the hardest murder to solve is your own

When Ronan O’Connor, a detective with a chequered past, gets caught up in a burglary, his life is brought to an untimely end by a brutal and relentless killer.

Shocked to find himself in the afterlife, his only escape from the limbo world of ‘Dusk’ is to uncover the truth behind his killer, track him down and bring him to justice using new-found supernatural abilities.

As Ronan, you have freedom to explore the town of Salem: its wooden houses, narrow streets, gothic churches and mental asylum for clues. Battle demonic spirits to save your soul and uncover the shocking revelations about who is responsible for your death.

During the dev chat, the developer played the first “mission” and commented over the top of the gameplay

The game looks great, and the idea is amazing (I wish I’d had time to check out the booth at the expo)
Basically, you start off having to solve your own murder. Going through the evidence and crime scene as a ghost. Which has upsides and downsides of course. Downsides, you can’t pick up and touch evidence and actually get a sense of it, upside, you can possess people, see through their eyes, hear through their ears and generally get a sense of the world and things around you

The game is set in Salem, Massachusetts, so every building is warded against ghosts (as you do), so outside Ronan can walk through people and objects, however to get into buildings, a door or window needs to be open to allow entry/exit (useful for loading areas huh? very clever)
Being a Ghost, you have a number of talents that will be upgraded as the game progresses…
– You can see flashbacks of scenes that happened, playback the scene to get insight into what happened, these are called memory residue, to aid the investigation “Real World”, like turning on a cooker hob to distract people, this allows for puzzle elements later on in the game
– Possession can also be used as a tactic against the Demons, human spirits that are tormented and think that devouring other human spirits will turn them into regular spirits again so they can lay to rest, like possessing a cop so you can get close without being noticed and jumping into the demon to rip it apart
– Also ghost side quests and investigations will unlock new info and generally make you feel better about yourself, like helping a young lady who was murdered and buried by an old couple in the block

The game is shaping up very nicely, it looks great on current gen (it’s due for release early 2014 on PC, PS3 and XBox 360)