Agatha Christie - Murder on the Orient Express is a modernized telling of the classic mystery, incorporating new elements into one of the writer's most famous stories. The interactive story game comes from Microids Studio, a developer and publisher which in the past has released everything from other Christie tales like The ABC Murders to Garfield: Lasagna Party. This release aims to surprise even the most seasoned mystery fans, adding fresh ways to experience the well-trodden tale.

This isn't the first Poirot-led tale produced by Microids, but Murder on the Orient Express introduces a slew of new elements into the detective's life. The game takes place in the present day, completely changing the context of the story, and introduces new character Joanna Locke. Locke serves as a method to break up the monotony of the train environment and a way for players to get more backstory behind Daisy's murder, taking them into flashbacks of the original investigation.

Screen Rant sat down with Microids Studio head David Chomard and narrative designer Lee Sheldon to discuss the changes to Christie's story, creating the right mystery solving environment, and the challenge of pleasing both old and new fans.

Screen Rant: This is one of Agatha Christie's most famous stories, but it's been a while since there's been a sort of updated style of adaptation of it. What made the team want to take on this story in particular as a project?

David Chomard: Basically, I've been working in the video games industry for 25 years, and I was in another company and I was approached by the president of Microids Stéphane Longeard, and he basically offered me to start a new studio to make this game. And I was so excited that I quit my previous job and I started the studio. So I mean, working on this kind of high-profile license and also an investigation game, I'm really into it, personally. And so yes, it was really a great, wonderful opportunity to work on such a great license.

And also why this one was picked up is because mostly, there was another adaptation of Agatha Christie game made by Microids almost seven years ago, which was ABC Murders, and it was very successful. From the sales point of view, it was really well received, and it kept selling for years. So it's not like a one hit wonder where you just launched the game and three months later it's over. No, because of the huge fan base of Agatha Christie's fans, it keeps selling even today. So they knew that Agatha Christie has a really big aura, and can drag a lot of players around, so that's also why they chose this license in particular.

Can you give a little bit more of an idea about what the gameplay side of things will look like? I know there's a new character, Joanna Locke, who will allow you to exit the train, which I think has a huge amount of potential to be super game changing, so I'm curious how that gameplay works.

David Chomard: From the gameplay point, there are two things: the scenario and the gameplay. From the gameplay point of view, we try to make it as easy to play as possible. We don't want it to be a really hardcore game. Even from the investigation point of view, we wanted to make it very accessible, yet there should be some challenge. For example, there is no arcade style or dexterity required to play the game; anyone who can handle a joystick can play the game without any difficulty. So that was the first thing.

The second thing is we wanted the player to feel like he was really investigating. There are a couple of games that use this kind of mind map, which is something where you try to connect hints together and make you feel like you're really an investigator, and we really tried to push it further so that it's not just connecting facts and making deductions from two facts.

We try to also have some workshops where you try to put together the timeline of events. So there will be a small workshop where for a suspect you're trying to put together, "Okay, what was his timeline? So he went smoking, then went back to the train, then he said he fell asleep, but there is something off here." So we have a lot of those to connect, eliminate suspects, to think amongst those suspects who are those that they can already put aside and so on. We have like a dozen of those different small game plays inside your brain. It's not in the real world, it's really inside your brain; you're connecting facts, you recall interviews, and so on, and you play inside your brain smaller minigames.

But that makes you feel smart, because then, for example, if you hear somebody say, "Oh, somebody stole my ticket, we could have said, "Okay, so you need to interact with the neighbors, you need to inspect the room, you need to check how the thief escaped the room." But we chose to put it in a minigame and say, "Okay, what would you do?" And we offer several options, and the player has to choose the right one. So after that, it's logical that you have to search the room, you have to interact with the neighbor; it's not forced, it's the player itself who chooses to. He came to the conclusion that, "Yes, I should talk to the neighbor," because he made the logical deduction. So that's kind of the philosophy of the game, let the player make their own deductions and play the game.

Lee Sheldon: We did introduce a new character, Joanna Locke, who is a police detective who was involved in the original kidnapping of Daisy. She investigated it, it ended up a failure, and she's taken on this case as - she has to finish it, because she failed and a little girl was never avenged. So that's why she's in the story. We flashback to her investigation of the earlier case, something that I don't think anyone has ever done.

It's played out in Western Massachusetts for some reason, written by somebody who actually lives here. And she then becomes at first a foil and a suspect, but eventually she and Poirot hook up to become partners in solving the crime, sometimes doing different things simultaneously in the game, and the player jumps back and forth between the two.

David Chomard: So if I can just add a precision, it's not like you go outside the train during the investigation. It's more like you are doing flashbacks with Joanna and it's kind of in-between. So you do a bit of investigation with Poirot inside the train, and then you have a flashback of the story of Joanna, you play a little bit of the flashback, and then you go back to the train.

It's kind of a back and forth during the train so that you don't feel like you spent like 10 or 15 hours inside the train. A train, even if it's the most beautiful train, can be quite boring for a player to play 10 hours going back and forth in a train and so that's also why we wanted to add a bit of the outside world and other locations, really different ones.

This version of the story is also set in the current day, which I think is also a really interesting sort of twist to it. What made you want to make that change in of setting and in what ways have things kind of been modernized in that regard?

