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Episode 21 - The Dagger of Amon Ra
2.5k Plays4 months ago
Healthcare! World Hunger! Capitalism! Unfinished Games! Get ready for some R-A-N-T-S!
"Aw, Man..." coming soon to NBC
Also, we talk about Laura Bow: The Dagger of Amon Ra for an hour.
Email us! [email protected]
Games Mentioned:
- A Space for the Unbound
- Stardew Valley
- The Haunted Chocolatier
- Lorelai
- Lorelei and the Laser Eyes
- Journeyman Project
- The Sexy Brutale
- Mystery House
- The Colonel’s Bequest
- The Dagger of Amon Ra
Recommended
Transcript
Concerns about Aging and Physical Abilities
00:00:00
Speaker
Here's the thing about being old now. Oh, God. Is that this birthday. I'm not. I'm bad at stuff now. Were you good at stuff before? Yeah, I'm not. I'm not good at it. I'm not good at everything. Like I'm a little worse at jumping, a little worse, a little slower at running. My punches are a little less powerful. Oh, fuck. um Yeah. What are we going to do about it? You know, I don't know. I'm hoping. ah I'm hoping 39 will be better. It's not okay ah so that out there and so i just You're saying I just lose punch power Precipitously for the rest of my life. Yeah, I mean by the time we get to 40 and we're dead okay, that's not what I've heard from science but
00:00:52
Speaker
or like personal experience. I feel like, and maybe I'm just mistaken, but I feel like I know people older than 40. Are you sure?
Life in the 40s: Stability and Security
00:01:02
Speaker
I wasn't there when they were born. You can't prove it. Exactly, exactly. My parents, my parents could have been one when I was born and i they just seemed older to me because I was zero. ah Exactly. Actually, a lot of people say that ah their 40s are the best time in their life. Yeah, but I also heard the same thing about my thirties and I also heard the same thing about my twenties. No, no, no, I disagree. I've never heard that about twenties and I've never heard that about thirties. I've only heard it specifically about forties and especially for women. Why? What happens in your fall?
00:01:40
Speaker
You just like, you find your groove and your prime and your friends and like you're, you are a little more stable. I know that seems like old to finally find stability, but it's not really guys. Like I still feel pretty young. So I, uh, yeah, I'm coming up on 30, 30 coming up on 30. I'm 20. Yeah. I'm 20. I'm 29. I've been 29 for 20 years now.
00:02:11
Speaker
But you look great, Matt. I'm coming up on 40 in a couple years now. And again, what I'm really worried about is my punch power. So I'm going to just like, I don't like, I don't want to work out is the thing. Okay. That's usually the answer. right Yeah. like oh no I think so. Okay. So how, so this is the question. How do I get, how do I stay good at running and jumping and punching if I don't work out and I'm still aging? I guess like drugs. Okay, I'll write that down.
00:02:47
Speaker
ah no and Guys, don't do drugs. No, don't do it. This is not. Do drugs. I've written down on this notepad. Caffeine maybe? It's a lot of caffeine, a lot of caffeine maybe. I'm too, yeah, i've I have this anxiety disorder. So I can't do, I can't really do caffeine. So I'll just do drugs instead. All right, let's start the show.
Healthcare System: ER vs. Urgent Care
00:03:33
Speaker
Everyone pushing up roses here. Welcome back to save your game with me is the slightly older But but but but still amazing Matt on camp. Hi Matt. Hey, how's it going roses? How do you feel now that I'm older? Oh How does your how does your life feel now that I am now that you're living in a world where I'm one year older? Oh honestly it's good to know that we're both old together so i'm feeling pretty good about you being old so you just woke up and the sun was shining and the birds are singing and you're like matt must be old now yeah matt's old i feel better about my life
00:04:19
Speaker
Unfortunately, it didn't seem to help that ah you getting older didn't help that I was insanely sick this week. If you guys have been following my tweets, a horrific experience in the ER. ah Never again will I go to the hospital that I went to because there were like 13 people ahead of me. No rooms available. And one doctor
00:04:45
Speaker
um there Wait, this is a Chicago hospital? It is, yep. A Chicago ER with one doctor? Yeah, at night. Yeah, they said specifically at night because I went at night because and I felt like I had to because none of the urgent cares were open. Right? ah So this was the this I felt like this was my only choice. But because I wasn't immediately dying, even though I was like sobbing in pain, everyone's like looking at me, I'm like, I'm sorry, it just hurts. They could do nothing for me. Nothing. Nothing.
00:05:19
Speaker
yeah And it would have been like another 12 hours. So instead of wait there all night, I ended up going home and then going to urgent care the next morning because that saved me time. I can't believe. I can't believe that that was the answer that like saved me time. You know, I um would expect that a city hospital would have at least a doctor and a half on duty. A doctor and a half. No, I think they, from what I surmised from talking to the nurse, the like the head nurse, is at night they're severely understaffed. Okay. I don't know why. i That's a bummer. I mean, but the medical system in the US, right? Yeah. It's bad everywhere for everybody. and Yeah.
00:06:11
Speaker
I mean, I will say this to to the doctor's credit, we do have good doctors out here. We do have good education, good doctors. It's just the system. The system is broken. People are not getting the care that they deserve and need, you know? Well, it's absolutely insane to do medicine for profit. Like, that's the craziest thing about the US Medicare system, or just the entire medical system, I mean, is It's for profit. It's the craziest thing. It's wild to think about, right? It's being paid in almost like a service. you know It's hard to even articulate what's so nuts about that because it's just it just goes against
00:07:01
Speaker
the prime like directive of human nature. It's the same as like food systems that are that are for profit rather than for nutrition. It's like, then what then what are we doing? So now we're eating for the sake of money rather than creating money for the sake of eating. And it's the same with, like we are getting sick so somebody else can get rich. Yes, yeah. we are not not simply just like saving resources in case somebody in society gets sick. it's yeah the it's yeah you know I hadn't quite thought of all this, except you know I'm in school for anthropology.
00:07:43
Speaker
and it's like reading just the very simple idea, and this should this should have been elementary, but it just whatever reason it hadn't articulated itself in my head in this way, there's no comparable situation in like the tribal world, or like the yeah ah even the pre ah-colonial, or pre-commercial world, because it just would not occur to anybody who is attempting to
00:08:15
Speaker
keep a society going, keep a race alive. yeah yeah To create food for any reason besides feeding people or medicine for any reason besides healing people. And yet we have we have like loads and loads of food that sit in places until they rot because nobody had enough money to buy them. And medicine that just sits behind like in a locked room until you have enough money to get to the medicine. like That's crazy. The good news is I'm feeling better. Why? Because urgent care gave a shit about me.
00:08:59
Speaker
well all Okay, sorry, I know like I'm ranting about capitalism. that's That is even worse to me, right? That the more private institutions yeah are the ones that we have to rely on. But like, thank God it was available to me because I would have not gotten seen anytime soon. I could have been dying at that point. And there there were no rooms. There just weren't. There's there's literally nothing they could do. um I had a much better experience at Urgent Care.
00:09:35
Speaker
Right. Yeah. So that was my week. Urgent care was probably cheaper than the emergency room had been anyway. Yes, it was. Which is another thing that's insane. Yeah, it was cheaper. And then on
Impact of Sickness on Gaming Habits
00:09:48
Speaker
top of all that, I had dental work done. So I've just been a complete mess, meaning I haven't played anything because I couldn't. I guess I could have whipped something out at the waiting room, but I was not in that state. Yeah, what where's your dedication, Roses? I know, right? You have listeners that are that are sitting, ah where do people listen to this? On a bus or in their... Bathroom? Bathroom. Yeah. In their bathroom right now that are ah being denied.
00:10:30
Speaker
when Just because you might have been dying, you didn't pull out a ah Nintendo Switch and play. Sorry. What? Thimbleweed Park, I don't know. I mean i've desperately wanted to keep going with The Space for the Unbound, but I couldn't sit up, ah let alone you know concentrate on on a game. ah The good news is, while I was getting my teeth done for seven hours, I watched an entire season of Monk.
00:11:02
Speaker
Uh, and it gave me an idea for videos. So I kind of got some work. um We, we, right. I was out of it, but I, I pretty sure I know what I'm going to talk about. Did, did he solve the crimes? He solved the crimes. All of them. Uh-huh. Every crime. Yeah. but See, now that's a good detective. As opposed to one that like botches everything. Yeah, yeah, I prefer, you know, yeah, when there's a detective, I prefer to be the one that solves the crimes rather than the other ones who
Backlog of Unfinished Games
00:11:41
Speaker
don't. I mean, I was joking, but I guess there are shows in which detectives don't solve the crime. ah Murder, she wrote being one of those shows because it's always JB Fletcher who solves the crime.
00:11:52
Speaker
I guess it would be pretty funny to have a crime show, like ah like ah a cop show, where they never solved the crimes, and not because of any like ingrained plot reason. like like oh ah this the the The crimes take the entire season to solve, so the the criminals always one step ahead. just like they didn't do a very good job. not So is there are you saying in this in this hypothetical show, there's no conclusion because the crime does not get solved? Well, the crime doesn't get solved. That's never the conclusion of the episode. The conclusion is every episode, they're like, oh, man.
00:12:40
Speaker
ah like maybe even a couple episodes they pull it they pull in some suspects and they get a case against them and then the case absolutely falls apart in court and like another one got away or just like or they got the wrong person like Oh man, like that's how every episode ends. It's the most unfilling show I've ever heard of. Totally gonna write it. Yeah, I think that would be a very good detective show. You could even call it, oh man.
00:13:20
Speaker
Yeah, ah keep your eyes open for that, everyone. I'll be writing a new detective show called Aw Man. Aw man. Aw man. Aw man. I love it. That's even, you know, that is actually an experience I had this week, but we will talk about that as we get into the subject of this episode. Nice. i also didn't play anything besides what we're talking about during the book. Yes! You devoted all your time to the game. I'm so excited. I did play a lot of Stardew Valley and I'm sorry because, but okay. I'm sorry. I have this list of games that have like built up during the course of the show that I've not finished.
00:14:01
Speaker
like Lorelei and Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, two Lorelei games. The Journeyman Project, Space for the Unbound that we talked about last episode, Sexy Brutale. I still haven't finished that game because my Steam Deck died when I was getting towards the end of it and then I got frustrated and I didn't want to do it all again. um I'm still playing the Quarry with my partner. You're still playing the Quarry? Oh, okay. I still haven't beaten that. I never beat little guardsmen. Like I just have this incredibly long list of games that I'm playing that I haven't beat yet. Instead, I pick up my steam deck and I play Stardew Valley for three hours. Well, you know what? That makes sense because Stardew Valley is addicting. It's so addictive.
