I'm not sure how to explain, but I think I'm missing something. It seems like I was thrust into the game and now I'm kind of bumbling my way through. The interviews are confusing - I usually understand when to use the "lie" command and present contradictory evidence (thanks Phoenix), but distinguishing between "truth" and "doubt" often seems like a crapshoot, especially when you only get one chance to hear their answer. And the commands often don't add up to what I think Cole will say - it's like the Mass Effect conversation wheel problem, but multiplied. I'll say "truth" and Cole will press them for more information, and I'll say "doubt" and Cole will press them for more information, but in a slightly meaner way. Anyone else feel this way? Loving the game, just having some trouble understanding how it's supposed to work.

It took me a bit to get used to the interrogation system, but once I realized that 'doubt' basically means that you accuse them of lying but you don't have any proof to back it up I started to get the hang of it.

Is that it? The game does a pretty poor job of explaining it. This thread on Reddit helped me out. So far, it's been my only real concern with the game (apart from the street crimes being a bit underwhelming and repetetive).

I do and i haven't even got the game yet :<

It's not a problem with you, it's a problem with the game's design. Unfortunately, due to technological limitations and design choices there are a multitude of obvious questions that should be asked during interviews and interrogations and also, poorly designed "doubt" and "lie" comments that many of which aren't what you're expecting. I'm probably going to stop playing the game soon because I can't get over the fact that each section of the game limits my choices and my ability to question individuals to the full and necessary extent; it's very frustrating.

I accidentally accused a woman of throwing her husband in front of a car earlier.

That's been my only real issue with the game, other than the character freeze that I posted a thread about earlier; sometimes when I accuse someone of something I think they're lying about, Cole accuses them of something entirely different.

It took me a bit to get used to the interrogation system, but once I realized that 'doubt' basically means that you accuse them of lying but you don't have any proof to back it up I started to get the hang of it.

Im getting the hang of it.  First you need to decide if they are telling the truth or it is a lie.  If you think they are lying you have two choices either you have the evidence to back up your accusation and you chose lie, or if you don't have the evidence you chose doubt.  

Me and my friend pretty much came to the conclusion that this game would be much better if rather than being truth/doubt/lie it should instead list what Cole will say. It would eliminate the crazy instances where you pick one option and Cole, rather than calling them out on that one fact, tries to place the murders of the entire city on them. But yes, this game really has some issues regarding the interrogation process and its no fail missions where if you get anything less than a 5 star rating, nobody explains anything that just happened.

You have to watch their faces and get a sense of whether they or being fully honest with you or are withholding something they think might make them look bad.

Here is a basic guide:

Truth: They aren't hiding anything, will almost always look you dead on with very little expression.
Doubt: They are holding something back for whatever reason, they will usually look away, have peculiar mouth or head movement and generally just seem nervous
Lie: Only use this when what they are saying directly contradicts the evidence you have.

Rarely does it actually have anything to do with the contents of their statement outside of when they contradict the evidence.

This is exactly how I feel. And it's really starting to leech the enjoyment I'm getting out of this game. I have, like, a forty percent success rate on interrogation queries. It's pretty frustrating. 

Seriously?  People are having this much trouble?  Just watch their eyes.  If they make eye solid, consistent eye contact then they are telling the truth.  If they look away at all then odds are they are lying or hiding something.  If you don't think you have logical evidence to contradict their statement then use doubt.

yeah the only thing I can assume is that you are supposed to get the questions wrong. 

I don't know how many people know this, but remember you can press start when you are looking at your notepad and select log on the menu, which will give you a script of the last things they said. If I can narrow it down to either doubt or lie I usually choose lie first and look over all of the evidence in my experience so far it seems that MOST of the time only evidence that directly contradicts what they said works. You can also back out of a lie if your evidence doesn't seem to match.