David Chomard: The choice of 2023, it was also another decision because there have been a lot of adaptations in 1930, and very well done on TV, on screen, and so on. So that was really, again, something to make it fresh, to have a fresh approach of the book, something that hasn't been done. So that was the main reason. And that was funny, because for the story, we first actually came with this idea that there was a copycat story, that somebody can replay the book today; that was our first idea, to make it like a replicate.

But the license, Agatha Christie Limited, they said, "Oh, why don't you just put Poirot nowadays and that's easier for you?" And we said, "Yes, that's much easier," because doing a copycat is kind of complicated. And they were very open to that, which was actually very nice from them, because we thought we couldn't have Poirot nowadays, but actually they suggested it. They said, "Yes please, that would be cool." And so we decided to move on with that, which was really a headache, actually.

Because nowadays you have mobile phones, you have PCs, you have internet, so all those things that are pretty difficult in 1930 are so easy now today, that actually we had to come up with some really complicated justifications. For example, the train is stopped in the middle of a mountain, and that's why they don't have network, so they can't use their cell, they can't use a PC, they can't use internet and so on. Because otherwise, that makes the thing completely different, the investigation is completely different nowadays. It's funny because Poirot has a mobile phone and so on. The investigation was just a nightmare to make it nowadays.

The trailer for the game also mentions an unprecedented conclusion. I'm sure you can't give a huge amount away, but I'm curious if you couldn't give any more insight into what that's hinting at.

David Chomard: I've been told not to. [Laughs] So I can't. What I can tell you is that after the end of the book, there is approximately three hours of investigation after that, so that's pretty big. And it's not like it's a separate story, it's kind of related to what you've been experiencing before. It's not like, "Oh, we made another side story that is another Poirot investigation," it's really related to Murder on the Orient Express.

Lee Sheldon: We do get off the train more in our version than they do in the movie version. So I should preface this with the fact that I did a game a long, long time ago called The Riddle of Master Lu, and it was going to have a successor after it came out. That never happened, but it involved Geneva, Switzerland, and I always wanted to incorporate Geneva, so that's one of the stops they go to.

And the other one strangely enough - we did this before the movie that just came out, - we're going to Venice. Gonna have to change it from the City of Love to the City of Murder. [Laughs] So those are the two big places we go away. And there's another one later on, but I'm not going to go into that.

Gotta leave a little bit of secrecy.

Lee Sheldon: Oh, there's a lot of secrecy still. [Laughs]

What do you guys think mystery fans in particular will really appreciate about this game?

Lee Sheldon: I think they will enjoy the parts that are faithful to the book. I think that there will be mixed opinions on whether or not we should have messed with it, but thanks to Kenneth Branagh now it seems to be okay to do that. [Laughs] And the people who think they know at all, what's going to happen and everything, they're gonna get the biggest shock out of anyone I think, because they don't know it all anymore. Other people have had their hands on the work.

That's very ominous.

Lee Sheldon: I'm an ominous person. [Laughs]

What are you most excited to see players react to when the game finally releases?

David Chomard: Well, really, we want to do a good investigation game. That's really the goal, to have a good investigation where the player feels in control, where he's smart and he's rewarded for that. If we succeed in having the players get feeling like, "Oh, I'm actually Poirot, I'm actually thinking like him. I'm making very rational, logical reasonings."

For example, we did a thing where you have to catch a lie when somebody's doing a testimony or something. So here, you really have a chance to listen to someone - he says a couple of sentences, and in one of them there is a lie, and you have to prove it. And to prove that you also have to give a fact that says, "No, you can't say that you were sleeping at that time, because I know that somebody saw you on the street," and so on.

So you really have to be careful, you have to listen to what people say, look at things. And you don't need to be super smart, you just need to be very cautious and you will be able to go through the game and still have fun having the feeling of being a real detective. And that's I hope the feeling that people will get when they play the game and be surprised, because we have a lot of twists

Lee Sheldon: I'd like to add to that; I think they're going to be pleasantly surprised with Poirot. I think people are going to go in thinking that we've done something horrific, and I think they will recognize this Poirot even though he's in the modern day. I certainly enjoyed writing him and I tried to capture the essence of Poirot, which is the important part, not what year we're in.

David Chomard: Yeah, I must add Lee did an awesome job in writing the dialogues. I think you capture the spirit of Poirot in the game. He's really funny, he's very sassy, he can be even a bit naughty. And he wrote basically most of the dialogues because we couldn't use the ones of the book. We use the key ones of the book because it's important for those who are the big fans, there are some sentences that are really famous.

Still, Lee came with his version of Poirot because we have so much more than the book; he needed to write a lot of things. We still laugh sometimes when we play the game about some sentences from Poirot. It's really funny, I think.

Lee Sheldon: Are you going to tell them how many words?

David Chomard: You can say if you want, yeah.

Lee Sheldon: 50,000 I contributed. [Laughs] So that's a novel length amount of words.

David Chomard: And also, I must mention that it's fully voiced over in English, German and French. So it's also something that is not so common to have the game fully voiceover in English. And we had good actors I think in English that really translate pretty well the feelings, I hope.

Source: Microids/YouTube

Agatha Christie - Murder on the Orient Express will release October 19 for PlayStation consoles, Xbox consoles, Nintendo Switch, and PC.