00:14:49
Speaker
Yeah, I just, I understand. Well, you wanted to catch up on the updates. You didn't have the updates for the longest time, so it makes sense. Right, and I've experienced almost all the update content at this point, besides... um when you achieve perfection, you get like access to a brand new area. That's the one thing I haven't done. So now I'm just in this process of trying to just get like millions and millions and millions of dollars, and it's just the same boring thing every single day. And so like now I'm not even having yeah fun playing Stardew Valley. I'm just spending all my time on it anyway.
00:15:26
Speaker
Yeah, it's definitely one of those games that even though it's you you can beat it, right? there's a There's a thing, there's a goal for Stardew that you can beat, but you can also keep playing it, but that gets so boring. It's just the same thing over and over and over again. right ah Which is why it's great that you know Concerned Ape is always trying to you know put new stuff in the game. I wonder if there's even more that he's gonna work on. When does it stop? What is the stopping point for for this game, I wonder? I know. he He started working on that other game, The Haunted Chocolatier, which I'm really excited for. The screenshots for it look really good. It looks kind of Stardew-esque, but with some more like fantasy flavor. I'm very excited about
Anticipation for 'Haunted Chocolatier'
00:16:15
Speaker
that one. Very, very excited. He keeps pausing it to just do more Stardew Valley.
00:16:21
Speaker
kind of understand it's like he he's probably putting in all these hours and haunted chocolatier and wants to take a break to maybe do another passion project. right Like I'll stop paintings mid mid-painting and do another painting. You know what I mean? So yeah, I understand. I do that with writing too. Yeah, no, I understand it. It's just Man, I wanna play Haunted Chocolatier. I do too. I'm so excited for it. Man, do we have a date for that? because i Now that you're bringing it up and talking about it, now I'm all over again excited. Chocolatier? Yeah. No, not at all. Damn it! There's not even there's not even the shit the hope of a date. No, really? There's not even the hope? No, his last progress update was at the end of 2021.
00:17:12
Speaker
God damn it, I want it so badly. You don't understand. This is a game for me. OK, so you've been playing Stardew. I've been sick. But we both are very confident in our discussion for the game that we're going to be talking about today.
Introduction to 'Laura Bow, the Dagger of Amun-Ra'
00:17:32
Speaker
What game's that? That game is Roberta Williams's Laura Bow, the dagger of Amon Ra. Not developed by Roberta Williams, but Roberta Williams' Laura Bow. You'll have to tell me about, like I don't know much about the development of it, but I'm sure you do. So ah I'm excited to talk about this, shall we? yeah
00:18:03
Speaker
Plankoraxistino,
00:18:07
Speaker
I don't even know what that, I don't even fucking know what that one was. I had to register it for a couple seconds. I don't even know what that one, that one was like maybe, that was the wildest one I've done. I mean, you're old now. It takes a little bit, you know. A little bit more to be clever. I gotta keep, I gotta do my Sudokus and keep just to keep my brain sharp. Get that crossword puzzle in. Gotta do the crossword puzzles just to stave off the, the, You know, the Joe Biden of it all.
00:19:08
Speaker
Hey everybody, welcome back to save your game. I am Matt Aucamp and with me still, can you believe it? It's the, it's the well, well, once again, she's now back to her prime health is pushing up roses. Hey everyone. I don't feel as bad as before. How was your break? ah It was good. I drank a little bit of this sparkling ice black cherry flavored sparkling water with zero sugar and vitamins and antioxidants. You can't trick me. You can't you yeah eat ice. You don't drink ice. You can't trick me. it's called The brand is ice. You can't trick me. I can trick you. You can't you can't trick me. You don't drink ice. You eat ice. I'm too smart for this.
00:20:01
Speaker
Oh my God, even though he's old, he's still smart. You can't trick him. Well, I had just had regular water. That's probably better. Although this is boasting that it has vitamins and antioxidants in it. I'm on a limited diet right now, so I can't have coffee and I'm dying. I want, before we talk about the game, the game game of this game. The game game. I know that you probably have just like a trove of knowledge about like the development of this game, the history of this game. i How did Laura Bow, the Dagger of Amun-Ra come about?
00:20:49
Speaker
well ah so These games, for some people, are considered part of the Mystery House games. I don't consider it that. yeah yeah Yeah, but some people consider Mystery House to be the first, quote, Laura Bow game. I do not. The way that um the Wizard and the Princess is right technically the first King's Quest game. And for people that don't know what we're talking about, people that aren't big so.
00:21:19
Speaker
<unk> invent classic adventure game, Agheads. good yeah ah Before Sierra started doing the graphic adventures that he were known for in the 80s and 90s, earlier they did, I guess they were graphic adventures, but they were basically text adventures where the all the images were
00:21:45
Speaker
line like crude line drawings. They were drawn on screen as you got to each screen. It wasn't like, there was no yeah there was no images. We didn't have like GIFs and PNGs and JPEGs yet. It was literally like in your window, it would draw the images as you got into each room. Yes, yeah, very crude. drawing and I'm talking mystery house, very crude drawings, it very limited color palette, nearly black and white. Yeah, there there might have been like a red tone. I don't remember. ah But that is that they started with this murder mystery, you know, kind of based on Agatha Christie's and then there were none. So some people
00:22:24
Speaker
At least consider that to be, you know, the starting point, the gateway to the Laura bow. But I consider the Laura bow games to be the Colonel's be quest and the dagger of Amun. Right. Colonel's be quest is a game that was developed by Roberta Williams. At least her name is on it. There's been some speculation as to who actually wrote it and who actually developed it. Interesting. Yeah. For the sake of this conversation, we'll we'll call it a Roberta Williams game, right? Who do you think, though? Who do you think? about I'm really not. I'm really not sure. There was a writer listed and I don't remember her name, but there was a writer listed in the credits to Colonel's Bequest. And I think it might have been more of her project.
00:23:09
Speaker
Right. It does not have the flavor. of Roberta Williams' dialogue. Right, right. But it is regardless, it was her concept. So we're going to go with that. This is a concept by Roberta Williams, a character by Roberta Williams. And Curl's Bequest was a very serious game. Again, very Agatha Christie, very whodunit. There's no speaking. It's pixelated art. it's It's one of my favorite games I thought it was very innovative for the time. I didn't see a lot of those kind of eavesdropping, interrogative games.
00:23:41
Speaker
And you can die if you walk underneath the chandelier. Matt is still really angry about that. Even one time at any point at any point in the game, if you just walk under the chandelier, you die instantly. It's true. It's true. There's a couple of things like that in this game, which we'll talk about. I mean, that's definitely Sierra flavor. Let you know, like. you know, it's there if you're there, but it's not if you don't like, it's ridiculous. ah But yeah, so a few years later, I think in what 91 or 92, Dagger of Amun Rock came out. That was developed by a man named Bruce Bell for it is still called Roberta Williams is Laura bow, but that is because she
00:24:21
Speaker
is the concept owner is actually developed by Bruce Bell for Lorelei Shannon worked on the gory parts of the game, you might know her from working on Phantasmagoria to she did a lot of work on that game. She did the gore parts for Laura bow. Josh Mandel, otherwise known as the voice of King Graham from five and onward. ah He played a big role in in this game as well, as well as playing a few of the parts, you know, playing ah voice acting and now yeah and voice acting. Yes, now it is voiced, which we will be talking about as we discuss this game.
00:24:59
Speaker
ah Graphic style is more in line with Gabriel Knight, Sense of the Father. it's It's more smooth. We have portraits. Actually, the lip sync for this game was particularly ah impressive. You might notice that a lot of lip sync technology went into the portraits. Not only do their mouths move, but their jaws move, giving it kind of this more realistic thing. So it's actually a really good deal for the time. And yeah, it it went off the rails, guys. I don't know. ah I mean, murder mystery tends to not be particularly grounded, I wouldn't call it that, but the Colonel's Bequest was more serious in nature. Dagger of Amun-Ra went a little bit campy, I would say. it got It got campy, it got absurd. Instead of just solving a murder mystery, you end up basically solving a serial- you're chasing down a serial killer.
00:25:55
Speaker
Correct. Yeah. Yeah. That's not how the game portrays it, but that is by definition what's happening. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's, it's another closed circle situation. Uh, you know, you're in a, now we're in a museum, which I think is a great, I really liked the setting of Dagger of Amman Ra. It is one of my favorites. I was very entranced by every single room. Pretty small museum though. Pretty small museum. Yeah. I wonder if some parts were just kind of closed off. Well, right. Cause you find out about other areas of the museum that are huge. Yeah. That aren't open to the public. So there must be more rooms like above or around or under those ones.
00:26:41
Speaker
I would think so. Yeah, I would think so. But obviously they need to keep it pretty, pretty tight, you know, for the ah for the sake of backtracking. Right. You don't want something. You don't want a situation like like one of the Siberia games of the giant, giant world. And you only use every fifth, fifth to 10th screen. Right. Right. I think they utilized every screen.
Game Strategy and Character Dynamics
00:27:10
Speaker
with great detail in Dagger of Amun-Ra. So I discovered this game actually on the Kings Quest collection that was released in the 90s. I had no idea what it was. I bought it because I wanted the Kings Quest games. And these were games, Curdles, Bequest, and Dagger came with it as a bonus. And I played, I have this distinct memory of playing the first chapter as a kid and thinking, this is great. What a great adventure game. I'm having so much fun. Right.
00:27:40
Speaker
And then, as it turns out, very gory murders, yeah being chased by a steer. I was scared. I was scared. ah As soon as I found the first murder, I was terrified. And I didn't play it again for for a while, on top of being a difficult game you know for for a kid as well. So I didn't play it again for a very long time. But that first chapter would lead you to believe that this is kind of a comedic a comedic game that maybe young people could play. I'm not saying they can't play it. I'm not sure I would, but just because it does get, it gets very adult in in different ways, you know? Yeah, in a lot of ways. there It is weird. it is It is confusing what sort of audience they were going for. Yes, yeah I agree. Because like you're saying, it's too silly to take it seriously or to take it as an adult mystery, but it is way, yeah, like way too adult for kids. Yes, yes.
00:28:37
Speaker
this like There's a lot of, there's just, there's as many, as many sexual references in this game as there is in like a leisure suit, Larry. k Yeah. Yeah. There, there's a particularly sexual character in the game. Everyone's boning for some reason, particularly sexual care. And we'll talk about as we go through the game, but there's, yeah, there's a lot of very horny people. But that all being said, I have such a soft spot for this game. I really love this game. And I think it all just comes down to mechanics and weird characters that you just kind of tend to to fall in love with. Again, it's got that very, and then there were none aspect where you are, you can't save anybody. ah There are going to be murders throughout the night. And they're going to be weird, my friends. they're They're not particularly grounded. I will say that.
