Law & Order: Criminal Intent E3 2005 Impressions

The explosion of Law & Order TV franchises is predictably resulting in an explosion of Law & Order games. With three Law & Order PC adventure games under its belt, Legacy Interactive is now branching out beyond the original series with Law & Order: Criminal Intent. This new game follows the investigations of the TV series' Detective Robert Goren, played by Vincent D'Onofrio. Unfortunately, the game was in development before Chris Noth came onto the cast, so you won't find him in the game.

Whereas all the previous Law & Order games were done from the first-person perspective where you played as an unnamed partner to the main detective, here, you'll get a third-person view. You'll be pointing and clicking to move D'Onofrio around an environment, examining clues, and interrogating suspects and witnesses. In fact, the questioning aspect of the game is a brand-new feature for Criminal Intent. Whereas before, you would only be able to choose from a list of available questions--some relevant and some not--now you can specifically choose the tone of your questions in order to try to coax info out of the person you're questioning. Essentially, a suspect's mood is measured by two meters. If you get going down the wrong questioning path and piss off the suspects, they'll become uncooperative. If you get the right path going, you can manipulate much more information out of them.

Another aspect of the game that's new to the series is a suspect profiling system. As you collect evidence and start to put the pieces together, you can get a profile workup for a likely suspect. This can give you vital info, such as gender and background info. Since you'll likely have multiple suspects to look at across the game's three major cases (which eventually tie into a fourth), that should be quite helpful.

Law & Order: Criminal Intent should be on store shelves this fall. We'll bring you more on the game in the coming weeks.