Seriously?  People are having this much trouble?  Just watch their eyes.  If they make eye solid, consistent eye contact then they are telling the truth.  If they look away at all then odds are they are lying or hiding something.  If you don't think you have logical evidence to contradict their statement then use doubt.

It takes some getting used to, but I just made it through an entire case with a 100% success rate following those guidelines.  Also, don't be afraid to use your intuition points.  You get several of them through the story and can only store up to five (or so it seems).  The "ask the community" option is generally the most helpful.

They need to patch the names of the options.
Believe
Doubt
Accuse
Would clear a lot of this mess up. Also like HatKing said, just watch the face and eyes for more than a couple seconds, look for twitches, movements.

Yeah, I'm likewise having trouble with Truth/Doubt.  Half the time I get an idea that they're holding something back, but sometimes you should pick Truth and gently coax more out of them, and sometimes you should pick Doubt and batter it out of them.  I usually know when to use Lie, but the others I get wrong about half the time.

I seem to do fine until I have to question a kid.  Then things go horribly.  I think I got 0 questions right both times so far.

They need to patch the names of the options. BelieveDoubtAccuse Would clear a lot of this mess up. Also like HatKing said, just watch the face and eyes for more than a couple seconds, look for twitches, movements.

It took me a bit to get used to the interrogation system, but once I realized that 'doubt' basically means that you accuse them of lying but you don't have any proof to back it up I started to get the hang of it.

There's a lot of little bullshit things going on with this 3 way system.  Honestly I think they should have made it a 2 way system and when you use the aggressive one it sometimes asks for evidence. 

In one of the early cases I was talking to a guy who said he didn't hear anything, I chose lie and presented that someone else said there was an argument there.  It was wrong.  I restarted, chose doubt, and the fucker mentions the argument that I presented to him.

Another problem case is I said someone lied and presented an object.  It was wrong, I then restarted and presented a different object.  COLE DOESN'T EVEN MENTION THE SECOND, RIGHT OBJECT AND INSTEAD MENTIONS THE FIRST IN HIS DIALOGUE. 

It's tough but you get the hang of it. If they're shifting in any way, or looking anywhere but your face dead on, it's not going to be truth, then you see if you have any evidence that contradicts what they're saying, if you do it's "lie", if you don't, then it's "doubt".

If you know they are lying and have evidence to prove it, you accuse them of lying.

If you know they are lying and don't have evidence to prove it, you select doubt. You also might have missed the evidence to show that they are lying so doubt won't work.

If you don't know if they are lying or not, you have to think a bit. Note that how they say things during their dialogue actually doesn't matter as much as how they are acting while you are selecting how you want to respond. You also have to think a bit about if it makes sense for them to be lying. The upstanding citizen who reported the crime and doesn't appear to be involved in any way, most likely is telling the truth.

Choosing truth/doubt depends on their intentions.

I understand the difference between doubt and lie but it should be a little more clear on what the question is with lie. There was situations where I would ask someone a question and think it has to be doubt because I didn't have any proof for that question but when I would click lie he would ask a slightly different question that I could prove him wrong with evidence. If I would have clicked doubt first I would get that question wrong and have no chance to go back.

I've gotten to the point where I press Lie just to see what they say. Often I press B to back out of it, but if they say something that directly contradicts, then I present the evidence. But just pressing lie to hear what they say is getting really old.

I got screwed so many times when I used lie. I would have evidence that backed up what we were first talking about but then when I hit lie, Cole would accuse them of something else completely and screw me over. 

Yeah, I've mucked up some interviews due to not understanding the system completely. I thought that it was all in the faces. That Truth would be when they look at you straight in the eyes, Doubt would be a little shifty and uncomfortable and then Lie would be them looking all over the place. But I guess not.

I got screwed so many times when I used lie. I would have evidence that backed up what we were first talking about but then when I hit lie, Cole would accuse them of something else completely and screw me over. 

I seem to do fine until I have to question a kid.  Then things go horribly.  I think I got 0 questions right both times so far.

