. Though I’m not sure if all the dirt was something that is considered bad in our standards, or only by the government in the game.

Should replay this one (too).

The screening process sounds a bit like Papers, Please.

chrissie - 17 June 2015 01:15 PM

On the subject of it being left open-ended although I did follow the sub-plot which is where it is left open-ended? I understand that it’s possible to conclude the game without even coming across that?

By sub-plot I assume you mean the whole butterfly thing. I actually wasn’t aware that it was optional and that it is possible to complete the game without it, two different endings perhaps? And yes it is mainly the sub-plot, which is really the main story imo, that is left open-ended. It ends when Phoenix makes an important discovery, but we never learn what she does with that or how it will affect the whole world union.

But the murder investigation itself is as I understand it, also never really fully concluded, and the sequel had planned to have Phoenix go to Russia to continue the investigation.

chrissie - 17 June 2015 01:15 PM

I have got the novel too which I haven’t got around to reading yet - does it expand on the sub-story?

Yes - There are unfortunately many things in the book that I can’t remember, but the game and the book is also very different in many ways. It has the same setting, many of the same characters and the same overall story, but at the same time also a very different story - It however ends at more or less the same place as the game does, so it doesn’t really answer the question of what would have happened in the sequel if it hadn’t been cancelled.

Where the book really adds to the story imo, is that it also gives the whole background story, of how the world union came to be in the first place, and it does so by telling the story of Phoenix’s boss (as I recall it), who lived through the whole chaotic period preceding the world union - In fact a quite grim story.

millenia - 17 June 2015 01:54 PM

She starts as a government drone, and she has a firm believe that all the rules and regulations are for the best. Surely she initially does believe that those interviews are an objective way to classify people. But as the plot goes forward and she uncovers things, she actually starts to question her beliefs.

I don’t think she ever question that her own actions in these screenings are anything but objective, at least not as I recall it, and that was kind of my point.

But it is true that she start questioning everything and looses faith in the system. It is however also I believe, clear that she was always in many ways a bit of a dissident, not a political dissident though, she does initially believe in the world union. But the whole lifestyle and promiscuity that is strongly encouraged, is clearly not something that comes natural to her, or something that she is comfortable with.

Interestingly enough there is a scene in the book, where her best friend actually has a nervous breakdown, after she doesn’t get a promotion even though she has slept with all the right people, attended all the right parties and bought all the right clothes.

Edit: Oh - and I also really liked both Phoenix herself, and the whole game, not just the dialogue puzzles.

Edit 2:

millenia - 17 June 2015 01:54 PM

I think it was possible to fail every interviewee.

It is - I failed everyone except Patel, who I accidentally passed

TimovieMan - 17 June 2015 05:00 PM

The screening process sounds a bit like Papers, Please.

I haven’t played “Papers, Please” - yet. But as I understand it, the differences are larger that the similarities.

In Culpa Innata the security screening is the last step in a very long process, a year long process in fact and not something done directly at the border, also there is no moral dilemmas or consequences for Phoenix (though there are grave consequences for those at the other end of the table), which I understand is a large and important part of “Papers, Please”.

Kurufinwe - 17 June 2015 11:14 AM

Speaking of dialogue puzzles, it’s interesting that your mind went to The Pandora Directive when looking for an example of a bad dialogue puzzle. The Tex Murphy games really had some of the worst dialogue puzzles ever.

I can’t really disagree with that.

Oscar - 17 June 2015 02:03 PM

This guy reminds me of someone. A movie star, perhaps?

Actually Culpa Innata had a bunch of faces that reminded me of real life actors. Even Phoenix herself was to me a mixture of Teryl Rothery and someone else.