Still Life Part #22 - Chapter 6-1

Part 22: Chapter 6-1

Chapter 6: In Which There are a Hell of a Lot of Cutscenes and Puzzles

So when we last left our pal Gustav, he had just found out that Obstructive Police Chief Skalnic not only knew who the Ripper was, but had been taking money to look the other way, and was also going to try and pin the whole thing on Gustav. Gustav responded to this by beating the shit out of Skalnic, hitting him with a phone, and then beating the shit out of him some more. Which is all well and good, but it’s probably time to leave the station, all things considered.

But no sooner are we out the door, it’s our friend Stasek.

“Hey friend. What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Where’s the body?”

“Listen. This is probably gonna be the last time I ask you this, but can you do me a favor?”

“Time is the favor. Don’t warn Skalnic right away. Just gimme a head start. Can you do that for me?”

“Great! You take care of yourself. Goodbye, my friend.”

Not that the game gives you any hints, but where you need to go now is the Shore, where we started Gustav’s story.

Past the original crime scene…

And there’s a convenient rowboat over here. We’ll just use that…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gh9U...eature=youtu.be

Damn fine boating, Skipper. Obviously no way back now. The door over on the right…

…is locked and won’t budge.

So we need to do the logical(?) thing and scale the waterwheel instead.

That reservoir is our eventual goal, but Gustav draws the line at getting his toes wet.

South from there, over here, and…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5ZZ...eature=youtu.be

It appears our latest victim is the unidentified first girl from Richard's screensaver. Peculiar.

And she’s toting yet another ring.

Yoink. But as soon as we take that…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjpS...eature=youtu.be

Bad news, Skalnic has used the time we wasted boating a river to recover from a savage phone beating and he’s now trying to kill us. Good news, he’s an awful shot. Anyway, the door to the left is locked. We’ll go down the ladder instead.

And over here is…fuck it, it’s a puzzle. You know it, I know it.

Of course. Let’s just look at whatever that is on the wall first.

One of Wile E. Coyote’s less successful plans for catching the Road Runner.

So yeah. The goal here is to get that basin up top filled with four levels of water, and then hit the small red button on the left. We’ll start by moving the bucket over, and then hitting the faucet up here.

That fills the basin up entirely with five levels of water.

Then we hit the faucet down here.

That dumps three levels into the bucket and leaves two up top.

Then we empty the bucket water into the drain to get rid of it.

We hit the bottom faucet again to drop the other two levels into our bucket.

And hit the top faucet again to fill the basin back up.

Hit the bottom faucet once more to drop one level of water into the bucket…

And we’re at four levels of water. Hitting the tiny red button…

Huzzah. That drains the reservoir up top.

Back up there, we’ll need to head down the manhole (tee hee).

Down here is a sewer, because you can’t get enough of those. North…

IS THE DARKNESS OF SPACE. No, actually, this is a mini-puzzle of sorts. Gustav is the tiny guy on the bottom left. The goal is up top. We’re in a maze, and Gustav can see roughly a foot in front of himself in either direction as he moves along.

…and there are arbitrary pools of water to get in the way and serve as dead ends. Backtrack, bitch.

And here we are. Not terribly difficult, just tedious.

In here is…please don’t be another puzzle.

As you can see, this is where we’ll be needing to use those rings we’ve picked up to fit in the slots. As you can also see, we only have five of them and will be needing six, because I overlooked something.

The sixth ring is *back in the fucking maze*. It’s actually directly to the right of where we are now, but to get there requires going all the way back to the entrance and taking a left instead of a right to loop all the way around.

Go south from here, go left a little, and a cutscene triggers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HI1H...eature=youtu.be

Well, whoever this one is, she’s pretty much just a pile of body parts. Examining her…

…gives the last goddamn ring. I hate you, game.

Now cart your silly ass *all* the way back to the entrance, take a right again and get to where we’re supposed to be.

*Now* we can get started on the stupid puzzle proper. Take the first ring…

Turn it to the left once so the pegs match up. Put it in the top middle slot.

Second ring. Turn it right three times, bottom left slot.

Third ring. Left five times, top left slot.

Fourth ring. Right five times, top right slot.

Fifth ring. Right three times, bottom right slot.

And sixth ring. Right once, bottom middle slot.

…but the key is *painted* on. I’m not even kidding. So what we have to do now is *another* goddamn sliding tile puzzle to get the key up on the top row.