00:29:32
Speaker
No. Why don't we start start at the beginning here? Why don't we walk through the game? so Sure. Well, the first thing I guess you see is just some guy getting strangled and stuffed into a trunk. Yeah, there's a little bit of a i guess a prologue, yeah. And it's that it's really funny as those jarring Sierra sound effects. So like, there's just this like, there's this kind of tense music. And then all of a sudden the strangling happens and it's like, blah, blah, blah. It's like so jarring. And you're like, what the hell? It's pretty bad. And then.
00:30:13
Speaker
And then you see a couple people disembarking from a boat in a harbor in New York and they are they're but They're unloading the basically the trunk that you just saw a man gets stuffed into. Let's see, what if this is where you meet some of the major characters here. Like- Yeah. Honestly, it's a good way to introduce these characters immediately. It seems like you they the game gave them motivation almost immediately. Right, so this is where you meet Steve Dorian, who's the stevedore, get it? Steve. And he's just he's just a big dumb hunk.
00:30:53
Speaker
is this thing. And so he's just helping carry a ah big trunk. And he's like, Oh, this is pretty heavy. And the other guys like, I don't even know what he says, probably like, that's what I pay you for or something. Yeah, ah Steve Dorian voiced by our friend Josh Mandel with a very heavy filter. right there could tell You tell there's a filter on it because it does that like bit of artifacting. It's like, oh, my voice isn't supposed to be this deep. But I love Steve Dorian. He's great. The next person you meet is Dr. Carrington. You're going to have to help me with these names. I know you know the full names. Dr. Archibald Carrington, but ah the third.
00:31:39
Speaker
um And he is the director of the museum. And something seems off about him. like he ah Nobody else knew he was on board the ship. And he doesn't recognize this other dude who works for the museum, Pippin Carter, yeah who is just like a big asshole. he Yeah, he is the discoverer of the artifact from Egypt, the dagger of Amun-Ra. Oh yeah, he doesn't actually work for the museum. Okay. Right, right. He is there because he discovered the dagger and he is just...
00:32:14
Speaker
bragging it up. ah He's based on I think the name is Howard Carter, who was also an archaeologist and discovered ah Egyptian artifacts. And he Pippin in this game is under fire because obviously he's he's an Englishman. He's very stuffy. He's very egotistical. And ah there are a few Egyptian what would you what would you call them archaeologists as well or historians maybe? Yeah. I mean, I think, well, so the first guy we meet is Dr. Tut Smith. Yeah. dr His name is like, his name is an Egyptian name. I'm not sure how to pronounce it, but they call him Dr. Tut Smith.
00:32:54
Speaker
Yeah, because that is that is ah but like the way this game treats race, right? Like there's an Egyptian guy, he's King Tut. Right. And this will happen over and over and over again, just to warn you listeners. Yeah, um it is it is not malicious, but it is very tone deaf. And it is see why yeah it is a white man doing just a, not even an Egyptian action accent, just standard Middle Eastern trope accent. Yeah, yeah.
Themes of Colonialism and Cultural Representation
00:33:25
Speaker
Not very well either. So he, yeah, so he works for the museum, the archeology museum in Egypt. And he's like, hey, this is, this is ours. Yeah, this is wrong. You can't just take this. This is, this belongs to us and the other guys like,
00:33:45
Speaker
I take what I want, you put some insult. Probably says, oh, calls him a fat savage. whoa okay i don't remember that well that's yeah i wrote it down i wrote it down he called him a fat savage which is uh unbelievable yes i i mean they're definitely driving in that the english archaeologist is the bad guy here which is good uh the good guys are you know and the more rational guys are the egyptians who want their dagger back
00:34:18
Speaker
You know, they're they're making a statement like, yeah, you can't just take our stuff. This is wrong. Yeah, I mean, and this was colonial archaeology for 100 years. You know, there's still a law in England um that and this this is the whole point of colonialism, like the British felt like, well, I guess all the Europeans, Western Europeans thought, oh, we are the better caretakers. of this stuff, we're the better caretakers of the land, we're the better caretakers of these people, and we're the better caretakers of these artifacts. There is still a law that is, and it not like an archaic law, like constantly referred to and argued in British courts, where British museums are not allowed to return artifacts. What? Because, yes, because unless they can prove that the other, country like,
00:35:11
Speaker
and Well, i actually, I don't know what this process is, so I'm not going to speak to that. But basically, it is it is illegal for them to return artifacts because the British are better caretakers oh my god of these items. And like it's like, well, we need to keep them for scientific for the scientific and historical, like scientific advancement and the the um progress of history historic history and arc anthropology. And it's like, you don't think there are historians and scientists in these other countries? Like you don't think that they don't, you think they don't have museums and people, and like labs? Like- That's it's insane. It's the craziest thing, this idea of like England owning
00:35:59
Speaker
owning civilization and owning history and owning culture when it's like, you know, like There are doctors in Nigeria. like here are nigeria there's a museum There are museums in Uganda. like You don't have to take their stuff. You have to take it off. Yeah, yeah. ah Anyway. It's all about fame. you know And they they kind of drive that in pretty hard in danger of the genre. And I was pretty happy. like As much as this game has a lot of this, I guess we can say,
00:36:35
Speaker
It has, as as racist as this game is, I'm just gonna say that. That is one point that this game makes very strongly, right?
1920s Setting and Aesthetic Appreciation
00:36:46
Speaker
Which yeah is that colonialism and the theft of artifacts by the British monarchy is bad. Yes, correct. And so and so yeah, Pippen Carter is portrayed as ah a terrible person with a horrible ego. um But ever. i And I don't know if we mentioned this, this place takes place in New York, ah they're they're loading in New York. we
00:37:16
Speaker
We mentioned that we did not mention it's 1926. Yes, it is. It's a great era that I love video games to be in and it might be a little overdone at this point. But man, when I played dagger, I loved it. I love the graphics. I love all the art deco. I love the ah costuming. I love the scenes that look like they're directly inspired by J.C. Liondecker, who was an artist for The New Yorker. i I love how this game looks. I can't say enough good things about it. it it is It is a really pretty game. Yeah. So, okay, so then we cut from there, we cut to, we we re but we reintroduced to Laura Bowe. She now has,
00:38:02
Speaker
a absolutely wild Louisiana accent.
00:38:08
Speaker
laura bow And while in the first game, she was just like on holiday with her friend and just happened to stumble into a mystery and decided to try and solve it because why I don't know why. um There's gonna be a lot of times in this podcast where I'm gonna say, I don't know why. i mean like There's things that you can maybe fill in for me. yeah For sure. um But ah in now she's trying to be a reporter. Yep, for the New York Daily Registered News Tribune. And they're like, oh, we don't let women do this stuff. And she's like,
00:38:47
Speaker
She's like, oh, well, just give me a shot. yeah well we'll if If I do bad, you can fire me or whatever she says. And so they decide to disguise her as a, well, what's happened is the dagger has gone missing. There's been a burglary. There's been a thievery at foot. um And they're going to disguise her as a culture reporter and send her to like the, what is it, like the opening gala? Yeah, yeah, the yeah. and of like the music Of the Egyptian wing of the museum or something? Yep. And ah while she's there, she's supposed to start investigating the burglary. Yeah, you know, do reporter stuff, talk to people, ah interrogate, interview.
00:39:40
Speaker
and a lot of eavesdropping. A lot, a lot, a lot. ah That's most of the game. So that's most of chapter two. Yeah. That's all of chapter two, I would say. Before that. you have, so before you get to go to the gala, you have to do like point and click stuff, right? Like you're you're going around um gathering information about what's happening, but not even really. Like most of that information does, very little of the information you get before you go to the gala really plays into anything that happens later. But it is important that you that you open up stuff in your notebook. It is important that that you get certain names to ask people about, yeah.
00:40:19
Speaker
um but but mostly you're just kind of wandering around town ah trying to get a dress. Yep, yeah we'll see, you were mugged when you got to New York.
Challenges in the First Chapter
00:40:31
Speaker
Yeah, oh and a woman on the train is like, it's the New York experience getting mugged and then gets off the train and gets her luggage stolen and then mugged for all her money. Yep. So we have no money, and we have no clothes. I looked away for a second. Do we see who steals her suitcase? It's just some dude. He just walks up and takes it. He just takes it, because we're trying to help the old woman that we met on the train. So we look away. We leave our luggage unattended. And some guy just swoops in. I thought it would be very funny if she took it. And that would be a very Sierra-like joke. That'd be funny. Yeah, that would be funny. But yeah.
00:41:10
Speaker
I guess it was just some guy. I like looked away and looked back and was like, oh man, I probably missed something cool and I don't want to sit through that whole intro cutscene just to see who took it. I love that first chapter. I played that first chapter a lot as a kid, ah because i again, I love the settings. I love the New York settings. I love getting around via taxi. there's There's just a lot to love about ah but so how this how how the settings were done and the characters. The way this game works is every time you talk to somebody you can ask them about anything in your notebook and it's a little clumsy. You have to select the thing from your notebook and then exit your notebook and then she'll ask about it. yeah You'll get used to it, to be honest. like it becomes To me it's just second nature now.
00:41:59
Speaker
Though if you're trying to play the game fast, your hand will cramp up from all the clicking. That's true. It's a lot. It's it's it's kind of a true mystery game and that it is very reliant on interrogation. That is that is a main part of this game. You must talk to people. You must ask them about other people. Correct. And but yeah, that that beginning part also is just again, a lot of point and click puzzles like you got to get the Oh, you gotta to get the newspaper to get the coupon, to get the sandwich, to give to the policeman, to get the password to go into the club, to get the- It's fetch quest stuff. Yeah. um And so this is the first time this game gets incredibly horny, is ah when you go into the bathroom at this club.
00:42:55
Speaker
this like secret speakeasy because it's 1926. There's a lady who's just viciously hitting on you. There's a flapper. Yep, she's a flapper. Now this makes sense because you are in a speakeasy. If you're going to a speakeasy, it's probably maybe assumed that you want some alcohol or you want some sex. So I'm not surprised that the flapper you know is hitting on us. Is this flapper, I couldn't tell, is she a sex worker or just a just a a horny lady? He's a sex worker, yeah. Okay, and she even mentions waiting for the countess, doesn't she? Yeah, yeah so she has clients, says she has clientele. Oh, right, yeah, okay, you're right. And she is voiced by Jane Jensen. Really? Really, yeah. um You have to get changed in front of her, which is also pretty funny.
