Hotel Dusk and Trace Memory developer CING is teaming up with Tecmo to deliver another atmospheric adventure on the Nintendo DS, this time in the form of a supernatural murder mystery. Again: Eye of Providence follows FBI special agent Jonathan Weaver as he investigates his family's death and its connection with a series of murders that occurred 18 years earlier. Again's title is derived from Jonathan's ability to see into the past and experience crimes -- you know, again.
Producer Koichi Yamaguchi walked us through a very early build of the game, demonstrating how this helpful hindsight would help us piece together the events that occurred in a given crime scene. In what is essentially a game of spot-the-difference, you'll view the environment in a first-person perspective on both DS screens (in book orientation). The touch screen allows you to interact with the scene, while the screen to your left displays the same area, but as it was in the past. As Yamaguchi noted, it makes sense to confine history to the non-interactive screen. You can't change the past, you can only learn from it.
One of the more obvious discrepancies you may notice between then and now could be a suspicious pool of blood, left on the night of the murder. That's your cue to touch the spotless carpet in the present, thus triggering a stylized flashback and delivering your next clue. The flashback scenes give the game its unique visual identity, with characters represented by solarized, live-action video superimposed on the polygonal backgrounds. FMV actors? Talk about a blast from the past.
Though it won't be released until Spring 2009, Again and its refreshing not-about-spaceships plot already has us thoroughly intrigued. We'll keep you updated as we learn more about it.
