The Tex Murphy franchise hasn't been around for quite a while now. Beginning with Access Software's Mean Streets in 1989 and ending in 1998 with The Pandora Directive, this series helped defined the "Interactive Movie" genre with full motion video and real actors used with in a "Virtual World" game engine. Now the series is back with The Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure, with a new trailer from Atlus called "12 Days of Texmas" showing off 12 reasons to play newest adventure.

The Tesla Effect picks up with Tex Murphy as a a detective of a post-apocalyptic future who has just regained consciousness after a lethal wound and the last seven years of his life wiped from memory. Now Murphy has to travel a dystopian post-World War III San Francisco in the 2040s, and his wits, creativity, humor and luck to get in and out of danger while dealing with reluctant allies and enemies amongst the mutants of Old San Francisco and find out who was behind his attack.

It'll be interesting to see how, in a post-Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls industry, gamers respond to an interactive movie world with non-digital actors. Then again, with Quantum Break arriving soon, maybe the bridge between digital and live action will bring gamers closer to the idea, paving the way for the full motion video-based games of the past like The 111th Hour, Dragon's Lair and...Night Trap, anyone?

The Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure is set to release sometime in 2014 for the PC and Mac. For more on the game, check out the Tex Murphy website. Check out the "12 Days" trailer below, along with the most recent trailer for a little context.

12 Days of Texmas

//www.youtube.com/embed/hQQG-kuHW54?feature=player_detailpage

Tesla Effect Trailer 3

//www.youtube.com/embed/_wnAayWwLEI?feature=player_embedded