00:43:51
Speaker
You look pretty cute. Where'd you get that dress? ah Salvation Army? she's also She's also always asking you to massage her. So at one point I did click on her like, Oh, is this like Is there some benefit to this? And no, she just gets horny. Yeah, she just gets horny. She's just like, touch me more. She's trying to do her job, you know, like, let's not waste her time. You know, if we don't want the we don't want to massage her, we should leave. if
00:44:23
Speaker
I mean, that's basically the first chapter. OK. Well, but we should talk about, so the racism is, is about to really come in strong here. So the police commissioner is Irish and a drunk and red haired and speaks in a horrible Irish accent. Yeah. bigarra to see yeah i want't I want to, I want to say, I wouldn't yeah call him racist because European, but I would call it extreme stereotyping. Well, that's a, I mean, yeah right. Yeah. Well.
00:44:55
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, Irish had also a different connotation. I guess by the time this game was made, yeah, we would consider Irish to be white Europeans, but yeah at the time this game was set um and the time these stereotypes developed. but um Yeah. That was, there was a different cultural idea about what being Irish meant. That's true. Same as there was a different cultural idea about what being Italian meant. Anyway, so he's, yeah, he's this Irish drunken cop. And then there is, again, the two Egyptian men. Ramsies and Dr. Tut, yeah.
00:45:35
Speaker
Uh, there is the law, uh, the dry cleaners. Oh God. I know is owned by a, this is the Chinese laundromat. You guys, it's a Chinese laundromat. The man's name is low fat. um and it's a it's a white man speaking in a very bad Chinese accent. And- I love that character, I just wanna make this clear. That character is so fun and happy and like helpful. That's true, that's true, he is happy happy and helpful. um And he basically knows you're you're stealing the dress that you'd get from him, but he doesn't care.
00:46:19
Speaker
um He makes fun of you, he's like, oh, so you dropped this off two years ago, huh? yeah
00:46:27
Speaker
and But later on you can overhear, or you can ask somebody about him and they basically say that he isn't Chinese, he just pretends to be because he thinks it drives a business. Which I don't, does that make it better? I don't know. I don't know. It's one of those things that it's just weird it's one of those weird things like if you look at something like the Muppets right that sometimes will have like a ah Mexican character or even like the Swedish chef right just oh my god speaking nonsense is that just antiquated
00:47:02
Speaker
weird jokes that don't have a malicious intention. Like at that time that was humor for some reason. Same thing with like, I will say to dagger's credit, these characters are not meant to be looked at as um ah lesser than, you know what I mean? No, everybody in the game is supposed to be silly. yeah Basically the only person in the game that you're supposed to like have respect for is Laura yeah and maybe Steve. But yeah, I would say that's right. Even the two Egyptian characters end up being good guys. Yeah, they're good guys. ah Even ah someone like Yvette who turned out to be kind of a home wrecker, but whatever. like That's a weird thing. it's all that's That's just weird. Even she was likable. You know what I mean? like right ah for For developing a character, like a Blanche Devereaux character with you know slutty tendencies, that can go wrong real quick. You can make them a very disliked character and bring a lot of sexism to it. Oh, I thought you were thinking of Blanche Dubois from Streetcar Named Desire, and i then I got everything all confused. No, Blanche Devereaux from The Golden Girls.
00:48:21
Speaker
Okay. All right. All right. Now everything's making sense to me. Okay. Yeah. Who is a self-proclaimed slut. She's happy with that, but with that title and and likes it. um And Yvette is kind of the same way. She likes her life. And and honestly, they could, especially in the nineties, right? They could have made her very dislikeable, a very sexist, but honestly, but I I was like, and she was nice. She was nice to Laura, you know, so they didn't make her a mean girl. They didn't, they didn't, you know, it's very interesting because it's it's a game that has problems, but clearly the intent was to do something good, you know? Right.
Museum Gala and Social Dynamics
00:49:03
Speaker
Once you get through all this, um you get to the gala and you're in your dress and now you're meeting all these characters that we're talking about in earnest. Yeah. Tut Smith, Yvette. Delacroix. Delacroix. Delacroix. The Countess. Countess is so annoying. Was just recently widowed and everyone assumed she killed her husband, which I think even by the end of the game, we don't totally know. I think we can assume. I think we can assume. She did? I assume she did. Because while she was admitting something else really delicate to us, she fervently denied the killing. So I kind of thought, oh, even in an honest moment, she's saying she didn't, maybe she actually didn't.
00:49:45
Speaker
Okay, that's fair. ah It could have been, I could have been someone else. We definitely know that ah she does shady things, that's for sure. Yes, um so we meet the Countess. There's a guy who we had already met. His name is Pippin. No. Pippin is Pippin Carter. Pippin is Pippin Carter, yeah. A lot of characters, guys. Yeah, there's so many characters. Ziggy. Ah, Ziggy. Just a weird criminal. Yep, a little barfly. They call him a pigeon, like a stool pigeon.
00:50:22
Speaker
Yes, but he like he he it's interesting because he like knows the cops and will sometimes give them like helpful information. We meet Dr. Olympia Mikos, is that how? Miklos. Miklos. She's a death obsessed. but She's one of my favorites. um she's actually She's a per paleontologist who just also happens to under like be a hieroglyphics enthusiast, um and she's obsessed with death and bones and scars and murder, and she has absolutely no, ah so like she has no situational or social awareness. correct ah Things can happen in front of her, and she'll just go, oh, that's interesting, and wander away.
00:51:07
Speaker
um And then we meet Wolf Heimlich, who is the ah Nazi-esque security guard of this the museum yeah museum. And he's also a suspect because he was the one on duty for when the dagger was stolen right under his nose. So people are kind of wondering how that could happen if he's involved. I mean, everyone is a suspect at this point. ah Everybody has motivation to steal this dagger.
00:51:40
Speaker
Yeah, so let's let's go through that a little bit, because basically you just wander around this gala eavesdropping on people. you what What you do is you walk around behind them and then click the walk button. yeah you just like in the center of their conversation. Oh, okay. So I, did okay. So I was, I would walk behind them and and then I would just like click around a little bit, but I guess that was just me getting into the exact right spot. And more about, listen in on their conversations and like, I don't know, what's some stuff we learn about here? ah So we, oh God. ah Well, we learned that Yvette has slept with everybody.
00:52:20
Speaker
ah that is slept with everybody. Everybody. Everybody, except for Steve, who she wants to sleep with. That's true. She wants to sleep with, and it's, it's not really, she also wants to sleep with us. It's not a matter of her wanting to like take people away from other people. She just wants to share, you know, she just really, really likes having sex with people. Yeah. Cause I mean, it's even implied she had sex with Olympia. Yeah, yes it is implied that, or at least some kind of pulling around. She did not have sex with the Countess, I don't think.
00:52:53
Speaker
i don't think I don't think the Countess likes Yvette because I think Yvette came on to ah the Countess' late husband, Sterling. But so she has had sex with Ziggy because Ziggy is the one who tells us that he used to be a customer of hers yeah when she was, as he puts it, a street walker. And now she's working for Dr. Archibald Carrington. he's She's working for the museum. right um we hear We get to hear Pippin go on and on about how he discovered the dagger. yeah Good gravy. Dr. Carrington is often found walking among the exhibits late at night. we get to Oh, the Countess lies about having known Dr. Carrington.
00:53:39
Speaker
Right. And on top of that, we meet like the new characters who just showed up at the museum. So ah Ramses, who wasn't I don't think was featured on the boat. I think he is like a new character now that we're meeting. Yeah, and he's like the accountant. um And I don't think we learn very much about him here. Not yet, not yet. But we do get to hear him kind of speak his his piece and stuff like that. And he does not have an offensive Egyptian accent. He has an offensive speech impediment. Yes, correct. We learn at that Yvette and the cop that's on the case, Ryan Hanrahan O'Reilly,
00:54:20
Speaker
are involved and that Ryan, the cop, is a little possessive of her. do we learn that in that Do we learn that in that scene? We do learn that. do i didn't know that I didn't clock that in that first act. I did. I clocked it by the way that they were speaking to each other. He makes it much more explicit later on. Later on, yes, for sure. for sure um But yeah, so she's sleeping with the detective who is on the burglary case. Yeah. And and that's that's also, I mentioned kind of before, but we also ah we also hear them gossip about Wolf Heimlich having been on duty while the dagger was stolen, and and people are a little sus about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We also find there's a very important part of this game where you go into the gift shop. There's a gift shop that you can go into.
00:55:11
Speaker
And if we look at the display of fake daggers, because, you know, there's souvenirs, but there's one that looks a little bit more realistic than the others. And before we get a really good look at it, we're kind of pulled out of the room. Yeah. ah By Wolf, we're we're not actually supposed to be in there. Apparently, it was supposed to be locked. All of them say made in Pittsburgh, and then one of them and one of them does not. Just doesn't say that. So so somebody was hiding the dagger in plain sight. Yeah, spoiler alert that is the dagger. That is the dagger. And you're supposed to think that. You are supposed to think, huh, what, what? You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. um And you know,
00:55:53
Speaker
I don't know if I, like, that didn't immediately occur to me. Oh, it didn't? It didn't for me? Well, first of all, I didn't know I was supposed to look at every single dagger because all of them look identical. So I just clicked on like one or two. okay And I was like, oh, they're all identical. And then I left. But then when I found out I was supposed to look at all of them, um Yeah, I saw the one that didn't say made in Pittsburgh and I was like, oh, I mean, maybe this is the real dagger. or Maybe this is like a fake out. It turns out that a lot of times you think something's a fake out. It's not. It's just sure that I did. I did a tie into the story. I was pretty ah pretty confident that that tied
Escalating Mystery: First Murder Discovery
00:56:41
Speaker
in.
00:56:41
Speaker
So after you've done all your eavesdropping, after you've seen the dagger, you go walking around the museum because Wolf Heimlich leaves his post and you stumble across the dead body of Pippin Carter. It is a harrowing scene, my friends. He is stuffed. This scared me very much as a kid. He's stuffed in a sarcophagus. He is stabbed with a souvenir dagger and one of the made in Pittsburgh ones. He's pale. You can poke his body. I poked his eyeball. It was great. ah Yeah, he did. And now. Yeah, yeah.
00:57:23
Speaker
Now we've got a burglary and a murder on hand. And at that point, we're the discoverer. So that's a little sus already. you know The cop comes over and he's like, no one else saw anything? What's going on here? And at that point, for whatever reason, instead of calling for backup like a normal thing, We meet ah Ernie, who is the the janitor, the maintenance man of the of the museum, and he is instructed to lock everybody in the museum. And the cop is still there, Ryan is still there, but now we're just all locked in together with a murderer and presumably a dagger, a dagger stealer. There's some weird things here because there are two pieces of evidence that you find near the body. Mm-hmm.
