Famitsu, 4Gamer, and other Japanese games media got the chance to try out an extended demo of DGS2 this week, and the first reports from that day are going up now! While they got to play parts of cases 2 and 3, info on case 3 is embargoed until June 16th. So for now let's summarize what they could talk about!

About episode 2



Episode 2 takes place a day after DGS1's episode 4; its official title is "The Memoir of the Clouded Kokoro" (literally "The Memoir of the Foggy Night and I", "吾輩と霧の夜の回想"; it's the same as DGS1-4's but with "adventure" replaced by "memoir").

With Souseki found not guilty in DGS1-4, Ryuunosuke, Susato, and Holmes head to St. Bartholomew's Hospital to visit the victim of that case, Viridian Green. Viridian's finally regained consciousness, and she thanks the team for coming to visit her and for solving her case. Famitsu describes her as an art student at Thorndyke University with a gloomy personality. Holmes quickly deduces that she lives quite a ways away from where she was stabbed, but before the team can learn any more about just why she was on Briar Road that night, a messenger arrives with a message from Souseki: his fellow lodger has been found dead!

At the scene, the group speaks to Souseki and learns he found the victim, William Petenshy, dead that morning. The two of them often debated Shakespeare, so Gregson's already suspicious of Souseki. Holmes looks over the scene and declares William was poisoned. Ryuunosuke steps in to help with Joint Reasoning as always, but as a result of their deductions, Souseki just winds up looking more suspicious than ever, and Gregson takes him away.

The demo jumped forward to court after this. Because Souseki was arrested so soon after his not-guilty verdict, the court has reconvened the jury of DGS1-4 to reconsider their judgment. Souseki tries to explain that he and William were just doing their usual scholarly debates ("Who is stronger: Romeo or Juliet?", determined through dressing up in character and battling it out, I am not making up any part of this parenthetical) and has nothing to do with the murder, but the jury isn't particularly convinced. Decargo Mieterman is called as a witness, and claims to have seen something implicating Souseki at the scene through a crack in the bricked-up window.

The demo let players cross-examine Decargo, but Famitsu elides the details. The demo ends there!

Other DGS2 news

The media then got a chance to sit down with producer Eshiro and ask some questions. To bullet-point the new info:

• DGS2 will not feature animated cutscenes; instead, they're trying to do as much of the action in-engine as possible, and they're stepping up their use of mocap.
• Although DGS2-2 has the same jury as DGS1-4, Eshiro promises the rest of the game will feature new jurors. The old jury was reused due to the nature of the case.
• Iris has a new outfit seen when the characters are out and around town.
• Eshiro says the camerawork for Joint Reasoning has been greatly improved, since the staff is more used to it now.
• The fast-forward feature for text has been improved so that characters don't cut from one pose to another so abruptly.
• Some music is being reused to help the games feel connected, but Eshiro promises there'll be plenty of new tracks as well.
• Eshiro reiterates that all the lingering mysteries from DGS1 will be resolved, and he feels confident in the game's scenario. If they missed anything, "he'll give Takumi what for [laughs]".
• There will be no DLC for the game.
• Development is nearing completion.

Additionally, a series of videos summarizing DGS1 will start on June 9th. Instead of being just dry recaps, they'll be presented as voiced skits, with a few easter eggs for series fans thrown in.

Finally, Famitsu teases that case 3 involves an explosion during a science experiment gone wrong. We'll hear more about that in the future!

[Court-Records is looking for a copywriting manager!]

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Wow! I didn't expect.. that!

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I can't believe they killed off William. I was looking forward to the Taming of the Shrewd.

Good grief, Eshiro. Locking Takumi in his office until he was done writing everything wasn't enough?

Anyway, cool easter egg, if not a little ominous. Lovely gramophone in the back there. I wonder if Holmes has figured out a way to make his own ringtones.

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Nice, even finally get to meet Virginian Green. And now what she was even doing on that night is its own plot. Oh, Takumi...

