With no shades of grey in the choices or action, picking the obvious bits is all the game offers. Your choices are “happy,” “scared,” “hiding” or “fleeing.” It’s never difficult to make the right choice. Murdered freezes the action while you select words on the screen to describe what’s happening. Meaningful evidence meanwhile will be followed by a full on cutscene flashing back to how it relates to the murderer, or flash to Ronan’s thoughts, like the memory of missing girl running through a wedding photo shoot. Meaningless evidence, like examining an ancient ship anchor in Salem museum, will just bring up a flash of text on the screen. Problem is, the game also tells you when evidence is significant. Ronan then has to go into a menu to connect significant evidence to complete the investigation. Already the game is giving up the ghost by telling you the limits of your investigation before you start the mystery is diluted. A counter appears in the bottom of the screen telling you that there are a set number of clues in the area.
Murdered is actually rigidly set into seven levels, which you travel between through the hub of Salem proper. She and Ronan never develop a meaningful bond as the detective tries to help her find her missing mother in the course of tracking down the game’s serial killer. Joy, who the Bell Killer was hunting when Ronan was killed, is no different. Even the inexplicably scattered pages of his wife’s diary you pick up are stray collectibles that do little to illuminate their relationship. With every examined piece of evidence, whenever he meets another ghost in need of help on the road, or even when he speaks with the teenage psychic Joy that becomes his partner and link to the living world, Ronan never has a real revelation. The hardboiled gumshoe comes off like a blithering moron. What’s his motivation? He wants to be with his wife. Unfortunately, Ronan never develops further as a character. Were Murdered the story of redemption and acceptance hinted at in these opening moments, it might have been something special. Ronan then has to investigate his very own murder, but only after meeting the ghost of his dead wife, who pleads with him to fulfill one last duty and make his peace before he can be with her. Controlling Ronan’s spirit, you struggle vainly to fit him back into his body, which is riddled with tattoos marking his youth as a criminal. Soul Suspect peaks right out the gate, suggesting a wildly different game than the one that follows by hinting at a more meaningful character. Following up on a lead without back up, the killer tosses Ronan out a window before shooting him seven times, marking his spirit with seven glowing bullet holes. The Salem, Massachusetts detective is hot on the trail of the Bell Killer, a serial murderer plaguing the famous city. Ronan’s ghostified in the opening moments of the game.
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