Murdered: Soul Suspect Review

Murdered: Soul Suspect takes place in the town of Salem, known for it’s horrific history with witch hunts and burnings. You play as Ronan O’Connor, a police detective, tasked with capturing the Bell Killer. At the very beginning of the game Ronan succeeds in doing said task, and upon metting face-to-face with the killer, is thrown out of a window and killed by gunshot. This leads to the game’s premise – Ronan returns to the world of Salem as a ghost, and is told in order to move on to the afterlife he has to identify his killer.

With your new ghost-form comes new abilities such as teleportation. With these abilities Ronan moves around the map of Salem exploring, doing side quests and finding a bunch of collectibles. On his hunt for his killer (and by extend, to his wife in the afterlife) Ronan meets a young girl, also a ghost, named Abigail, a daughter of a Puritan of olde. Abigail leads Ronan back to the place where he was killed, and Ronan learns that a medium named Joy saw what transpired, and is now hiding in the local church.

Being a ghost is not easy. Even after death a lot of souls linger around Salem. Each lost soul has an errand that needs completion before they themselves can move on to the afterlife. Whilst traversing Salem, Ronan can take on the role as saviour of the lost souls and help them through an array of side-quests. In the main plot, the clairvoyant Joy is trying to find her missing mother, who was helping the police with the Bell Killer case. Joy initially does not want to help Ronan, but after being withheld by the police she agrees to help us upon Ronan helping her esapce from the police station. With the help of Joy we now have a link between the mortal world and the ghostly afterlife.

Whilst leading Joy out of the police station we learn that her mother had helped an angry cop called Baxter, and in viewing her research papers leads us to the local graveyard in order to investigate the latest victim of the Bell Killer. Ronan meets a young girl who has drowned, and by using his ghost-powers he views a flashback of the murderscene. The drowned girl tells us that the Bell Killer asked her about a ‘contract’. The next point in the research papers are the mental hospital. Here is another of the killers victims, one who survived.

Talking with this victim, Iris, we learn that she too can communicate with the dead, and they realize that the Bell Killer is hunting for psychic mediums. Iris herself is posssessed by her dead sister, a young girl who the Bell Killer burned alive when she helped her sister escape. Iris and Joy return to the church whilst Ronan investigates the museum, that has an exhibit on the Salem Witch Hunts. Here Ronan realizes that the Bell Killer is killing his victims as if they were witches. In a flashback Ronan sees Baxter, the cop, hiding evidence at the museum about the killer. Suspicious that Baxter is the killer, Ronan leaves the museum only to see a bunch of police cars going towards the church.

At the church tragedy has struck, as the Bell Killer has pushed a water fountain on top of Iris, crushing her to death, whilst murdering other people who were in his way. Joy survives the ordeal, but is taken away by Ronan’s brother-in-law Rex and is being arrested. Ronan learns that the killer is hiding in the ruins of the Judgment House. Here Ronan learns of the killer’s plans, and clues are given that the killings has taken places for hundreds of years. Then Ronan discovers Baxter’s (the angry cop) ghost, who also were killed by the Bell Killer. He informs us that Joy’s mother is still alive.

In a flashback in the basement we learn that Abigail, the ghost girl, was imprisoned here before she was hanged. She was executed because she had accused several innocent people of witchcraft which lead to their deaths. Angry, Abigail drew a bell symbol on the floor and swore an oath to never stop untill the bells of Salem tolls for the witches. Returning to the museum, Ronald learns that his own brother-in-law Rex is the Bell Killer, and that he is possessed by Abigail. He is preparing to hang Joy, but Ronan forces Abigail out of his body and begins a battle where they inflict painful memories onto each other. The memories of Abigail shows that she has posessed a lot of people and used them to carry out the Bell Killer murders, and then killing the possessed person.

In a final effort to stop Ronan, Abigail summons a portal of demons meant to drag Ronan to Hell. Ronan escapes the demons, and forces Abigail down in the hole. Joy is safe, and reuintes with her mother. Rex is no longer possessed, albeit still ‘the killer’ (with Ronan hoping Joy will help him by masquerading his tracks), not even knowing of his actions and that his body was used in the crimes. The game ends with Ronan walking, hearing the voice of his wife calling from the afterlife, turning towards her.

Murdered: Soul Suspect is first and foremost a crime drama. It brings up the point that ghosts exists because they have unfinished business in the living world, and in our case it is finding out who killed us (and by extent solving the police case we were working on whilst being alive). The game has areas with clues much akin to those of L.A Noire. When travelling through Salem the ghostly world is also shown to the player. Scattered around the map are ghostly objects, straw wagons, old docked ships, crates etc. It distingues the living world from the dead, and gives the game a lot more character. The graphics in the game are a bit outdated by today’s standard, but it is still a neat looking game. The art style, with the ghostly interior, works seemlesly, and makes the environment a tad more interesting. Another neat artstyle choice is that of the main character. Ronan is looking ghostly (obviously), but he has entrance wounds from the gunshots he recieved upon his death, all glowing in an orange hue.

The gameplay is what you’d expect from these sort of games. You hunt for clues in order to advance the story, which is quite linear. You have no inventory (he’s a ghost, so no pockets), so you are not hunting for in-game items (except for the collectibles, if those are of interest). In order not to make the game too easy, there is certain obstacles in place. That spans from areas you cannot traverse to malign dark ghosts hunting for you, that you have to avoid. None of it is especially difficult, and the game is played for it’s story. The story is good, albeit a bit short, between 5-6 hours in total. The side quests can be a bit tedious and boring, but most of them serves as a neat way to create world building – by being a ghost you can spy on the living, which helps in solving some of the things.

The soundtrack is decent, fits the game well but nothing really to write home about. It does it’s job, and some of the scores are quite good.

All in all Murdered: Soul Suspect is an interesting take on the genre, one which asks the question of what would happen if the detective/player died in the beginning. It has some resemblances to the movie The Crow, which is nice. In any case it serves as a neat crime/detective drama, that can be played through with relative ease and in a short-ish amount of time.