00:58:13
Speaker
And these actually are totally misleading. um And i I don't fully understand why, what the fuck they were at all. um There's two pieces of evidence you find near the body of Pippin Carter. Number one, you find ah the Ankh medallion of Tut Smith. yep Number two, you find a dainty woman's shoe print in the blood.
00:58:44
Speaker
What the hell are either of those doing there? I don't know, I think, I really believe that they are red herrings. But how they how did they get there before you? i don't That I don't know. That I think is just an oversight completely on on the game design, only meant to, I think, to throw you off. Yeah, that's just, that's cheap, right? Yeah, it is, it is. the very end. You think you've got some evidence and you really don't, you know? Right, neither of those things are evidence. Neither of those things make sense. Nobody should have seen that body before you. yeah Nobody should have walked through that blood or, like, I'm guessing the killer dropped the ankh there to frame Todd Smith, but you know there's no no indication of that anywhere else. what
00:59:42
Speaker
Well, knowing what we know about the game, and I don't wanna spoil it, necessarily, well, maybe, we'll see, we'll see how we feel. Knowing what we know, I think the killer would attempt to frame, and I think the killer would also have access to a dainty woman's shoe, do you agree? Yeah, but why would he try to frame two people at the same time? Because he's an idiot. And on top of that, what happened to the shoe, why he just gave the shoe back? Yeah, it's and then hard to say. And then so if the killer's a man. I mean, like. Well, there's only like a few. Yeah, like that's fine. I'm fine. That's obvious. Yeah, I think that's obvious to say because we're saying that ah the woman shoe doesn't make sense. Right. Correct. Correct. Knowing what we know, why would the killer not have the killer was in the best position to point out a suspect and never did?
01:00:41
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that's true. um Okay, so that happens. Yeah, and you know what, the even though I agree, I find that first scene extremely confusing, but I also find a lot of the evidence you find later too makes sense. um Also, it i dont I don't know why, sorry. That's okay. I also don't know why the killer killed Pippin Carter. Let's think. Let me think on that. Let me think on that. I think I don't know why the killer killed most of these people. It's it's a Y. Honestly, it's a wild reason. It's a wild reasoning that doesn't make a lot of sense. um But I think that people were savvy to knowing who he who the killer was or at least let let's say this. Let's let's put this out there. Okay. The killer and the thief of the dagger are the same person.
01:01:40
Speaker
So my, what I think, and by the time that we end the game, it's wild. It makes no sense. But I think the burglar got paranoid that he would be found out. So he just started a killing spree, essentially. There's a lot of murders and there's just, there's no way to avoid spoilers. We won't say the names until the end of this whole conversation, but there's going to be a lot of spoilers here. So yeah there are two murderers. That is true. There are two murders. Yeah, that is true. There's one, I would say there's one main murderer who does the bulk of it. I don't think there is any way to,
01:02:24
Speaker
besides the fact that the game tells you if you're right or wrong, I don't think there's any way to know for sure which one of those murderers killed Pippin Carter. Pippin Carter specifically. Okay, that's fair. Yeah. Um, yeah, that's fair. I would say for the first kill. That is fair. I think we get evidence and eavesdropping and things later that help us to ah to determine. But yeah, you're right. I think you're right. I think that would just be process of elimination that you would have to trial and error it.
01:02:58
Speaker
Okay, so that's that's act two. The act just ends now. Act three, like you're saying, we're locked in the museum with all these people. And this is another series of point and click puzzles and eavesdropping. yeah um you just And these these chapters, these upcoming chapters, they're some of my favorites. ah they They get so balls deep in story and character conspiracy and like connections and scandal. It's some of my absolute
Solving Puzzles and Avoiding Traps
01:03:30
Speaker
favorite. And some of the things we find in the game are great, are just horrific.
01:03:36
Speaker
It's really easy to miss a lot of this stuff, but yeah some stuff is like harder to miss than you would think. Like some things just don't progress until you find. Well, I guess you could just walk around in circles, but. You're going to stumble on something. Yeah, it would be. it would There's some things it would be hard, ah very, very, very hard to miss. And I can't exactly tell what progresses time. Sometimes it just seems to be time passing. Sometimes it seems to be the things that you've discovered. It's it's always going to be triggered. Time is never going to just pass on its own. You have to trigger it via something. You have to do everything in this time period. Correct. This hour or this sometimes half hour.
01:04:19
Speaker
correct before you Because sometimes the trigger is nothing it feels like nothing. like yeah There's one point where all you need to know from entering a certain room at a certain time is that neither person that was supposed to be there shows up. And that makes time pass. So cur you didn't arty if you weren't going there for that reason,
01:04:46
Speaker
you would have, you would just be like, oh, ah time just passed for no reason there. right In this act, yeah, yeah, there's a lot of, there's a lot of like point and click puzzles, right? Like you have to get a key, um you have to get, and you could not do some of these things and the game would progress and you'd just die later. Like there's a lot of Walking Dead scenarios here. yes You have to get some cheese, but see let me I'm trying to think of the point and click puzzles. You have to open a safe by deciphering a password. um You have to have to get a lantern by getting a bone by and then smashing some glass and then taking the lantern. right you have to You have to be able to see down a passageway by turning off
01:05:37
Speaker
a light bulb, letting it cool, picking it up and then switching light bulb. You have to. Oh, there's some of the like the carbon paper thing. So like getting a piece of coal to read a notepad to read like a note that was left on a notepad. Yeah. Holding stuff up to lamps. yeah You know, a lot of it really is like classic detective. A lot of it is. And then some of it is just absolutely insane. Right. Like getting the cheese. There's no reason. You have no reason to think you need cheese, but there's cheese in a mousetrap and the mousetrap is set up to, when it goes off, ah set off a machine gun. To kill you. Yeah, this is in Woolpimelook's office where everything is a death trap. Everything. Right. i did not
01:06:25
Speaker
I could see that coming a mile away. For sure, absolutely. To its credit, it makes it obvious. So if you want to go, ah if you want to fuck around, go ahead. But the game is like, maybe you don't. yeah yeah but yeah You're to find out. ah but and so Yeah, But there's no reason to know that you need the cheese. But because it's point and click game, I put in the effort and got the cheese. It's an adventure game. You need it. Pick up everything. thats yeah If there's a thing that's hard to get, You probably need to put in the effort to get it, because you're going to need it. Especially if it's cheese. Let's be honest here. How many times have we used cheese in an adventure game? The answer is a lot. But there's a bunch of weapons on his wall. If you touch any of them, you get zapped, but you don't die. But if you touch the sword, it falls off the wall through your entire body and you die. Yep. Just crazy stuff.
01:07:19
Speaker
um And there's some really hard to find things. There's some like, it's not even, I don't even know if I'd call it pixel hunting because the things that you find in the scene. aren't different than the other things in the scene, right? Like there's a bookshelf where all the books are the same sort of like. Yeah. That one's hard. That one's really difficult. Well, there this happens twice. There's two places where there's just a bunch of books on shelves and you can look at all, you can look anywhere you click, you're just going to see some books, but there's one part of the bookshelf that is not visible from the background of the scene. You would have to,
01:08:03
Speaker
either click everywhere or nowhere it is already and click. correct yeah um And then you see then like a zoomed in thing and there's one of the books is facing the wrong direction. And there's another place where it's even more ridiculous. There's just a red book and all the other books are not red. And again, in the background, it doesn't look like that. right it Only when you click on it and it zooms in. so Yeah, no, some of those things are hard. And one of the book, pixel hunting book things you don't necessarily need to find, but one you absolutely do. Right. ah Yeah, there would be absolutely, because one of them gives you an entire layer to this game, and to this mystery that you would, you could maybe slightly guess at. Yeah. But you would have no, ah no idea.
01:09:01
Speaker
unless you found this incredibly hard to find. not There's no clues for it at all. There's like one clue that doesn't that's not very helpful. And that is that somebody who died on a porcupine, by the way, porcupine death. We at the Pushing Up Roses channel love Spiny Norman, the porcupine, and the porcupine death. ah Anyway, ah yeah, in that scene, the victim writes CP on the desk, which stands for crime and punishment. That's what I was going to ask you about, who what was CP? Yes, so CP is crime and punishment. Which is one of the books on the show. Which is the book that you find evidence in, yep. um Okay, yeah, let's walk through some of the people that die and some of the stuff you learn here. ah God. So yeah, I have like a kind of a list of things that we overhear, like,
01:09:58
Speaker
Yvette has a secret with Olympia. Ernie is fencing for Big Al. Yes, he has got himself in a lone shark situation. We also learn that Yvette's true love is Ernie, even though she is sleeping around with the cop, with everyone, ah like everyone, Ramses, just everyone. and ah yeah she Her true love is Ernie, the maintenance man of the Lion Decker Museum. um A vet also helped both Tut and Najir into various parts of the museum. ah Like after hours for something, we don't know what it is. And you learn all this stuff ah by putting glasses to but to... talking to people, putting glasses to doors, finding notes in trash cans, or um a really clever one, which is using the intercom system or using yeah yeah using the intercom system and listening in to various people in various rooms.
01:11:00
Speaker
love doing that. When I was young, i did i I don't think I thought to do it. But then as i as I got older, I did. And this is a testament to this is one of those games where I feel like even if I played it right now, I might learn something new ah about it. Right? Yeah, there's just so much to to discover. There's a weird thing that happens where Ziggy's trying to scope the place out in Ernie's office and Ernie kicks him out. I don't know what that was about. O'Reilly tells Yvette if he finds her cheating on him, she he'll kill her. yeah Oh, we learn about like Olympia and Wolf kind of having a little thing. Olympia and Wolf are having an affair. um There's a weird thing in this hotel, or at the hotel, this museum. as if this person does not like, it's as if the writer did not know what happens behind the scenes at a museum. So just like invented it, just like was like, yeah I bet it's this. There's a bunch of vats of like live or not live, but like dead subjects. Yeah, being preserved and like being preserved in alcohol. Yeah. Yeah. So weird. there's Yeah. She says that there is something blocking the vent or something. on what event i want Yeah. Yeah. Mm hmm.
01:12:21
Speaker
the Warthog that. Yeah, I think that's that's like the majority of the stuff you over here. Yeah, at least the important stuff. um Some things are not as important. Some things are just scandalous and and yeah and naughty. And this. Yeah, the stuff that you stumble into and actually get to see are like you find out that and um we're going to start unraveling some of these mysteries. The Countess is involved in something.
01:12:56
Speaker
kind of naughty. And she actually confesses this to you if you can. Yeah, we find her via via notes and, and people I don't know why is this the right time to do this? I don't know if these people are insane. um I'm just gonna go I'm just gonna go ahead and spoil it. So the countess Ziggy and a middle man that we don't quite know a lot about we're learning about him. They're involved in this this forgery this art forgery scheme. Ziggy is the middle man. Ziggy is the middle man. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, but yeah, there is a third person who we don't Yes, you're right. There's a third person who at this point we don't know anything about.
