Part 1: Bonus Materials

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MISTY ACRES MAPS - SPOILER FREE
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These are maps of everywhere we've been so far.



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GOSSIP - SPOILER FREE
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This is what everybody thinks about everybody else, the first time Laura is able to talk to them.

Opinions can change over the course of the evening, but you'll be able to figure that out by watching the videos

The animals are organized Polly on top, Beauregard in the middle, Blaze on bottom.




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FENGAPRINTS - SPOILERS
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Sometimes there are fingerprints that you are able to examine with the magnifying glass. They are never saved or displayed side-by-side in the game, but with the magic of screenshots, we have compared them!

There are some spoilers in here, so this is best viewed once you've seen the videos.




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WORST DETECTIVE - HILARIOUSLY, SPOILER FREE. WON'T BE FUNNY UNTIL CHAPTER 7
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You know, all this talk about motives and plots and who-did-what made me remember how lucky we are that we know so much about the goings on tonight.

I mean, when it comes right down to it, Laura is really a fantastic detective! She's awful at sharing the results of her detecting, but man, when it comes to snooping, she's got to be one of the best. I mean we know all the plots tonight!

But... what if it wasn't that way? What if there was a universe where she didn't pick up so many style points from her dad?

What if there was a universe where she was, in fact...





She's up to where we are in under 15 minutes, and she is UTTERLY clueless.

So here's the deal. This is all done without speeding up the game (artificially I mean. I set her walk speed on "fastest" in-game). The few times I did a cut to "after a few laps around the mansion", that is when the game will progress given a certain amount of time. I think they do that so you aren't stuck forever if you can't find a secret passage.

I wanted to see how little I could get by on, and my gosh, the game doesn't disappoint.

Think about what the player who played through that (totally valid and legal) play-through knows.

They have seen ZERO deaths, they know ONE plot (I think seeing Fifi kiss Henri in some way is totally unskippable). The best they could do is think Lillian is acting a bit odd, and what was the deal with that bloodstain near Clarence's chair?

It didn't hit me until just now that NONE of the bodies are required viewing. One funny thing is that at least Gertie's body is always ready to be discovered - anytime, even in act 6 or 7, I could go outside her window and see her lying there.

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HORRIBLE REALIZATION
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THE LEGEND OF BLUEBEARD - SPOILER FREE
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I wanted to tell a story, and, as is sort of the way with this thread, one story quickly became two. The pictures and the worlds to this particular story are in very tight agreement at the beginning, but I'm afraid they were forced to part ways about halfway through and by the end, well... you'll see.

Both stories, by the way, are fantastic, just for different reasons. And only ONE of them is mine.



Click the image for youtube, or get your blip here


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GOOD CONVERSATIONS - LISTED BY CHAPTER. SPOILERS IF YOU READ AHEAD, DUMMY!
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Chapter 1 - None

Chapter 2



Chapter 3



Chapter 4



sigh

This is either a scripting error or one of the most clever, creepiest uses of game mechanics I have ever seen. I'll explain it, and then make the case for both of those options.

This is how talking works in the Colonel's Bequest. "Ask about", "Tell about", and "show" all work the same way. You can just type in "ask about X", and the game will assume you are talking to the closest character to you on that screen.

If there is only one person on-screen with you, that's easy enough. If there are two people and you want to ask the other person a question, you can be specific and say "Ask Y about X", but the game always will accept simply "ask about X" as long as there is another character on-screen.

"Talk to" works differently. You can NEVER just type in "talk". Observe:



That ALWAYS happens. You always have to type in "Talk to X".

And then, in act 4, at one point in time Lillian is resting in her room. And this can happen. Observe again:



That's right. "Talk to Lillian" informs you that Lillian isn't in the room. "Talk", for the first and only time in the game, will get a response.

Now, it would be easy to call this a scripting error. It could and heck, probably IS, just the fault of the programmers assigning the responses to the wrong command in this room.

But I'm not so sure. It's not like "talk" has a different response programmed in in every room, like "Talk to Rudy" might. It would just get the response you saw above. So they had to specially program in that result.

Not only that, they made it happen with the character who is going (is already?) crazy. Which makes the normally innocuous "You must be confused. Lillian isn't here right now." incredibly creepy.

It also begs the question. If Lillian isn't here right now, who's that on the bed? And what is that behind her, on her nightstand?

Chapter 5