In new game, studly young Sherlock investigates why men and women alike faint when he walks in the room

I know some people find Benedict Cumberbatch handsome, but I wouldn't say the modern BBC Sherlock is about young Sherlock Holmes being a total stud. It's more about him being a bit of an asshole, if anything. Based on nothing but screenshots from Frogwares' new adventure, Sherlock Holmes Chapter One, I think I have the mystery here figured out—young Sherlock is such a smoldering hunk that everyone keeps passing out as soon as he enters the drawing room. 

Classic Sherlock, he's not great with social cues, and blissfully unaware that his raw sexuality is rendering everyone around him unconscious. It's a puzzle alright. Could Moriarty have developed some kind of undetectable knock-out gas, spreading across the entirety of England? Sherlock wonders. No, bud, it's your blue-green eyes that are like a limpid pool in a forest glade.

The developer presentation of Sherlock Chapter One from the Future Games Show doesn't expand on my theory, instead choosing to focus on Sherlock's origin story investigating his mother's death, open world puzzle-solving on a Mediterranean island... Sherlock's abs are never mentioned explicitly, but I remain confident they're the key to this caper.

Sherlock Holmes Chapter One is out sometime next year, which gives Frogwares plenty of time to append the tagline "His sexiest adventure yet."

Wes Fenlon
Senior Editor

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.


When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).