The Detail's first episode - Where the Dead Lie - strikes an interesting, if not always perfect, blend between great visual novel elements, replete with comic book stylings and a terrific sense of style, and a slightly more ho-hum game. As a fan of the modern story-driven adventure game revolution (i.e., The Walking Dead, The Blackwell series, and Yesterday), I wound up liking Where the Dead Lie and hope it grows into the game it has the potential to become.

The first episode focuses around the intertwined stories of a weary detective investigating the suspicious murder of a prominent criminal in the middle of a gangland and that of a reformed criminal just trying to keep his nose clean for his wife and his daughter. These aren't exactly new archetypes, but they're written well and there's lots of room for the player to play them as good, bad, or somewhere in between.

Throughout the game, the player is presented with several choices for dialogue or action, all of which have repercussions in the ways the people around you react. My personal favorite was the necessity of playing a cop willing to bend the rules to gain access to a gang member's house. My boneheaded moves had some real negative effects, ones that left me queasy with the results.

While this episode is mostly about laying the groundwork for the plot and characters, these moral choices lead to some excellent taut moments and a brutal showdown at the end of the episode. If the game's creators can keep up this kind of intense action and dialogue with a pervasive sense of my actions having some real effects, I'll be absolutely delighted. That said, some way to replay specific scenes when the player has finished with the episode to see the various outcomes without having to replay the whole game would be terrific.

When it comes to the moments when you actually have direct control of the characters, the game unfortunately loses some traction. For example, when the player come to the crime scene of the gangland hit, the playerdo very little actual detective work, and are instead presented with very clear cut-and-dried conversation choices. There's very little done here to actually make you feel like you're doing detective work. This initial episode feels a little too guided. While I'm not looking to solve puzzles or combine inventory items ala the "bad old days" of adventure gaming, some further degree of interaction would have been nice. I want to feel like I'm doing the detective work, not having the game's characters do the detective work for me.

The game has a great sense of art style, and the music is terrific. I'm hugely fond of the environments, which practically made me feel the grit and the grime of this terrifically crafted little universe. The walking animations felt stiff, something I hope is addressed in future episodes. Perhaps most head-scratching of all the game's problems is the complete lack of sound effects. Aside from some rain, there are none. It creates an odd little disconnect from the game. Not having speech is fine - it works well with the comic book stylings - but some sound effects would draw me even further into the game's great setup and characters.

As it stands, while there's definitely room for improvement, The Detail looks to be a phenomenal entry into the growing world of interactive visual novels. I'm really looking forward to seeing where the plot - and this team of developers - goes from here.