Focus Home Interactive announces Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments, a new installment in their series of games based on the consulting detective. The previous game in the series, The Testament of Sherlock Holmes, marked a switch from a point-and-click interface, and the new game switches from their proprietary game engine to Epic's Unreal Engine 3. These screenshots show off the new look of the game, which is coming to PCs and consoles at an unannounced future date, and here's more on how it departs from their previous Sherlock Holmes games:

Unlike the previous adventures of Sherlock Holmes, in Crimes and Punishments you will not be a mere spectator during the detective’s investigation. It is now your turn to truly become Sherlock Holmes and lead your own investigation--actually, your investigations, as 8 captivating cases await you! Murders, disappearances, spectacular thefts, and other investigations will bring you to the cutting edge of the detective genre and these cases will be the bread and butter of this game, written in the pure tradition of Conan Doyle’s novels. Each case offers real freedom to players, who will have to make important moral choices instead of simply enforcing justice by the book. All decisions have an influence in the game and affect your character’s reputation in addition to having realistic, sometimes unexpected, consequences. You will have to bear the weight of your choices, as Crimes and Punishments offers an exciting system of actions/consequences that forces players to think before acting by giving true depth to every decision they make.

In Crimes and Punishments, players will embody a Sherlock Holmes with a brand new look. Developers at Frogwares have abandoned the classic Sherlock Holmes inspired by the 60s Sherlock movies, replacing him with a more modern character perfectly matching the new artistic ambitions of the title.