I'm getting pretty much every question wrong.
Every time it's because someone says something totally normal so i say truth and it's wrong, i have absolutely no evidence to suggest this person is lieing so why would i chose anything else?

If the game wants you to get things wrong then fine but i wish it wouldn't fucking tell me i'm wrong every time, feeling kind of pathetic here.

I have the same problem. I like the atmosphere and the characters alot, but the actual design of the game is pretty weak. There are multiple instances where I knew what I had to do to expose the suspect, but I don't have the option. It's a game, sure, but if that's the main focus of it, it needs to be better. I've been having problems with the animation as well. The faces look great compared to other games but whenever anything happens that looks non human it jumps out at you and completely throws me out of the illusion.

I've gotten to the point where I press Lie just to see what they say. Often I press B to back out of it, but if they say something that directly contradicts, then I present the evidence. But just pressing lie to hear what they say is getting really old.

Just a quick reply,  using the Intuition option during an interrogation,  never rely on the "Ask the Community" option. 

I have the same problem. I like the atmosphere and the characters alot, but the actual design of the game is pretty weak. There are multiple instances where I knew what I had to do to expose the suspect, but I don't have the option. It's a game, sure, but if that's the main focus of it, it needs to be better. I've been having problems with the animation as well. The faces look great compared to other games but whenever anything happens that looks non human it jumps out at you and completely throws me out of the illusion.

You should almost accuse them of lying any time you see them twitching because if you you might have proof for whenever you actually take to prove, something you would never know if you went with doubting what is initially said.

So Im not the only one having this issues .... Im not liking this game much , I also have other stuff against it , as for example why all the shootouts must I kill the criminal why they didnt use the Red Dead redemption limb damage system? I only want to disarm the mofos , not pop their heads all the time , and my god the shooting system is pathetic.

Well, you have to actually look at the characters face durring questioning.  If they maintain eye contact with you the whole time, then you can bet they are telling the truth.  If their eyes are darting and shifting around, then they are not being entirely honest with you.

I can't stand how the murders are never explained, either. I'm not far in but for example, the game will have one guys uniform be full of blood and he'll have the murder weapon, but another guy will have some other proof he did it.

It doesn't feel like I'm breaking or solving a logical case. The fact that it's never explained feels like the game is creating an arbitrary case for me to solve that's impossible and I'm just playing a guessing game. What's the point of trying to deduce a case when the writers of the game just made up the pieces of evidence and there IS no case to solve? (note: I don't feel this way about every case, so maybe I'm just doing so bad on some that I never get adequate answers. This doesn't fix anything. It still feels the way I described and is frustrating)

And yeah, getting questions wrong - especially in some cases where I solved the case in my head long before the end, and answered based on those assumptions which were entirely correct - is really frustrating.

That combined with how repetive the game is (investigate question chase someone question car chase) is really lowering my view of the game. On disk 2, I hope this gets better. Not seeing what the rave reviews saw so far.

 La Noire is a masterpiece.
But Phoenix is still the king of crime solving gameplay.

Truth is the most obvious; where you believe them to be telling the truth

@Vexed said:

I seem to do fine until I have to question a kid.  Then things go horribly.  I think I got 0 questions right both times so far.

 Yep. Talking to kids in this game in a royal pain in the ass.  I got 0 questions correct when dealing with the girl in the hospital.

I also had a frustrating experience during a homicide case while questioning a suspect. I'd found the bloody murder weapon and clothes in their apartment. Still, my only option for a question was "What is your alibi?", when I should have asked "Why in the blue fuck do you have this bloody pipe in your apartment, killer?"

Just finding the game frustrating to be honest.  Even if I have figured out exactly how the case went down, I still feel like I don't have any idea what the interrogation system wants from me.  The feeling that I'm fighting the interrogation interface the whole time is stopping me from enjoying what would otherwise be a good game.