Agatha Christie: Murder On The Orient Express - Development

Development

Murder on the Orient Express was announced on May 2, 2006, as the second installment in The Adventure Company's Agatha Christie series. As with the game's predecessor, And Then There Were None, Murder on the Orient Express was developed by AWE Productions, in collaboration with producer The Adventure Company. The production team remained largely the same, with Lee Sheldon reprising his role as Lead Designer, and Scott Nixon from AWE Productions reprising his position as Managing Director.

The Adventure Company and Chorion, the owners of the rights to Christie's works, chose Agatha Christie's novel Murder on the Orient Express, widely considered the author's magnum opus, as the basis for the next game in the Agatha Christie series. AWE Productions had little influence in the choice, other than being asked for an opinion. Lee Sheldon created a concept document for the new game and sent it to Chorion, who sent it back with some suggestions. Sheldon agreed to some of these, but refused others. Chorion was generally more comfortable with the development team for their second outing. They did not have to scrutinize every aspect of the game as with And Then There Were None, and generally had fewer complaints with Murder on the Orient Express, as opposed to its predecessor.

Mike Adams, the Producer of Murder on the Orient Express, was extremely determined to have David Suchet as the voice actor for Poirot, a major character in the game. Scott Nixon thought that Suchet had become so intertwined with the character of Poirot, after his success with the television series Agatha Christie's Poirot, that it would be hard to imagine someone else doing Poirot's voice without constantly being compared to Suchet. Nixon described the situation as a catch-22, saying that he "worried about someone coming in and doing a Suchet impression instead of a unique rendition of Poirot, yet the more the voice strays from Suchet's version, the more people will wish it was Suchet doing it!" Another reason for the development team's determination to have Suchet aboard was that they thought he would spur the other voice actors in the game, such as Vanessa Marshall who portrayed Antoinette Marceau, to step up and compete with Suchet's skillful portrayal of Poirot. Fairly late in the game's development, Suchet agreed to do the voice acting. He admitted that one reason for his acceptance of the offer was that he felt possessive of the role of Poirot, considering he had been portraying the character for so long. Mike Adams expressed pride at having succeeded in convincing Suchet to do voice acting for Murder on the Orient Express, and said that his skillful voice acting would bring "tremendous excitement and authenticity" to the game.

As with And Then There Were None, Lead Designer Lee Sheldon introduced a new character to the plot of Murder on the Orient Express, who was not present in Christie's novel, in order to fulfill the role of a player character and protagonist. The character, Antoinette Marceau, is described by Sheldon as an amalgam of two characters from the novel. These were Poirot's friend who ran the Orient Express, Marcel Bouc, and a young soldier who is present in both the novel and the film version of the story, who shepherds Poirot to Istanbul. Sheldon stated that he did not want to create entirely new protagonists for the Christie games, but rather preferred to draw from sources in Christie's novels to piece together the games' protagonists. Sheldon also addressed concerns from several early previews of the game, which asked why the player could not actually play as Poirot. He explained the choice of Marceau as the protagonist, saying "the reason for choosing Marceau over Poirot as the protagonist is that most of the fun of Poirot is seeing what he is up to, watching how he acts and solves things. I’ve always thought the more interesting character was the ‘Watson’ character rather than the Sherlock Holmes character."

To make Poirot an even more integral part of Murder on the Orient Express, Sheldon made him into an elaborate hint system. After players complained about a sense of aimlessness in And Then There Were None, which arose whilst they tried to find a trigger to begin the next section of gameplay, Sheldon made Poirot an "oracle of sorts," who can provide help whenever the player is stuck or unsure of what to do next.

The development team decided that, as with And Then There Were None, they would change Christie's original ending for Murder on the Orient Express. The aim of the developers was to create games that would not only appeal to casual gamers, but also to Christie fans. As nearly all Christie fans have read Murder on the Orient Express, and know the solution, and considering that the novel was to be included with the game, the developers decided that the ending needed to be changed. The novel has two solutions – one being what appears to be happening and the other being what is actually occurring – and the developers aimed to develop a third solution which drew on these two solutions and still surprised the player. Lee Sheldon admitted that his variation to the ending of And Then There Were None received some criticism, and said that in Murder on the Orient Express changing the ending was even harder because of the sheer fame of the book and its solution. He also expressed his hatred of adaptations of older material which make fun of that time period, and said that he was trying to stay as faithful to Christie's work and time era as possible.

A major difference between And Then There Were None and Murder on the Orient Express that Sheldon pointed out was that in the former, the premise of the novel was that no one solved the murder. This forced Sheldon to desperately try to find a way to integrate clues into the story so that the player could actually discover the murderer, although the game remained quite uninteractive. In Murder on the Orient Express, the actual novel follows an investigation, so Sheldon could more easily integrate clues to lead to all three possible solutions. Sheldon also excised unnecessary puzzles from Murder on the Orient Express, as they were an unpopular feature of its predecessor.

Several graphical improvements were made to Murder on the Orient Express over And Then There Were None. These were mostly dedicated to character design and animation, which were extremely poorly received features of the first Christie game. The development team introduced animation layers, allowing them to control parts of character models independently. This allowed the developers to use the same animations whether the character was sitting, standing or lying down, and also gave them more head and upper body control. In And Then There Were None, characters had to rotate their entire bodies to talk to one another, whereas in Murder on the Orient Express, characters can simply turn their heads. The game has no physics features, but screen resolution has been increased, more detailed backgrounds have been made, and characters models contain more polygons.

Research was a major component of the developmental stages of Murder on the Orient Express. Most of the research was focused on Yugoslavia in 1934, the game's setting. Sheldon focused on the political and scientific situation of this era, and explained his intensive research, saying "all of the puzzles have to be contextual. They all have to either help character, help story or define period." The developers also drew influence from a train museum outside Miami with an original Pullman carriage - the same as the carriages used on the Orient Express in the 1930s. The museum also contained a locomotive similar to the one the developers were looking for. The developers ended up using the train museum, several books about the Orient Express, the 1974 film version of Christie's novel, and the internet as research resources. With Murder on the Orient Express being the first Poirot game produced, Sheldon was careful that the game fitted into Christie's timeline of Poirot's exploits. The television series often took liberties with the time in which stories were set, but Sheldon was determined to keep everything in strict accordance with Christie's work. There are several references in the game to Poirot's earlier cases, all of which are chronologically accurate. This was partly so that Sheldon could draw influence from the culture of specific eras of time, and also so that in the future other Poirot-based games will be chronologically accurate.

The official site for Murder on the Orient Express was unveiled on September 21, 2006, and contains screenshots, character biographies and photos, environment artwork, trailers, demos, music, wallpaper and contests. Murder on the Orient Express was shipped to stores on November 14, 2006 in North America. It received an ESRB rating of Teen (13+) and retailed for an MSRP of US$29.99. The Adventure Company held a launch party for the gaming press on November 16, two days after the game was shipped. Among the guests were the development team of Murder on the Orient Express, and actors portraying the game's various characters. The demo for Murder on the Orient Express was released on December 20, 2006, and contained a small portion of the game which has the player exploring the train.