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*pushes glasses up*

I'll have to pull my Sherlockian card out here, but I'd go with The Memoir Of The Foggy Night And I, as several of the major Japanese translations of The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes use 回想, and obviously, the change from adventure to memoir is a Holmes reference.


Ha, totally not suspicious name.

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Huh, I've had a thought for a while that a DGS sequel would have "Memoir" as a theme name. Guess I was kinda right (though I was thinking the episodes would still be named "Adventure" and the game would be named Memoirs, rather than Resolve, but hey, you can't win them all).



Okay, that's actually very suspicious.

Actually, considering that the building has a reputation for being cursed, now I'm wondering if Petenshy has something to do with that now.

By the way, does Episode 1 have a name?

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Huh. It feels like an odd move to have them go back to the events of the worst case in DGS :p

More Souseki is nice I guess, and that case did have the most obvious unanswered questions outside of DGS-5, what with who we now know to be Petenshy and Meterman just showing up randomly. I wonder if the time skip could be to do with this case actually not tying into the overall plot, so they don't want it to feel out of place (like 6-4 did in SoJ).

The "debates" is certainly chuckle-worthy, and I'm glad to hear that all the mysteries from DGS will be resolved here (does that finally put to bed the idea that this will be a trilogy?)

I am a bit curious if them having no DLC means that the original DGS' DLC didn't sell well, and so wasn't worth the time spent developing it? A bit of a shame if so, not because I care about DLC, but because poor sales figures is never good for a game series you want to see continue.

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SHERLOCK........................

I get the feeling that this episode got shunted off to this game because of time constraints. And I don't mean development time, but game length. It's no secret that the original game was supposed to be longer than it ended up being.

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I considered "Memoirs" when I was writing the article last night! But it was late, I was tired, and my first cursory lookup of "The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes" in Japanese used 思い出. I figured if it was a direct reference you'd catch it and correct me anyhow. I'll update the article; hopefully we get the official English title sooner or later.

Also, fun fact: when we briefly meet William in DGS1-4, the game plays Jezail's theme, which in the game's sound data is referred to as "petenshy.mca". At the time I figured it was just meant to convey "this person's a crook", but maybe Takumi had the name bouncing around back when DGS1 was being made too!



Not yet!

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Hopefully we'll get an official English release of this game sooner or later

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Wait a minute, the 'Elegant ~ And Excellent' sound file was labelled after this guy?

Is...is he actually kinda important?

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Sounds this game is being rushed out the door to get it over and done with. They probably want to move on from this series, so DGS 2 will likely be the last game. I still wish this game utilized Sherlock more. He seems like a very underused background character that just does random things.

What makes you think this is being rushed? Also, I think it is very unfair to judge Sherlock's role in this game before it is even out. I agree that DGS1 could have benefited from Sherlock's story mattering more to the game's plot, but to say that DGS2 underuses Sherlock is obviously unfair, for now at least. If we believe that all the mysteries from DGS1 will be resolved, then Sherlock will obviously play a much bigger role in this game's plot.

As far as DGS2 goes, I am very excited for it to come out. I have given up hope for DGS1 getting localised shortly after it came out, much earlier than most people, so I am looking forward to the fan translations if those are still worked on. I regret watching the DGS1 fan translation and Bolt's streams. This is also probably were I'll stop following news for DGS2. I am fine with waiting a couple more years for the fan translations.

I can see how someone might see this as if it's being rushed due to how soon it has become a thing since the first game was released but I think DGS is one of those games where they probably started doing the groundwork for Game-2 as soon as work on Game-1 wrapped up and they basically just build the sequel by using the same engine as the first just as JFA... which not to mention the devil, but I sincerely do hope the plot of this game was planned well enough as a continuation of 1. I'm crossing my fingers that it's true that Takumi had a larger story arc in mind when drafting the first game and that he's realizing the most important parts of it with the sequel. There probably was plans for another trilogy at first though, but of course DGS wasn't quite as successful as the mainline games for, dare I say, obvious reasons.

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Loving all of this new DGS2 info! Exciting that the development stages are almost complete! The science lab case should be interesting and also like the fact that they are going to be new jurors and a new outfit for Iris as well.