multi-process story
Culture and Sports

A development process created to experiment with how best to combine a game's story with its interactivity. Previous adventure games have primarily used the idea of multiple endings to expand a game's interactivity, but this method does not let all players experience the best possible story the game has to offer. Policenauts takes the completely opposite approach, keeping the basic framework of the game the same, thereby allowing all players to appreciate the game's story and themes to their fullest, and instead changing small elements of the game's content in response to the player's pace and actions throughout the course of the game.

With this method, a player's individual actions, no matter how minute, are reflected in the game's dialogue and events, while the basic story and themes remain unchanged. This helps draw the player into the game and also allows the developers to fine-tune the story and ending in one fashion.

This method, previously used in Snatcher, has now been further developed with Policenauts. It could be said it has offered up one possibility for the future of interactive cinema.