01:13:34
Speaker
Yeah, or we don't know a lot about we don't know a lot about we're kind of learning by the by the time we discover this we might have we probably just learned this man's name. I want to talk about the kills though because that's what that that's what got this game kind of. I think people are interested in because of the kill scenes, you know. OK, first kill. very first kill was first kill is Pippin Carter well first kill is us a man we don't know we'll get strangled at the very beginning second kill Pippin Carter yes third kill let's see let's see if i can just recall this as my favorite game i'm gonna say the third kill was probably you find the the decapitated head with the pterodactyl
01:14:20
Speaker
Yes, you find a body that has been stabbed with a pterodactyl like somebody cut The wires holding up a pterodactyl and it's stabbed through this person's middle and that person's head is missing Yes, the person says it's overkill you guys it's go to say I think why say who these people are and if if you guys don't want this spoiled You've listened far enough in that it's it's time for us to start getting into spoilers. We won't say who committed all the crimes, but we will start spoiling the bits of the story. So Ziggy. Ziggy!
01:14:54
Speaker
And you don't know it's Ziggy until you find his head stuck on a wall. It's so gory, guys. like They really went like Agatha Christie plus slasher randomly. It's kind of great. Like I said, I hated it as a kid. It scared me as a kid. But ah playing it today, i'm it's kind of novel. um If you poke it, it falls on the ground. His head falls on the ground. Yeah, if you poke it, it falls. It makes a squish noise. ah Yeah, that's true. um Okay, who dies next? All right, so let let me think about this. So we've got Pippin, Ziggy. Yeah. I think the next kill is the porcupine death. The next kill is the porcupine death. Yes! And that is apparently, apparently. Apparently this is Dr. Carrington. Right. In his own office. But. um Don't know why he gets killed.
01:15:55
Speaker
Right, not yet, but we do later on. I don't know why Ziggy gets killed. um I think the murderer is just insane. Right, I don't know why, wait, you think we know why, okay, we'll we'll talk about it when we get to the end. um Okay, fifth kill. Is it gonna be um Ernie? Ernie, Ernie is the fifth kill. Yep. He has been drowned in a vat of alcohol. and there's warthog hairs on his. yeah yeah So yeah that's how you know, you find warthog hairs. Right, so clearly while he was carrying out that task for Olympia. He was murdered. Yeah, somebody pushed him in. Oh, by the way, we should say, that's where we find the dagger of Amun-Ra. We do, we find the real dagger in one of the vats. And I'm guessing that this is, we have to find it before Ernie gets killed or we can't find it.
01:16:51
Speaker
I'm not sure, I usually always find it because I do the task. Like I go to check the VAT pretty immediately. So I've never not found it in my many playthroughs. Okay, so now we're at the end of act three, now we're in act four, and it's really just more of the same running around and trying to gather clues. um Yes. So let's just keep on going with the death, sixth death. Are you counting the skeleton the skeleton we find? Oh, good point. Okay, no, now at this point, probably, This is, is this the point we find the skeleton or did we find it earlier? I was not- We can find it, I think in chapter three or chapter four. So ok we find- At some point in the, yeah, you find a skeleton and this is a really annoying Sierra puzzle. Go ahead.
01:17:36
Speaker
Yeah, ah so remember way back in the prologue that we see a trunk, a steamer trunk, and somebody's body is put in it, and it it is shipped off of like off of the boat. Well, that ends up in the museum, and we find it, and there's a Skellington in it. There's a big old Skellington, and if if this is the weirdest thing, so if you open it and then look in it, you die. Yeah, so you can eat and alive by... By bugs, and there's there's maybe there's no indication that this could even happen. Right. There's no no clue, no hint, there's nothing to warn you. It's just you open the trunk, you look and you die. um So you have to open the trunk, throw meat in it. Throw a steak in it, yeah! Annoyingly, for the rest of the game, anytime you walk into the lobby of the basement,
01:18:33
Speaker
the bugs march past with the meat and you have to sit there and wait. It's like funny the first time and then what happens like the ninth time you're like, Jesus Christ. Like fuck these fucking beetles. Yeah. um So yeah, you find a, you find a body in there. We're not going to tell you who that is until the very end. All right. So I think the next, I want to say the next one is, uh, uh, what's her face? Uh, the countess. Nope, that ends the chapter. Well, it's Yvette. Suck my blue. I really felt like I found her later, but I. Damn, that sucks. I i was really sad at Yvette's death. I really was. Yeah, Yvette has been. Strangled. Yeah, with her own pantyhose with her own pantyhose and then covered in
01:19:30
Speaker
Plaster. Plaster. Yep. And put on display in the in the museum. And then our last death, poor, poor Countess Lavinia Waldorf Carlton, who was found in Olympia's office. ah having been bitten by a snake, a poisonous snake. Because for some reason, Dr. Miklos has a snake in her office, a venomous snake. And ah the killer let the snake out. It bit the countess and she died. And here's, you could you could probably die here. I didn't die here because I had the snake oil, which in this game is a thing that repels snakes. yeah And I had the snake ah the snake catcher. Yep.
01:20:19
Speaker
um But I assume you can die here. Yes, you can. Yeah, you can die there for sure. um Oh, there's also if you find a secret passage before this is anywhere in the game, you find a secret passage before you have a lantern. You don't get a choice about whether you go in the secret passage or not. If you open a secret passage, Laura just walks into it and dies. Yep. Again, more Sierra bullshit. Yeah, it's dark. You died. Yeah. when When you're in the dark, you die in any Sierra game.
01:20:50
Speaker
So at this point, you're probably wondering, what's Steve, what's Steve Dorian's ah part in all this? Yeah, he's missing. So I want to mention that he stalked us to this. ah So we meet, Steve Dorian is our romantic interest. We meet him on the docks. He's smitten with us immediately. We you know, we kind of tell him, Oh, we're gonna be at the you know, at the museum later, and he pursues us. He stalks us to the museum and gets caught up in all of this because he really wanted to see us again. He really wanted to see Laura again. And we kiss him right away. Yeah, she's into it, man. Yeah, she's super into this guy. She doesn't take a fucking second. She's just like, he's like, I like you. And she's like, whoa good for her.
01:21:38
Speaker
So yeah, so she's got this love interest and you would think that you wouldn't split up, but it's a horror game. So there,
Suspenseful Encounters and Revelations
01:21:46
Speaker
everyone's going to split up and you know, we kind of run into Steve every now and then, but eventually we just kind of lose track of him and where, where is this man? Where is Steve Dorian? And, uh, go ahead. Right. And, uh, and Steve Dorian has red hair. He does. Yeah. And. ah at least, is this two of the bodies now? yes ah Have red hair on them when we find them. There's two instances of of red hair. And before I found the last body, when I found Yvette, the last time we see Steve Dorian, he is with Yvette and we are jealous and angry because ah she's trying to fuck him and he's trying to politely massage her yeah and because her boyfriend just died.
01:22:34
Speaker
At that point, I wrote down in my notebook, Oh my God, is it Steve? I know. Yeah, it it kind of, it leads you to believe that it could be Steve. Even though that would make no sense, right? There's no motivation there, even a little bit. And he has no access to any of this stuff, any of these people. But also at this point, I was assuming that there was multiple killers. Right. which there kind of isn't. No, there's really not. it's really um It's the one serial killer type of a type of a deal. Once we find the Countess, suddenly we are in another part of the museum and we're being chased by a person in a hood with a mace. Yeah. Wherever you were, you just get transported to this other part of the museum and... Yeah.
01:23:25
Speaker
And there's suspenseful music, and you're like, Oh, it's a Sierra game, I should probably run. And as you're running, you see, Oh, yeah, there's a guy chasing me. Yeah, it's kind of it's a little survival horror. At that point, your goal is to get away is to just get away hide somewhere from the murderer. And you don't know why there's no like preamble to this or anything. There's just like all of a sudden. Yep. there's a guy chasing you. The chapter starts and there's a guy chasing you. I kinda like it, honestly. I don't know why I like it, I'm just like, oh cool, let's just get right into it, all right. And then it's a series of point and click puzzles that if you if you mess up even once, basically you die. yeah um Basically like yeah like barricading doors and finding passages and hiding and stuff like that. And setting up false leads.
01:24:17
Speaker
right for the guy to chase. And then we stumble into the cult of Amun-Ra. I almost forgot about that. I almost forgot. There's a moment where you're like, oh, is this the solution to the whole game? and there's ah There's an Egyptian cult underneath the museum run by Ramses. Yep. and they say, well, we're gonna sacrifice you to death. We're gonna kill you. And we're like, what? Yeah, and then unless you answer a riddle, and it's a riddle that you should have had time to prepare for because somebody earlier in the game told you about it, and again, because it's a Sierra game, or this is just adventure game stuff, because it's an adventure game, if somebody tells you a riddle at some point, you better spend some time thinking about that riddle, because it's gonna come back.
01:25:13
Speaker
Yes, correct, correct. So by the time, so hopefully you've solved the riddle by the time it gets there. um Should we say it or should we just let people? let people Yeah, let people ruminate on it. Had you had it, did you get it? I did, I did get it, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's kind of fun, right? and Yeah, it was fun. I knew it, I had the those two words written down from chapter one. Yeah. And I was just like waiting for them to come into play. And then as soon as Ramsey's was the head of the cult, I was like, all right, gotta get my two words. Gotta get my two words ready. ready yeah So that happened. and then And then we find another body. ah Well, if you answer the riddles, right? They just let you go. And you find another body yeah in a coal chute.
01:26:10
Speaker
And it's our buddy, Steve. And he's alive. He's alive, yeah. He's just unconscious. But if you don't give him his shoe fast enough, he breaks his foot and then he's and then you lose the game. i I think what happens is he burns his foot. Okay. That's what I think happened, because you're in the furnace room. So I think he burns his foot. I know it's stupid. Look, I didn't write it. I didn't write it. Look at me. But, and at that point, there's actually, a so so if you haven't found the boot yet, the boot will be sitting there on the floor and you can pick it up and give it to him real fast. um And there's another object you need at this point to wake him up. You need to wake him up, yeah smelling salts, right? And man, if you don't have it, you're fucked. Right, um but if you do have the boot, but you didn't, you get it here, but not earlier, you're gonna survive the scene, but you're gonna lose the game. Right.
