Getting into trouble with the law abroad is never a good time. But while I've run afoul of a few Berlin traffic cops, I've never had to flee from a town whose police department consists of one Godzilla-sized policeman.
Such is is the case in Militsioner, a bizarre immersive sim from fittingly-named developer Tallboys that concerns, well, a very tall cop. You've been accused of a crime, see, and with the entire town convinced you're guilty, you need to plan your escape before the massive rozzer sends you off to big boy jail.
As we see in this week's new trailer, this mostly involves plenty of skulking around, trying to avoid the Kaiju-scale cop's sight while hopping on the first car, train or otherwise outta town. The townsfolk aren't exactly on your side, ratting you out any chance they get. Fortunately, Militsioner's massive watchman can be reasoned with.
See, Tallboys' other trick is voice recognition, with all your interactions coming via direct conversation. You can speak to the massive cop, and he'll respond. Maybe he can be reasoned with. But more importantly, maybe he can be tricked.
"Voice input feels very natural to use, and it can be interesting to play with in the game world," Tallboys write in a blog post, spitballing ideas for how this might pan out. "What if you shout at night? If you shout to the car driver, or ask him for help? Maybe try to trick someone? There may be a number of interesting applications here that we have never seen before in any other game."
The developer cites games like Façade and Phasmophobia as examples, and is currently working on a playable demo to give the big man a trial shift. On Twitter, Tallboys confirmed that it is looking into more conventional text and conversation systems.
Militsioner already has its share of detractors, mind. Last year, Russian state television ran an absolutely wild segment slamming the game as "Russophobic" for framing a towering, Soviet-coded policeman as the villain.
Cheers for the spot, RPS.
