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Xbox Series X/S. Release. WW: February 8, 2024. Genre (s) Action-adventure. Mode (s) Single-player. The Inquisitor is a 2024 action-adventure video game developed by The Dust and published by Kalypso Media. Players investigate reports of a vampire in an alternate history version medieval Europe.
- A fascinating investigative premise with a bit too much handholding.
- The Inquisitor Gameplay Screenshots
- Do you pick "good" or "evil" choices in games?
- Phil Hornshaw's Favorite Investigation Games
- Verdict
By Phil Hornshaw
Updated: Feb 6, 2024 3:23 pm
Posted: Feb 6, 2024 3:22 pm
Video games can be great vehicles for mysteries. The idea of gathering clues, questioning witnesses, and giving dramatic speeches where you stun an array of suspects with your intellect makes for an exciting fantasy. But lots of games stumble trying to fit the inherently open-ended, red-string-connecting fantasy of the detective into traditionally linear story structures. The Inquisitor is a game like that — it starts with the compelling concept of playing as a medieval church cop hunting a vampire, but it always puts the strings on the board for you, and thus never really lives up to the potential of its premise.
It feels a bit like you've stepped into Star Trek's Mirror Universe as you begin The Inquisitor, with characters describing how mercilessness, retribution, and the ends justifying the means are virtues of their religion. For a story-driven game that promises tough decisions to make in conversations and interrogations, it's an excellent setup. Lots of games will put "moral" questions to you, but I've never seen another use its worldbuilding to change the rules underlying that morality. What you consider moral in our reality may not be what characters consider moral in this one, and you might need to worry about how others will interpret your actions in ways you don't expect.
At least, that's the underlying idea of The Inquisitor, but it doesn't ever really land that feeling. The consequences of your actions shake out pretty much the way you'd expect them to whether you’re nice to people or mean to them — or at least, that's how it seemed to me over two complete playthroughs, the first of which took me around eight hours. How and when your choices affect the story isn’t particularly clear in most cases in The Inquisitor, and its mostly linear, straightforward structure makes it really difficult to tell if and when you're able to move things in different directions.
Having exactly what you're looking for lit up is helpful, but removes any critical thinking.
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That said, the story The Inquisitor tells is a fairly compelling one, at least for most of its runtime. The writing is largely solid, with interesting characters that are mostly portrayed pretty well by the large voice cast, although a few look at you with animatronic-like eyes that seem like they're trying to escape their heads. But Koenigstein’s art direction successfully gives it a dirty, lived-in atmosphere. It's generally bigger than it needs to be in a way that makes it feel like a town, not a gameplay space that only exists to hold your objectives. The drawback is that the town is so big that most of your time is spent sprinting from one end to the other as you chase the next plot point.
As an investigator, you'll eavesdrop on conversations, examine murder victims, and scope out crime scenes from time to time, and these moments generally tell you exactly how many clues to gather before you can move on. Most of your clue-collecting ability comes from The Inquisitor's version of Detective Vision; when Mordimer prays, the landscape goes gray and important elements like your destination, collectible notes, clues, or scent trails you can follow are all highlighted. Vision modes like The Inquisitor's always seem like a necessary evil, since it can be tough to spot small details in a busy world, but that didn’t stop praying from feeling like a crutch whenever I used it. It's difficult to tell what's interactive and what isn't or to see details like a blood trail leading to a suspect without highlighting them, but having exactly what you're looking for lit up orange all the time removes any requirement for critical thinking.
Good — I like to be a paragon of virtue
Evil — I like to see how dark things can get
It depends — I pick what makes sense for my character
Either — I go for the most interesting options
Both — I'll play one way and then the other to see all the differences
You have more agency through your conversation choices, particularly in interviews and interrogations. People are often lying to you, so whether you're nice or brusque can determine how forthcoming they'll be. At the same time, it's tough to see where the failure points are or if you've messed up. In one interrogation, in which Mordimer has a guy strapped to a torture chair, you can take the suspect at his word or increase the pain. I played this scene twice, varying my approach the second time knowing I'd gotten false information before. This time, I got some additional answers I could also vet with my knowledge of later scenes — but Mordimer gave up the interrogation basically right afterward, indicating I'd learned all I could, and he still treated information I knew was false as if it was a good lead. So the extra info didn't actually lead to anything new, and I was still left chasing a lie.
There's a mystery afoot!
There are occasional technical issues that undercut the experience as well. The Inquisitor's best sequence takes you into a maze-like dungeon, where you confront a murderous jester who's constantly rhyming and playing a flute. This guy is creepy, and when you find him dismembering a victim, he disappears among the jail cells, forcing you to follow his taunts emanating from the shadows. You can light torches as you search, but the jester will attack you if you wait in the shadows too long. The presentation of the scene is excellent, making it legitimately frightful. The dinginess of the dungeon under torchlight, the cackling couplets from the darkness, and the escalation of the moment as another character shows up for the jester to target instead, all made for something that was really fun, tense, and spooky — until I got lost in the maze.
The Inquisitor takes place in a fascinating, dark world, and its story often puts you in strange and interesting situations. Searching for a vampire and trying to solve murders in a medieval town is a great idea, and it's compelling to search a scene for clues, to try to puzzle out the best choices in conversations and interrogations, and to attemp...
Jun 2, 2022 · Originally published on June 2, 2022. TAGGED: grand inquisitor, Inquisitors, Obi-Wan Kenobi, reva, Sith, Star Wars, Star Wars Rebels. The Inquisitors have been lethal Dark Side warriors since...
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Jan 15, 2024 · RPGamer was able to learn a bit more about what lies in store for him through a thirty-minute press preview. On the immediate surface, The Inquisitor is set in a version of 16th century Europe. Its primary twist from history is that Jesus Christ never died on the cross but instead went on a violence filled vengeance against the non-believers.
Feb 8, 2024 · The Inquisitor • Feb 8, 2024. The Inquisitor - Official Launch Trailer. Check out the launch trailer for The Inquisitor for another look at the world and story of this dark fantasy...
The Inquisitor emerges from the darkness with a release date and Behind-the-Scenes Video Grab your swords and get ready, as The Inquisitor, will be released on February 8th, 2024, on Steam, Windows PC, Xbox Series X | S and PlayStation 5.
May 26, 2022 · Moses Ingram as Third Sister (Inquisitor Reva) Image via Lucasfilm. The Third Sister is one of the few new faces appearing in the Obi-Wan Kenobi series. All we know about her comes from the ...