01:27:06
Speaker
ah because it is an essential clue. So in the beginning of the game, when you're kind of looking around the museum, you come across, I'm just going to preempt this, you come across a talking T-Rex. He's this really big T-Rex model. And if you press a button, ah he talks. you know, normal, normal museum stuff, talking T-Rex. It's very reminiscent of Sam and Max to me. So just keep that in mind, bear that in mind. So after you're done, like going through these passageways, ah you fight some snakes, like like you said, you fight some rats. One of the passageways takes you out of the mouth of the talking T-Rex.
01:27:49
Speaker
So you tumble out. Steve tumbles out. The murderer is chasing you. He gets stuck. And what do you do? You press the button on the talking T-Rex and it closes him in. Chomps him. Chomp. And now i' you can see who the murderer is. Sort of. Right. This is a weird thing because she, Laura goes to pull his mask off. Uh-huh. And then it shows you Steve and her looking shocked from inside the T-Rex's mouth. It's cool, it's a cool little ah cool little scene. I guess that's them looking at his face. Yep,
Inquest Phase and Endings Exploration
01:28:26
Speaker
that's them being looking at his face being shocked, yeah. Okay, now chapter, act six is where you answer all the questions. So this is the big spoiler thing. If you guys wanna try and solve this game on your own, it is time for you to jump forward, I don't know.
01:28:44
Speaker
however many jump forward until you hear Swanky Max Amino.
01:28:50
Speaker
Otherwise we're, cause we're just going to say what we're just going to say everything that happens. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, you ready? All right. So what happens is you get asked a series of questions and it's just who, who did everything. It's like every, who's the murderer. Yep. And what's the motivation too? Right. So, The answer to every question is Detective Ryan. This is so frustrating to me because it's it's almost every murder was committed by Detective Ryan and here I was trying to think like, oh, this might be different people. right And it asks you to answer like what, so it starts with Pippen, Pippen Carter. The answer is Detective Ryan. yep And he did it for financial gain. See, that's not what I put.
01:29:43
Speaker
I put to cover up another crime. Okay. And it's steve still got. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. And that's what makes this game so wild to me. If you go that route, if you go like, if you go the route of to cover up on another crime. That just makes this killer absolutely insane. So so basically, yeah, Ryan is also that the, he stole the dagger. He's the one that wanted the dagger. He was working with someone one else to make this possible. Right. Well, correct. Hold on. Yeah. Okay.
01:30:25
Speaker
Did Ryan steal the dagger? I thought Watney Little stole the dagger. He stole it for Ryan. yeah wa yeah little correct right So Watney Little, if you play this game well, ah you'll learn that Watney Little killed Dr. Carrington in the prologue and stuffed him in a and ah and a trunk, and that was his in. So and now- One hero was just like a random criminal. Yes, just a random criminal. He was trying to start an art heist business, and yeah, he just killed
01:31:00
Speaker
Dr. Carrington and then- Imposed as him. He wanted to pose as him. yeah So he could be close to the museum. That's why the dagger was stolen so easily because, you know, there was no rando there. It was, you know, Dr. Carrington. And for some reason, Ryan manipulated Watney a Little into stealing the dagger. I don't know why Ryan wanted the dagger. I guess he just wanted money. um but But he knew he could do this because Watney Little and Countess Waldorf-Carlton were running this art theft ring where they would repaint these master paintings, yes then put them on the wall. They're still wet. ah Yeah, and then steal the original, and then yeah and then Ziggy would help them so helps them sell it to like the underground. right The other things you have to answer are, um
01:31:57
Speaker
Who is the high priest of the sun worshippers? It's Ramsay's najir. Who's in the fencing business? It's Ernie Leech. And then you find out the silly little joke that ah that just means he puts up fences. right like he's yeah he was in yeah he was He was in gambling debt. He doesn't he doesn't fence goods. He builds fences. um Okay, so then who killed Pippin Carter? It was O'Reilly. It was O'Reilly. And you can put you can put either financial gain, which makes sense. that's what That's what a thief does, right? they want He wanted the dagger. you know Pippin was claiming the dagger.
01:32:36
Speaker
um or you could cover another crime. Yes, or you can cover another crime. So I think he wanted to do ah kind of this red herring route where i he may have felt like he was under suspicion. So weird. So he made these series of murders to cover up everything. And now it gets wild, right? And then he stuffed Pippin Carter's body in a suit of armor for some reason. For some reason, yeah. And then who killed Ziggy? So Ziggy was killed again by and by Ryan. And also, I also chose to cover another crime because now in my brain, ah Ryan is insane. So he's like, oh no, I killed Pippin. Now I gotta to kill someone else to cover up this crime. Now, the next one actually does make sense. Who killed Ernie Leech? Ryan killed Ernie Leech right yes to cover another crime because Ryan, you can find out at some point, Ernie saw something he wasn't supposed to see.
01:33:32
Speaker
Yes, he did, he did. so You can also choose jealousy, by the way. oh okay yeah For obvious reasons, yeah. So then, yeah, who killed Yvette? It was Ryan and the motive was jealousy. yeah um But yeah, so like, it just I guess just by happenstance, O'Reilly happened to wander in as Ernie was cleaning the tank and shoved him in. yeah
01:34:00
Speaker
So it's just a crime of convenience, I guess. yeah um yeah then you and Then it asks, who was the skeleton? Yeah. and by Oh, sorry. Who killed Countess Waldorf Carlton? Ryan to cover another crime. What the hell is he doing? He's just create, he like freaks out and just creates the most insane diversion and misdirection. None of it makes sense. Why is he doing any of this? My first, I had guesses all over the place in my first my first time guessing because I was just like, what?
01:34:39
Speaker
I was just like, oh, okay, it must've been this person. And then this person, oh, this person was jealous of this person. And I guess, so they had motive and they had the means. Because I was doing them the test. um What is it? Motive means and, oh, opportunity. Motive means an opportunity. yeah yeah um And I was like, oh yeah, all sorts of people had the motives, the means, and the opportunity to kill Pippin Carter. And cars right yeah that's the person that made the most sense is Tut Smith. He had the motive, he had the means, he had the opportunity, and he loved he he his onc necklace was at the scene. Right. But like all the other evidence suggests Ryan. Like literally all of it. And we learned that he's corrupt. What other evidence is there to suggest that Ryan killed Pip and Carter?
01:35:32
Speaker
Oh, for Pip, oh, sorry. for Oh, okay, all right, you're saying for everyone else. yeah Okay, what evidence is there to suggest that Ryan killed Ziggy? Ziggy, let me think. Don't know. I guess I'm thinking of mostly about like Yvette and Countess, where there were like grapes at the scene. um And then for Yvette, there was red hair. ah So I thought Watney Little,
01:35:59
Speaker
So here's what I thought it originally originally. Who killed Pippin Carter? I thought it was Tut. Revenge. Who killed Ziggy? I thought it was um Carrington. ok ok Well, I guess it would have been Watney Little. Watney Little, because he was trying to i put financial gain. He was trying to cut um Ziggy out of the art heist business. Then who killed Ernie Leech? I put Ryan yeah ah and I put, that one I put Jealousy for the first time and later I was like, oh, he's doing it to cover the crime. um Who murdered Yvette? I put O'Reilly for Jealousy. for jealousy yep Who killed Countess Waldorf Carlton? I put O'Reilly only because I had the red hair and I had no idea what to put for the motive.
01:36:50
Speaker
Yeah, and that, again, to cover up another crime. Interestingly, but so what's really interesting about the quiz at the end is it's super complicated with a lot of answers, but the answer itself is not complicated. It's just Ryan every time. Ryan, cover another crime. Ryan, cover another crime. Ryan, cover another crime. um Okay, so then who is the skeleton, Skellington? I knew it was Carrington, and Watney Little murdered him, who impersonated him Watney Little, knew that. Who murdered Watney Little? That I didn't know. It's, again, it's Ryan. I don't know why. I guess because, yeah I guess just be again to cover another crime. This is just one of those insane, like it's a very detailed game but the story kind of falls apart because that we don't really have great motive for Ryan. The most important thing about a detective game yeah and about any detective story is that the the is that it holds together. Yeah. And then who stole the dagger?
01:37:46
Speaker
It was Watney Little, manipulated by O'Reilly, as we said, but I didn't know that. So, as who stole the dagger? My first playthrough, I was like, I guess Tut. I guess that's why Tut killed Pip and Carter, and then Tut stole the dagger. but ah Well, I guess Tut stole the dagger first, then killed Pip and Carter, and then ah who manipulated Little, and I was like,
01:38:08
Speaker
Oh, okay, you don't get that question if you don't answer Little. So the second time who manipulated Little, I guess I knew it was Ryan. But it could have been anybody. Why would Ryan want the dagger? Could have been anybody. Yeah, it's just one of those cases of psychotic, corrupt cops. And that's it, that's really it, that's the answer. There's no specific evidence that shows you that Watney Little stole the dagger. Right, correct. Could have been anybody. Yes. There definitely was a little bit of foreshadowing way back in chapter one, when you talk to, obviously Ryan is the cop on this case, and his case file is nothing.
01:38:50
Speaker
There's just no report. Right. And so that's kind of trying to foreshadow that he might be involved. Like, why is this report nothing, you know? Right. um And then, ill yeah, all the other questions you should know if you have paid attention in the game. Yeah. You know, responsible for stealing paintings countess. responsible for stealing, the man responsible for stealing paintings, Watney Little, the art theft middleman Ziggy, the high priest of the sun worshipers, Ranzi, in the fencing business, Ernie Leech, those I all got first time. For sure, yeah. But all those murders, it was like I was, I kept thinking, again, who had the means, who had the motive, who had the opportunity, and the answer, there was multiple answers for all of them, and it was just so frustrating to be like, oh, it's just Ryan, Ryan, Ryan, Ryan, Ryan. It's funny, it's funny. Yeah, it's funny.
01:39:38
Speaker
but there's no way to solve, there's just no way to solve this mystery. Roses. I agree, roses it's too hard. Yeah, it's I almost called you by your non. He was so angry, he almost called me by my name. I almost called you by your actual name. God, it made me, yeah, i got I got so fired up when this happened. um But. It's way too hard, it's a little ridiculous. I know you love these endings, you wanna talk about the three endings? The endings are wild. I don't know again with the camp, right? So there are three endings, two of which are bad, and kind of similar. ah So if you get everything right, and I mean everything, you are now a hero, you have solved the burglary, you have solved the murders,
01:40:27
Speaker
The dagger gets to go back to Egypt. You hook up with Steve. Everything's great. And everybody also gets their own ending, which I think is fantastic. So Laura knows exactly that. And most of them are dead. So they get endings about like... Like what happened to their body? Yeah, what happened to their body? They leave Yvette in the museum. Yeah, they do. That's so fun. Obviously, they won a very comical campy route for this game. um They also left Ziggy's head in the museum. In the life mask room. It's preserved in the life mask room. Yeah, it's so funny. um And they yeah, they talk about, you know,
01:41:08
Speaker
Dr. Tut and Ramsey and even like even your boss and and your co workers what they went on to do what low fat went on to do. And granted, like if you are the winner here, if you solve everything, even though some of these characters are dead, they still have quote, a happy ending. You know what I mean? Like versus ah versus the bad endings where literally everyone's disappointed in you. Yeah. So if you don't find the murderer, They go after you. They go after you next. and even ah Even if you find the dagger and you're like, oh, she found dagger, but the burglary was solved. No, no, no. You got to find the murderer. So if you don't find the murderer, who who is Ryan, he will come into your room at night and machine gun you after. Yes, after your whole life has been ruined, and everybody's lives have been ruined. Everybody hates you. Yeah.
