At the beginning of this month, Square Enix and developer Airtight Games confirmed that Murdered: Soul Suspect, previously only planned for the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360, would also be jumping to the PS4 and Xbox One, complete with native 1080p output, subsurface scattering, and an increased particle count.
These new-gen versions of Murdered: Soul Suspect weren’t something Airtight Games had planned on making, however, with the idea to put their game on PS4 and Xbox One decided after both consoles launched in November, as Senior Game Design Producer Eric Studer told Eurogamer:
When the game went into development next-gen consoles weren’t around. They weren’t a thing. We knew they were on the horizon, but rather than jump off the cliff in terms of this new technology, we wanted to use what we understood and build the game based on that. So the decision was to go with the Xbox 360 and the PS3.
However, when the systems launched last November, it was a good opportunity. We were in the right space to explore the potential of going for the next-gen platforms. And so we started researching it and we thought, yeah, we can do this.
There definitely were challenges. They’re whole new platforms so there are things you have to learn. But we’re going to make it, so obviously it wasn’t an impossible task to overcome!
Despite being added to these new consoles, Murdered: Soul Suspect won’t take advantage of the PS4 and Xbox One’s features that heavily, with Studer saying, “We’re not going down the rabbit hole of all the new features that the platforms use.” Instead, Airtight is focusing on making “sure the experience is uniform across the different platforms, but use the new technology to create a slightly higher fidelity experience on Xbox One and PS4.”
The reason behind keeping the experience the same on last-gen and new-gen consoles is because “we didn’t want to fracture ourselves and start trying to create all these new things for the new platforms and potentially undermine the experience.”
To get a 25-minute look at Murdered: Soul Suspect, which is “intentionally slower-paced,” check out this gameplay walkthrough from E3 2013, but be warned as it shows off what appears to be everything from the game’s opening (Murdered content starts at 1:07, or skip to 3:30 for everything after you’re murdered):
Murdered: Soul Suspect is scheduled to release in June 2014.
