Part 67: Summary - The Blackwell Deception

Deception Main Menu



The fourth game in the series, The Blackwell Deception marked the first game Gilbert had released since branching out from development and into publishing. The change was significant, as the influx of cash from other projects meant he no longer relied on getting this game out early to keep his company afloat. The result was a much more polished game than the first three, and somewhat lengthier as well. There was considerably more dialogue, and the extra length gave the opportunity to start delving ever so slightly into some of the backstory, a very welcome addition, even though I would have liked much more of it.

The graphics took a bit of a hit after Convergence, but there are some nice lighting effects and the game is still much more attractive to look at than Unbound or Legacy. In terms of the story, Deception continued the trend set in Convergence of being a touch darker than in the first two games. One notable change, however, was the complete removal of characters based on people in real life, as Gilbert felt he'd taken that concept a touch too far at the expense of telling a good story in Convergence.

Deception Tension



Much like Convergence, Deception began with a short case serving as a tutorial. We learned straight away that Rosa was now a spiritual hand for hire, and had been hired to investigate paranormal activity on a yacht.



Despite being empty, the yacht fired up to life shortly after Rosa and Joey came aboard.



Rosa and Joey found themselves floating in the middle of the Hudson River with no convenient way to return to shore, giving them more reason than usual to deal with whatever lost spirit they would find on the boat.



Unfortunately, the spirit they found was that of a furious, gun-wielding bank robber, who was more than happy to plug Joey full of Ghost Bullets at only the slightest provocation.



It turned out that the robber, a man named Ryan, had been fired by the bank he worked at, and decided to take matters into his own hand by pocketing a few million in cash and making for the border.



Unfortunately, he was gunned down during his attempted getaway, and wound up as a ghost.

Boat Escape



As usual, Rosa and Joey were able to help him to move on...



...but not before he sent the yacht on a collision course with the New Jersey City dock.



A quick evacuation and swim later, and our heroes were ready to continue with their business!

Rosa's Theme



Back in their apartment, Rosa received a call from an old colleague, Jeremy Sams, who used to work as a journalist with her around the time of the first game.



Jeremy asked Rosa to help him out with a story he was working on, as he'd become ill and unable to complete some vital interviews.



Strangely, trying to ring Jeremy back didn't work, with Rosa getting a machine without the phone even ringing.

Jeremy and Rosa



When they arrived, Jeremy called out to them to let themselves in...



...but when he came out of his room to meet them, the truth was immediately obvious: Jeremy was dead, and a ghost.



Jeremy and Rosa seemed to share an unspoken attraction, and though it never went anywhere, it did serve as a very nice emotional backdrop for the subsequent investigation into Jeremy's death.



Jeremy told Rosa that he had alerted his workplace that she would be taking over his investigation, but of course, with him dead, that never happened. With Rosa not aware of any of the details of Jeremy's death, she was asked to leave by the receptionist on duty.



With Rosa barred from entry, it was up to Joey to do some investigating, and he discovered that Jeremy's last movements were to a park called The High Line.

The High Line



Sure enough, Jeremy had gone to The High Line, only to end up shot. Local detective Sam Durkin, who Lauren had spoken to in Unbound (he was Mavis' son) was on the case.



Rosa offered to identify the victim, but Durkin dismissed her as a crazy woman until she was able to produce a picture of him.



Durkin and Rosa would go on to keep in touch on the off-chance that Rosa could help Durkin's investigation.



With the police now aware of Jeremy's identity, his workplace was notified, and Rosa was finally given access to Jeremy's office, where she found a notebook detailing Jeremy's investigations leading up to The High Line. In particular, a name - Penelope Haines - stood out as having been his primary source of information.

The Haines Residence



Rosa tried to track down Penelope, but found only her daughter-in-law Madison, who told Rosa that Penelope had been moved to an assisted living centre after going off the deep end and becoming too difficult to care for.



Madison was unwilling to tell Rosa where Penelope had been moved, but some quick detectivery from Joey unearthed the location - Seagram Assisted Living.



Fortuately, Seagram had an open-door policy for their common room area, meaning that Rosa was able to speak to Penelope without further hassle.

Common Room



Penelope was initially unwilling to speak with Rosa, accusing her of having been infected by Madison's aura.



She was also mostly just a pain in the ass.



