Prequel sleuther Sherlock Holmes Chapter One is announced, due out next year

From those folks at Frogwares wot love doing Sherlock Holmes adventures, comes the next sleuth 'em up based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's gentleman detective. Sherlock Holmes Chapter One is a prequel story to the developers' other games, this time telling a story of Holmes' early years standing in for Gerard Way on My Chemical Romance tours. No, not really, but they say that Chapter One will feature a "cavalier young Sherlock" before his reputation preceded him. It's due out sometime in 2021.

In this prequel story, Sherlock is off to discover the mystery of his mother's death alongside his companion Jon. No, not Dr. John Watson, just Jon, whose origins are apparently also somewhat of a mystery.

"Our version of Sherlock is not a traditional character," Frogwares told Gamespot. "He has this raw talent [for discovering the truth] that's sort of untamed. He's more arrogant, and much more volatile in this game compared to [other] versions. He has more fun playing with the truth, and he has no problem lying to somebody to get to the bottom of his investigation."

Chapter One will have an open world approach to mystery solving called Global Investigation in which you "explore and exploit the entire city in your pursuit of truth, using clues, rumors, disguises, tags, and pinned evidence to build a solid case within your mind palace." It sounds relatively similar to the exploration investigations of their recent games The Sinking City and Sherlock Holmes — The Devil's Daughter.

I don't have personal experience with either game, nor Frogwares' earlier Sherlock games, though the official RPS treehouse opinion seems to be that they're, well, middling. Alice Bee says in her The Sinking City review that she was "confused and uncharmed by the whole thing," meanwhile John Walker didn't even finish The Devil's Daughter, citing similar sentiments.

Sherlock Holmes Chapter One will be out sometime in 2021 over on Steam, the Epic Games Store, and GOG.