01:42:04
Speaker
The world starts falling apart because you didn't solve this murder. And then you get killed. It's a pretty extreme bad ending, I would say, but it's kind of in line with the rest of the campy kind of gory, gory game at hand. But yeah, obviously, if you get the good ending, it's it's one of the most fulfilling things you could do. And I just, I feel so good at the good ending. I just love it. I love it. Everyone claps for you too. Everyone claps in like the coroner's room. it's It's so great. your Your dad is proud of you. Yeah, your dead dad's proud of you. Wait, is your dad dead? No, he's alive. Oh, he's alive. My bad. Sorry. There's no dead dad here. Yeah, John Bow. John Bow is your dad.
01:42:49
Speaker
and he's proud of you and your boss is proud of you and your co-workers are proud of you and you start dating Steve Dorian it's the best it's the best ending ever yeah all the endings are crazy they're very funny and crazy and i don't even know i don't even know what to say about these roses
01:43:14
Speaker
it's just i mean It's just the standard Sierra, it's all insane thing. ah But it's good, it's fun. And you know that's how I feel about this game. like
Charm and Replayability of the Game
01:43:25
Speaker
there's some There's so much that's crazy about it. All the ways you can die, all the things that don't really add up, all the weird puzzles and the racist accents. But there's something just really charming and sweet about this game, and yeah yeah there is it just feels very good to play, even if you probably will need to play with a walkthrough. Or just replay a couple times. like I did eventually have to use some hint systems or walkthroughs, but like I did find it fun to replay some of these chapters and replay
01:44:00
Speaker
is some of the some of the game it's because every time I found something new it was just so fulfilling it was so exciting to find a new intercom conversation or a new note in a trash can you know yeah and I guess you could yeah if you have a very long time to play if you're if there's no time limit at all and you're really enjoying it yeah you could just keep playing over and over and every time you find something new make a note of it and then you could ostensibly do like a like a perfect run. Yeah. But most of us, yeah, are gonna have to. We're like, do what I did, which is play it.
01:44:42
Speaker
get to the end of the act, and then there's a, you get like a comment at the end of the act that tells you whether you've done it perfectly, whether you've done it good enough to pass, right or whether you've missed something, so is that. Meaning, and by good enough to pass, I mean, um you might be missing information, but you're not missing evidence. right right If you can answer the questions correctly at the end, you won't lose. but then the other two answers are like saying you did bad. um So I would get to the end of a thing. I'd get the good but not perfect thing. And then I'd start over at the beginning of the chapter with a walkthrough and fill in the two or three things I missed. So that's how I played the game.
01:45:29
Speaker
I do have to mention that, and it sounds like you did well on this, but if you get every single question right, but you didn't collect enough evidence in your inventory, you will lose. Did you know that? Um, I did. Cause you had told me that before. Yeah. So that is one of the roughest things I think about. I mean, it's realistic, right? In, in terms of real life. Yeah. If you don't have evidence, what in the world, but I'm talking about like, you forgot to pick up a shoe, yeah one shoe, one, one shoe. And you're, you're screwed if you do that. So I can't reiterate enough, pick up everything. If you can, cause it might be evidence.
01:46:11
Speaker
including the cheese, which is an evidence, but you need it to survive. You definitely need it. I tried to feed it to the ferret and the ferret didn't eat it. And I was like, why do I have this fucking cheese? And then again, eventually I found it out. Also, you don't have to kill the rats. Do you know that? Okay. Yes, i see I always save the rats. I never kill them. ah Yeah, because the first time I played, I saved him. And then when I went back through with the walkthrough, it was like, throw it into the door that leads to the incinerator. And so I did that and I was like, I feel bad. And then I went back one more time because I honestly because I misclicked in the coroner's in quest in the end. Yeah. um
01:46:54
Speaker
So I had to redo this part again. And I was like, I'm just going to save the rats and see if it does anything bad. It doesn't. You just save the rats. The only reason the incinerator is there. It's not. The only reason you can do that is to see which door is the incinerator. If you know. Oh, yeah. So like what if you look at the door, it says. you can smell burning down there. Right, exactly. And so that's how I knew which door to pick. I picked a random one for the rats and they survived. Yep. Anyway. Yeah, you can save the rats. If you need extra confirmation, you can use the rats, but it's not necessary. Just save them. Save the rats. Just save the rats for crying out loud. Save the rats! There's enough dead rats in this game. There's enough dead everything in this game.
01:47:43
Speaker
um So that's the dagger of Amon Ra. I love this game so much. I don't even understand. I just, I fond memories of discovering it as a kid. And I just love it. There's a lot of problems with this game as we discussed. And a lot of it is there's some problematic parts that didn't age well. And there are puzzle design problems, obviously, and just the entire like, why? What what is wrong with this? What is wrong with this burger? But but that is that is also Sierra game, right? Like, yeah, if you're gonna play one of these Sierra games, you're going to run into problematic stuff.
01:48:23
Speaker
Uh, you're going to run into, I think in pretty much every game, except for some of the King's quests, there's problematic stuff. And I mean some of the King's quests because some of them have really racist accents. Correct. Yeah. So. Yeah, I think.
01:48:43
Speaker
It's par for the course of a Sierra game, and it's a pretty good one. I'm generally really good at deduction games, right? And I felt like an absolute moron and when it came to answering the the inquest at the end. I was like, I don't know any of this stuff. yeah I'm gonna put my best guesses. And I told you what all my guesses were, right? There was a reason behind each of them. yeah but about a third of them were just completely wrong. I know. It's way too hard. And I will concede to that. The end is way too hard, even though there were definitely parts, like you said, you knew answers, some of those answers right away and got them correct because of the way that you were given evidence, ah the things that you found, the things that you overheard. It's just not perfect. It needed to be cleaned up.
01:49:37
Speaker
No, that's exactly it. that what this game couldve used was po What this game could have used was Danny and Bill from Escape This Podcast yeah to come in and clean their puzzles up before release. Before release, yeah. that's Yeah, that's Dagger of Amon Ra, go play it, it's fun. It's very fun, you guys. It's fun. It's so fun. ah if
Community and Upcoming Events
01:49:58
Speaker
it If it frustrates you, play it with a walkthrough, there's no shame in that, especially with old Sierra games. Yeah, if it makes it fun, do whatever it takes to make it the least infuriating that you can make it. Roses, this is our longest episode. I'm sorry, it's my fault. No, no, no, I'm not, no. It's me, I'm the problem, it's me. It's me. ah We should throw on some swanky maximino so people who didn't want spoilers can come back and then just say a quick goodbye.
01:50:27
Speaker
Okay, that sounds great. I enjoyed this though. I'm gonna, I will, I will, I will gush after swanky Max Amino, as usual. Okay, okay, okay, okay.
01:51:07
Speaker
Okay, people that jumped ahead, welcome back. People that stuck with us through the whole thing. Hi. You are true fans. No, I'm kidding. No, no, no. I'm kidding. But, ah you know, ah I'm glad I played that game. Thank you for making me play it, Roses. I'm glad I finally crossed it off my ah classic Sierra list. Yeah, honestly, I really do think it's worth playing from the Sierra catalog. it's Obviously, it's not one of the most well-known ones. you know I think we could all agree that the Quest series are the more well-known Sierra games. Right. Sierra had a lot of a lot of different games that went beyond the Quest games. And I really think that the Laura Bow games are great and underappreciated.
01:51:54
Speaker
Next episode, we'll be doing a Q and A. Probably it's too late to get your questions in by the time you hear this, but hey, keep keep sending them in because you know apparently we do Q and As every eight to 10 episodes. So we'll get to your question eventually, you probably. um so Also, here's the thing I want to tell the listener in case they didn't know, and we should have mentioned it last episode, but we didn't. You guys remember Julia Minamata from episode three? Oh, we love Julia. She has finally announced the release date of the Crimson Diamond. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is a drum roll, please. While I
01:52:46
Speaker
pull it back up because I lost it. It's a very long drum roll. It is August 15th, 2024. Oh my god! It's so close. It's like a month away. A month and a half away. I'm really excited. We should play it and then have Julia back on and just like gush to her about it. You know what this means, right? What? There's going to be a video game review on the Pushing Up Roses channel. and it's Crimson Diamond feel looks very much, and ah you know ah ah Julia talks about it very much. like It's a spiritual successor to Laura Bow, so um check it out. If you haven't looked into it at all yet, check it out, and that's gonna be really cool. Also, the adventure game Fanfare is coming up at the ah end of this month, at the end of July,
01:53:42
Speaker
Supposedly it's almost sold out. So if you haven't got any tickets, grab your tickets, I will be there. Rose's unfortunately will not, but- So sorry, but I will be there in spirit. She'll be there in spirit. Listen, I'm gonna be in fucking England, so y'all can go nerd out about adventure games while I ah go to, I don't, i while I vacation. While you drink a slightly warm beer at a pub. Ew, no, that's not my dream vacation. Yeah, when i was in when I was in Scotland, I didn't find any warm beer. I've always heard that my whole life, that in the UK, they like... warm lager, but that never happened. I only got my smoke beer, so I don't know what to do with it. I don't know where that river comes from. maybe so maybe one of our ah Maybe one of our listeners can be like, actually, 90% of the beer is warm, and Matt just missed it. ah I'll ask Ashins what he thinks about this. Everybody, subscribe.
01:54:46
Speaker
But no, you're already subscribed probably. but If you're not subscribed, subscribe. Comments, leave review. What am I saying? Leave a review! Leave a damn review! I think that Matt has exerted all of his energy on talking about Daggett. I'm I'm so old I need reviews to get young again. I'm like Tinkerbell. I'd like Tinkerbell. Leave me iTunes reviews. and i will And I'll be good at jumping and running again, and I'll get a stronger punch. Listen, Matt, I have something that's going to help you. What's that? I just need you to listen very carefully. OK, I'm listening. Because podcast is art. But art is suffer. Do you feel better now? No.