The key thing to come out of meeting Penelope was that she had a strong, and quite irrational, hatred of her daughter-in-law, and by extension, her son as well.

Old Man



As Rosa and Joey went to leave, an otherwise silent and senile old man seemed to sense Joey's presence.



Floating over to look closer at the man, Joey very quickly recognised him, but wouldn't tell Rosa who it was. The old man was later revealed to be Danny Marconi, who Joey had known back in his days of being alive. Joey had died saving Danny's life, though he didn't give any details about exactly what happened.



Heading back to Madison, Rosa asked why Penelope was so bitter about her.



Madison's explanation was that Penelope was brainwashed by a kind of cult leader named Gavin. After meeting with Gavin a few times, Penelope completely estranged herself from her family and removed them all from her will, leaving all of her money to Gavin.

Deception Tension



Rosa spoke to Penelope about Gavin, but she said that Rosa wasn't "spiritually ready" to meet him.



To become "spiritually ready", Penelope asked Rosa to break into Madison's home and retrieve her (Penelope's) peridot stone that Gavin had given her.



Rosa tried the honest route, but when that didn't work...



...it was time for Rosa to add to her ever-growing list of places she has broken and entered into!



Despite a near miss with the Haines family returning home while Rosa was still there, she was able to grab the stone and escape unnoticed.

Lisa's Theme



Penelope still wouldn't tell Rosa how to get in contact with Gavin, but she did give Rosa a name - Lisa Tenzin - who was the lady who had first directed Penelope to Gavin. Penelope also indicated that she had directed Jeremy Sams to the same lady.



Lisa was a "psychic", or more accurately, a fairly convincing con artist who specialised in extracting money from vulnerable and gullible people in need of a spiritual quick fix.



Rosa asked about Jeremy Sams, but Lisa was close-lipped about whether she had even met him, citing professional obligation to privacy for her customers.



Fortunately, it turned out that Jeremy had dropped his phone while he was visiting Lisa, and it had been placed in the trash.

Jeremy and Rosa



Before confronting Lisa with this evidence, however, Rosa decided to use Jeremy's phone to present a logical disconnection and help him to recognise his own death.



Instead, though, it just convinced him that Rosa was trying to trick him, and he decided to leave and pursue his meeting at The High Line.



In the end, though, that was sufficient to remind Jeremy of the gunshot that had lead to his death. He had been going to The High Line to meet Gavin, who presumably was the man wielding the gun.

Deception Lament



In what served as a kind of half-way mark for Deception, Rosa helped Jeremy to move on, and swore to figure out just who Gavin was and what part he had played in Jeremy's death.



Confronting Lisa with the evidence of Jeremy's phone caused her to become angry, and she demanded that Rosa leave.



By this point of the series, Rosa had finally grown a spine, and she let Lisa know she wasn't about to let this one go.



The following day, Rosa set out to back Lisa into a corner, but she was refusing to see anybody. Initially it seemed likely that she was still stewing over Rosa's accusations.



When Joey floated inside and checked, however, she was mourning over a picture of someone very familiar to Joey - a young Danny Marconi, who turned out to be Lisa's grandfather.



It turned out that Danny had died overnight, and Lisa was working through her emotions for him.



With a little help from Joey, Rosa was able to convince Lisa that she knew about Danny, and Lisa invited her in, demanding an explanation and suspecting Rosa of being a "real" psychic.



It became very evident that Lisa was very scared of the "real" psychics, and that something dastardly was happening behind the scenes. Lisa was referring people to Gavin, and then never hearing from them again. She gave Rosa two names - Tiffany Walters and Jamie Graham - of young women she had referred to Gavin recently. Sure enough, both would prove to be dead, and both had left ghosts behind.

Tiffany's Theme



The first of them, Tiffany, was a late 20s-ish woman who had bounced from job to job, struggling to find herself, until falling madly in love with a married man named Ken at one of her temp jobs.



After blackmailing the temp agency to discover Ken's whereabouts...



...Rosa spoke to Ken, who turned out to be the son of Cecil Sharpe from Unbound.



Ken initially denied having any recollection of Tiffany, but a note hidden in his drawer soon put that theory to bed.



Ken admitted to having had an affair, but then choosing to break it off when Tiffany became clingy. He said she went completely crazy, calling him at all hours, showing up at his house and demanding that they be together. He made it very clear that he regretted ever having shacked up with her.



