I just played through two muder investigations. One was the killer in Winterhold and the other was the murders in Malacath.

Now, does anyone else think it would be cool to have a modded questline revolving around murder investigations? Skyrim has all the necessary coding to make a decent crime saga questline mod.

You can:

- move evidence about, lift things up, sift through fruit bowls etc. for micro evidence (e.g. amulets, notes etc.)
- investigate enviromental decals (like bloodstains for instance)
- look through bodies
- read letters and notes
- have branching dialogue trees
- the ability to make schedules and quest triggers for criminals.
- YOU CAN REANIMATE THE DEAD, REANIMATE A VICTIM TO GET SOME CLUES AS TO WHO MAY HAVE KILLED THEM AND WHY IF YOU ARE A NECROMANCER! :D:D:D:D:D:D

Imagine being like a mediavel type detective, hahha, you could call it Skyrim Noir, like LA Noire.

Someone PLEASE! These are the best quests out there, because they are often great stories and dynamic cos one minute you could be investigating a murderers house, when the next you could be brawling a guy for information or making an arrest (or execution )

Thoughts?


EDIT: I would be happy to write a few quests, I graduated with a degree in screen production afterall, but I lack any modding skills.

So I feel such a suggestion would be obtuse to any modders who feel enjoyment for both creative and technical modding endeavours.

If they merely enjoy the technical challenge, however, I would happily contribute scripts to turn into quests.

PM me if anyone is interested

=) Have actually had a similar idea brewing for a while now, as I feet that Skyrim has shown to have the potential to allow for some seriously cool quest mods. Maybe it won't rival LA Noir, but I really want to see/make a mystery/crime/w/e quest mod that takes use of classical dramaturgic practices and make you feel for the characters in it, as well as shocks you and surprises you at the keypoints of the story.

Haven't gotten very far with my planning though, only done some sketching about the basic plot line.

Yeah this would be great.

Not sure about the reanimating the dead thing. Kinda defeats the whole point if I can just reanimate the guy who was murdered and ask them who did it.

What this would really need is some good writers, otherwise it might fail hard.

Well, if you got stabbed in the back, how could you know who killed you? Also, reanimating corpses could only survive for a few seconds and that means you could only ask 1 question, like the life glove in torchwood.

Anyway, I love murders and I love catching the murderer ( i knifed the Windhelm ripper in the back just before he killed a poor argonian).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think... there is no murder mystery in Winterhold, it's in Windhelm, and Malacath is not a place, it's a Daedric prince. So I'm not sure what you're talking about there. However, I would LOVE a really indepth mystery that you have to solve yourself and are not given any major solutions outright, and it matters who you accuse. I created one for a village I never finished for Oblivion, oh, that would have been an awesome mystery.

Markarath?

I meant windhelm. Sorry im bad with names.

Wow, what a great idea for a Mod.


Add in new "Mysteries" as they are created! Whoever does this can do episodic content.

You could even use Alchemy as tool to finding out who did it. You would have to have "known" the correct effects for certain world items in order to ask new questions about poison, contents found in blood, on the weapon, on the floor, ect...

You could use the Fear magic to coerce people into talking.

I would definitely help do a mod like this. Although I might not be much help - first time modder.....

There was a nice short mod for Oblivion that had murder investigation - http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=13134. A fun mod, really 'underdog'.

I made that one, and I had planned to expand it into a full quest line, and I now have considered making a Skyrim full version, but the thing about mysteries is that just making ONE mystery that's really fun and interesting takes quite a bit of time thinking through not only what the murder is, but how the evidence will be found and you have to make sure that the logic is completely sound so that the solution is very believable, yet not obvious.

I'll give this a go when the Creation Kit comes, it'll help me finish off what I started in Oblivion.

i think this is a cool idea. I think necromancy is supposedly illegal in most of Tamriel though. There is a spell for it, but only a "bad mage" would cast it I think. Hence why necromancers tend to be hostile npcs?

Necromancy is no longer illegal. When you ask the conjuration master int he College of Winterhold he says that archaic thinking died with the Mage Guild.

Work Backwards, as someone who has studied screenwriting, I would suggest this is the best course of action. Work out characters, motivations and then plan how the murder takes place. Rather then trying to think of cool clues then trying to fit the characters to them.

I could write scripts for you, but I feel that would be an obtuse thing to suggest, as surely the modder with the technical skills would enjoy the creative side the most.

If not, the offer is there. If so, I cannot wait to play such a mod!

PM me, if the former is the case and you are interested.

I highly support this mod and I hope some writers pick it up!

I agree that the best way to write a murder quest is to start with motivations, characters and the actual murder and then go to making the way of discovering this as interesting as possible. Also, even simple mysteries can be hard to figure out (e.g. the Windhelm-quest, it doesnt have that many 'stages' of investigation, really).

I loved solving the Windhelm murders and the quest to find out if that one guy killed his wife... I would absolutely LOVE a mod like this. I loved reading Agatha Christie when I was a young girl (not too young; 12ish.)

Unless i've missed something, i'd love for the Windhelm murder "case" to be continued or further expanded.

I was very sad after arresting the initial guy and him being dragged off yelling "I didnt do it!" and no mention is made of it again. First thing i did was talk to him in the cell, nothing... =/

the quest continues... I will say no more.

If anyone is working on a mod like this, I would happily make a trailer for it

TES Skyrim : L.A Noire ..

Lol


But yes, it would be cool.

First off if we can make NPCs actually react to their fallen comrades that'd be nice. Right now we get something like this:

http://pcmedia.gamespy.com/pc/image/article/683/683202/episode-14-the-scarlet-hootenanny-20060124060821789.jpg

(they're hidden because of the hankies covering their heads, obviously)

THIS! I love these murder investigation things. I feel very accomplished when I solve them and the whole Forsworn Conspiracy one was really cool with the people trying to intimidate you. I would love a mod that added these to the game!

I will say that I was very frustrated by the way the windhelm quest was handled. My character was a very methodical investigator with surprisingly good intuitions about what was going on, except that many evidence related options would not become available except after doing something that I was avoiding precisely because of the issues behind that bit of evidence.

I suppose I should have bumbled through it, but I didn't -- my deep desire to microcontrol things lead to me reading spoilers and save/reload to get past the points where the evidence would not trigger. Not much fun, in retrospect...

So imagine if it was done well?

Nice job, I hope you'll make some for Skyrim too. Take the offer from the guy that offered story planning.