Ever feel like you’ve been given too little information on how to find someone for a job? Here’s how to actually get anywhere.
Any Job Solution
All credit goes to Wolfmeme!
Word of Warning
I feel I should make it known that this will absolutely spoil probably one of the best ‘eureka’ moments the game can offer you, and it being an immersive sim in general, it can often feel much better figuring this kind of thing out on your own. If you’re this far into the guide, you’ve already gotten enough of a hint that you probably don’t have to run all over the city just to find a person who fits the bill, and likely still be wrong. But, you’ve been warned. If you continue passed here, you want the answer, and it’s there for you.
The Answer
So, at very minimum, you’ve been given a few things by the job listing, in this case, we’re assuming things you genuinely cannot act on, like say being given only age, height and hair color for example. Even if say- the hair color is distinctive or rare, finding someone who fits the bill by running all over the city is exhausting and not worth your time when there could be hundreds of people you’ll stumble into. So, with all that said, we’ll turn to the job listing. It’s still sitting there right in the case, unless you’ve unpinned it for some reason. I recommend you don’t, because that’s where we can get our answers.
Instead of looking for who you’re told, you’re now going to snoop on the fool who gave you this job you don’t have enough actionable information to accomplish. You can go to the connections on the job listing and pin the ‘unknown citizen’ that gave you the job in the first place. At this point, I’m sure you can see where this is going. You should already have some form of actionable information on the job giver. For example, if they asked you to meet someplace like a bar and find them with X, you already have their appearance. In future, you’ll likely want to inspect these people as you meet them so that you don’t have to go running around after the fact, and pin them to your board. If they don’t give you enough info, you can still follow them home, which is much easier than running around to people asking if they’ve seen them, or trying to follow them with the camera towers that only take pictures sometimes every 5-? minutes.
Things can get much more complicated though if they’ve only given you information over the phone. All you have is their voice… and phone number because they just called you on that phone. So far as I can tell, 541-0000 doesn’t work on payphones, not that it matters much, but now’s the time to look at outgoing and incoming calls in a phone box somewhere to figure out where the call came from. Tall buildings often have this in their basement, while the bars and locations that are effectively their own building often has this as an additional building outside the main one while still being on the land.
This all works because… I mean, was this person going to order whatever the job is on some guy they don’t know for giggles, paying out thousands of crows? No, they’re going to want you to mess with someone they know for some reason. If you don’t find any leads on their v-mail or in their home, you’ll have to go hunting for people who meet the specifications at their place of work or wherever they tend to be.
That’s Really All There Is to It
That’s it. That’s the secret. Thanks for reading- and please stop complaining about there being unsolvable jobs when you just don’t know any better… unless there is actually some reason or bug stopping you from doing it, then go ahead.
What about a job issued by the police? If you don’t have a client giving you the job, then what? Some cases just give you an eye color and a salary and nothing else. No client to follow home, no phone call to trace, no name to look up, no fingerprint to match. What then?
If none of this works, there is the busy work brute force method of getting access to a computer with a government database (I’ve found them in the enforcer office). This database has every citizen of the city and gives you appearance, work info, DOB, and fingerprint. It can be annoying because you have to search by name so going through and finding matching suspects is tedious.
Got a vandalism job, phone call into briefcase. The client was already identified by the game through, I’m guessing, voice. But the briefcase had another identified person’s prints. The info was very lacking, and after a very long investigation I stumbled into a burger joint, hungry. The only waitress for some reason asked for password when I tried to buy something, and I didn’t get an option to input anything, just went back to the conversation. The waitress fit some of the criteria though, so after raiding her place I confirmed she was the mark.
As it turned out, she was in the address book of the person who left their prints on the briefcase. Not sure if the middlemen can go both ways, or if the briefcase prints are more helpful than the voice sample from a phone call. Also not sure if the password thing was a bug, or if marks really can be identified like that.
It’s a shame, I’ve got all of the systems in the game down pat and I’m greatly enjoying my time in it but now I have an arrest job in which my only lead is that the person has bald brown hair and they work inside a 14 floor building. I’ve checked all the employee data for every company in the building and have had no luck.
Starting to think this one perp is just missing at this point, considering I’ve stood at the entrance as if I’m checking hall passes for several in-game days.
*FINGERPRINT SPOILER*
A tip I found for getting fingerprints easy is to go to a workplace, and if there are pictures of the employees, like 90 percent of the time I have found that each finger print on each picture matches that of the employee in the photo.
I’ve managed to find people’s names, photos, fingerprints and addresses on the computers in the hospital.
When I get jobs where the information is, say, “Grey eyes. Average build. First initial A,” I head there and start checking every AA-AZ name in their database, cross-reference it to their physical description, and narrow down a list of suspects. Last night I had this exact scenario, and was able to whittle down my suspects to 2 with some computer sleuthing. After that, I tailed both and spoke to them some. One asked me for a password for some shady shit they seemed to be up to, so I ultimately determined they must be the person I’m meant to arrest.
Nailed it.
First of all, this isn’t going to work for those outsourced arrest missions. These missions aren’t given by people but by an enforcement division.
Secondly this isn’t going to work on missions where you don’t have any contact with the person who offered you the job. For some listings you get the information for the target placed directly in your evidence board and you don’t have to call or meet with anyone. You can still get the “unknown citizen” connection from the listing, but you won’t have any information on them to actually find them.
Third, this doesn’t work on murder missions where you don’t actually have someone who gives you the job.
Lastly, on jobs where you are supposed to ask staff about the job, and they give you a photo, and you use the photo to find a briefcase, all you can really get on the person who gave you the job is their prints from the briefcase, which is likely going to be even less info than you are given about the target (though I guess you could technically scan the finger prints of every door to every apartment in town to find the job given by brute force).
The method is interesting, but there are jobs in which they call from an unknown number, so perhaps there is some way to determine even such numbers, which i still need to guess.
One extra point – if you got a briefcase with clues instead – check it for prints!
Not sure all of those help with arrest jobs though, as those are given by enforcers.
Good guide. I think that part of the reactions people have for “unsolvable” gigs isn’t that they’re unsolvable, it’s just that it’s directly relative to how much or not much info you get at mission start. I mean, for a side-job I just got the first letter of a name, a phone number and their age and that’s all I’m getting to target someone for an impromptu stealth photo op for the creeper of a client. it’s not impossible because there is some sort of link between the client and the target. That’s one thing that I like about this game, it simulates relationships; platonic, romantic and professional. I’ve not hit a point where it was impossible per se. That’s not to say that glitches don’t happen, but, that is saying that a lot of supposed glitches are part of the gameplay loop.
In that way, it reminds me of point and click Bladerunner. Hopefully more people realize that those vagueries are actually what makes this game good in a unique way.