In an awkward scene, Joey brought Tiffany to listen as Ken spelled out exactly his feelings about her to Rosa.

In The Void



With Tiffany's heart well and truly broken, Rosa and Joey spoke to her one last time before helping her on her way.



Tiffany revealed that she had gone to meet with Gavin to try and find herself, and that Gavin had told her that she was destined to be with Ken. Somehow, he had convinced her so thoroughly that when the relationship didn't work out, she literally ceased functioning, doing nothing until she died of dehydration which lead to a blood clot in the brain.



While Joey thought Tiffany was a bit childish, the case really moved Rosa, who thought Ken was a jerk and Gavin was a creep.



With the evidence of Gavin's involvement in Tiffany's death, Lisa was a bit more open, but not too much. She revealed that every psychic like her had to make an arrangement with a particular secret society, or else they got shut down (the implication being that they would be killed). She said that whenever she had a client who just refused to get happier, she would send them to Gavin.

Jamie's Song



Investigating the second girl, Jamie Graham, Rosa and Joey found that she had been a very strong student until she had fallen off the rails, spending all night drunk at night clubs.



One night club in particular, Munray's, seemed to be Jamie's favourite, so Rosa and Joey went to check it out.



Sure enough, in the VIP room upstairs, Joey discovered Jamie's ghost, where she was still partying and dancing away.



Joey correctly determined that Jamie would need to leave the night club to recognise her own death, but she was insistent on remaining there. Eventually, Joey figured the best option was to try to seduce her and lure her out that way.



Through the use of email hacking, talking to friends, and even tracking down Jamie's former lover, Rosa was able to discover enough personal information about Jamie to help Joey pose as her dream man.



Rosa also continued her collaboration with Sam Durkin, who informed her that Jamie's body had been found in a dumpster, but that in the end the death was ruled to be one of natural causes - once again, a blood clot in the brain. Evidence towards Gavin's direct involvement in these girl's deaths was mounting up very quickly.

Joey and Jamie



Despite Rosa's discomfort with this approach...



...Joey continued to pursue Jamie in the hopes of getting her to open up emotionally.



Sure enough, she revealed that she too had been instructed on her "destiny" by Gavin, but in her case, she was told that she needed to party and have more fun, rather than reading books all the time. And sure enough, she partied until it literally killed her.



Before long, Jamie recognised her own death, and was helped on her way.



This time around, it was Joey who had become infuriated at Gavin over the course of the case, and the two of them set off to give Lisa a piece of their minds.

Gavin's Theme



Although she was clearly uncomfortable doing so, Lisa agreed to arrange a meeting with Gavin in a few day's time.



However, Rosa didn't need to wait that long, as Gavin had tracked her down, and shot her with a tranquiliser gun.



In something of departure from the usual vibe of the Blackwell series, it was revealed that Gavin was part of a secret society of so-called "psychic vampires" who feed on positive emotion to stay alive. Gavin himself was almost 200 years old.



Rosa woke up to find herself tied up in Lisa's attic. Lisa wasn't in league with Gavin, but was too scared to say no. Gavin, meanwhile, was busy communicating with his society before deciding what to do with Rosa.



Joey was able to get close enough to Gavin during a phone call to determine that he was being instructed to kill Lisa, to ensure no witnesses.



Rosa informed Lisa of the truth, but rather than helping Rosa and the two of them escaping together, Lisa just made a dash herself. Unfortunately for her, she was unsuccessful, as Gavin caught and killed her.



Rosa made a daring escape attempt herself, but Gavin caught her and revealed that his group had been looking for a "Bestower", their name for medium, for a long time.

Lisa's Ghost Theme



As Joey searched desperately for something to help Rosa, he came across Lisa's ghost, fresh from being murdered by Gavin.



Dealing with both a lack of time, and his own personal distaste for Lisa, Joey decided to skip the usual soft touch approach and really needle Lisa into recognising her own death.



We discovered that after Joey had died to save Danny Marconi's life, Danny had spent the rest of it feeling guilty, and passed that same guilt onto his children, telling them they weren't good enough to warrant Joey's sacrifice. Lisa hated Danny for it.



Lisa's distaste for her grandfather pushed Joey over the edge, and he dragged Lisa kicking and screaming into realisation.



As Joey went to find Rosa, however, he found her surprisingly unharmed and free of Gavin.



This was obviously strange, and as Joey went to investigate, he found out the hard way that Gavin had taken control of Rosa, who pulled Joey into the void.



Strolling calmly back through the portal, Rosa banished Joey just as The Countess had done to Madeline so many years ago, leaving him trapped in the void.

Deception Lament



As Joey floated around and bitterly regarded his fate, he spotted a familiar figure - Madeline, still trapped in the void.



In a rather horrifying bit of exposition, Madeline explained that Rosa was going to go mad, much as The Countess had all those years ago, and Joey would feel his soul being torn in two when it happened.



Madeline indicated that if Joey was able to access his link, he'd be free to leave - and Joey realised that Madeline was referring to his tie.



Madeline quickly deduced that Joey was completely unaware how his powers were supposed to work, and offered to help get him out, as long as he took her with him.

Confrontation



In the game's final scene, Joey found Gavin slowly sucking out Rosa's positive energy in what was an uncharacteristically extravagant display of supernatural power. Gavin had managed to convince Rosa that her life sucked, and that she needed to stop worrying so much about Joey and the ghosts, and start thinking about herself more.



By talking Rosa through the process (mostly belittling and insulting her), Joey was able to help Rosa take back control of her mind and expel Gavin.



The resulting paranormal explosion killed Gavin, but he claimed he had consumed enough life energy to return to life shortly afterwards.



However, the now very-much-aware ghost of Lisa decided to try to redeem herself in death and hold Gavin up, giving Rosa and Joey enough time to suck them both into the void.



Once there, a horrified Gavin begged to be returned, but it was all too late as some kind of unknown power destroyed him utterly, bringing his centuries-long reign of terror to a fitting end.



Lisa summed the ending up quite appropriately, as Rosa helped her to move on.

Deception Lament



As usual for the games, an epilogue scene played at the end, in which Rosa expressed remorse for what she did to Joey, but more than that, concern that many of the issues Gavin had brought to the fore were there to begin with.



She had started to find rescuing ghosts depressing rather than uplifting, she was getting frustrated with being shackled to Joey, and she felt that her life was meaningless. Most pressingly, however, she didn't like the feeling that she was just floating from case to case without any direction, reacting to situations rather than planning for them.



Finally, in an attempt to seek greater purpose in her life, Rosa resolved to seek out this secret society and take care of them once and for all. Joey, having gained more respect for Rosa over the course of Deception, promised to back her up as best he could.



And, in the final, final epilogue, we heard from police chief Alex Silva (who sounded suspiciously like the member of the society Gavin had spoken to on the phone), who claimed that she would be hunting down the people who murdered Lisa and Gavin with extreme prejudice.



And that was Deception! As a game, it was quite well done - a much better length than Legacy and Unbound (longer than both of them combined), and with much better pacing. A few of the puzzles had issues in terms of logical flow, owing to a last-minute reshuffling of the storyboarding, but on the whole Deception played very well. Although not as pretty as Convergence, Deception was still quite easy on the eyes. The new style of cel-shaded portraits proved to be an unpopular choice, but a subsequent Halloween rerelease saw the portraits replaced with the more familiar pixellated style, which would be retained for the upcoming Epiphany.

Deception also received the series' greatest critical reception to that point, although the slight shift in gears stylistically from "tortured soul" bad guys to "smoke and mirrors evil" bad guys disappointed some. Certainly here, in the LP thread, most people found the ending scene with Gavin's sudden appearance and magical powers to be a non-sequitur and an anticlimax. There was also the problem that Joey's backstory, although lightly touched on, was still almost entirely an unknown by the end of Deception. On the whole, I was starving for more of the threads started as early as Legacy to be explored, such as why Joey was shackled to the Blackwell family, or how he became a spirit guide to begin with. Instead, we seemed to end up with considerably more new questions than we did answers to old questions.

Gilbert had plans to release two more Blackwell games after Deception, but as history reveals, only one was created. Simply put, Gilbert didn't feel that his ideas were substantial or interesting enough to drag over two games, and so decided to do one game well instead, dropping a few story elements and really taking the time to put a thick coat of polish on everything. So, how well did he do? Stay tuned for tomorrow, where we'll start looking at Epiphany to see how this saga ends! Really keen to hear your thoughts, and I hope you're all up to date for the LP to start tomorrow