I’ll think about perhaps building in some backstory between one of the characters and Spillane to anchor them more in the location (it’s also mentioned that they remember seeing Blake around college, so maybe I could build on that?)
The idea with the investigation was that yes, you can get all the info from the Becker convo. But investigating earlier helps, because you’ll probably have been able to eliminate at least one or two of them based on what you find. That way, if a reader doesn’t quite pick up on every detail from Becker, there’s still a chance for them to solve it! And in order for that to work, it really is the case, I think, that the guilty person has to be the only possibility. The issue with making Glass a full professor, for instance, is that he’d then be an entirely viable candidate to be the guilty party. He’s male, long-serving, and a full professor. So why would Spillane leap to the conclusion that it was David, since there’s somebody else who could just as easily be the traitor?
As for the stat issue, yes, it’s currently impossible to hit those numbers, if you only play this book. However, if you import a save from Book 2, it’s possible to start with María’s relationship stat a lot higher, and those numbers become possible. Yes, it’s a little rough on people who only play Book 3, but tbh, what do they expect if they jump into a trilogy on the final entry?! I definitely wanted to give some reward to players who played through the earlier books! Although I think I should go back and get the Maria stats up to 65 achievable. But I’ll probably leave 85 unattainable for the Book 3 Only people!
Thanks again for all the feedback. It’s certainly given me a lot to think over going forward!
Well, the way I see it, that’s where the other factors would come into play—investigating the right people earlier in the chapter, testing the waters by directly accusing someone with Becker and seeing how he reacts, or correctly identifying the Smithsonian clue. Personally, I feel like that provides a wide enough buffer for an observant player to solve it even if more than one person fits all of Becker’s smaller clues.
Ah, yeah, that makes sense, I’d forgotten that the demo isn’t necessarily indicative of the actual expected game experience. I’m in support of making the shared bed check achievable, but yeah, I do think it’s totally reasonable to lock the other one off to returning players given that it’s the consequence of a pretty deliberate choice they would have to make knowing the potential fallout.
I have a lot of feedback on this one. I’m about to go in fairly deep and critical, so just know that I really actually liked the chapter a lot, and that I think it’s one of the best you’ve written.
Spoilers
-I actually failed to identify Winter on the first try, then immediately figured out what I had gotten wrong and replayed it. I think that if you think of David as a candidate, the mystery is fairly easy; it’s fairly difficult if you forget him. Perhaps have him pop up midway through the story to remind you that he’s around, but to say something that would make him seem less likely?
-That goes back to the fact that I wish we got a little more about how he inspired Spillane to become Spillane. I’m imagining he’s a Henry Jones type, and what made Henry Jones work so well is that Sean Connery made it so that you completely believed he was Indy’s dad. Here, David is just there briefly.
-The option at the end to let David potentially off the hook is iffy. One of the few railroaded aspects of Spillane’s character is that they hate Nazis, which is entirely reasonable. The hedge that you’ll beat his ass if he keeps in touch with the Nazis is effective as a way of not turning him in while still doing your job, but if Nazism is his actual philosophy and he wants subhumans dead, it seems like it would be a pretty big bone to pick with a Jewish/Russian/Afro-American Spillane.
-Also, Corvus really hit the nail on the head here with:
Maria as someone who hates Spillane and vice versa would be painful to see at a dinner. Alternatively, if Spillane popped the engagement question… this would be their first public outing as a couple since that. Kind of a huge deal.
-On top of that, the one thing that this chapter is really missing is those big emotional beats with Maria. Her “death” is really well done, and had me freaked out for a moment. She’s a good investigative buddy. But, I think we need a scene with her maybe walking through campus or you old dorms or something, reminiscing about what college life at Oxford was like and what it was like sleeping together/knowing each other/ hating each other. Kind of a “boy, like was something back then. how did we get so far apart? Why are we here now?”
-I feel like Valeria Glass gets a pretty harsh treatment from the story. Rather than getting the looks into her ideology like we get with the other suspects, her entire character is fervently defending herself against charges of treason, even when her uncle is a Fascist… and she’s kind of justified! I feel like she needs a bit of something to flesh her out.
-You can play the chapter and never run into the Reverend. Maybe you need to walk past him and then realize it’s him at some point? You don’t necessarily need to have a talk with him or anything, but some acknowledgement that Spillane could at least place him would be nice.
-I totally called it for Professor Blake
-One final thing, and this is just my curiosity: was the amount of people who were genuinely sympathetic to the Nazis a real life feature of British academia during WWII? Obviously, someone who says “yeah, I hate Nazis” isn’t going to be much of a suspect for the story, but I’m just wondering if this was a thing in real life
I think I probably do need to add a bit more Maria banter and posing as a couple. I’ll add some bits to the meal when I get time, and see if that does it.
And yes, perhaps I need another David scene. Could be tricky, but I’m sure I’ll think of something!
I hope her bitchiness comes through at dinner, especially when she teases Magwitch. That’s a character trait!
There were certainly Establishment figures who were Nazi-sympathetic (including in the royal family…) Oxford professors are pretty solidly part of the Establishment, so I’d guess a few of them had those ideas. It’s easy to forget just how appealing Fascism was to some members of the British right and upper-class. The Daily Mail was a big pro-Nazi voice to begin with, and Britain’s own mini-Hitler, Oswald Mosley, was very aristocratic.
Jumping on the ‘I would have liked to interact more with David train’, it’s a bit different having it in text only saying, oh this dude is Spillane’s second dad who inspired Spillane to be a world tripping archaeologist who punches nazis daily. While I think the investigation parts are solid in this chapter I feel like Spillane could defiantly do some reminiscing around Oxford before the dinner to start to make us feel more grounded that this was the place that Spillane started to become Spillane.
And as a player whose Spillane is hopelessly gay and had declared himself eternal enemies with Maria from the moment he met her I would have laughed if they actually had to pretend to be a couple, defiantly if my Spillane had mentioned to David before hand that he was getting married (to Zhu, but kept the details of the downlow for obvious reasons) and Maria getting mistaken for the fiancé. And then at the end when confronting Professor Dad, telling him that he’s not actually getting married to Maria and that David is now totally uninvited to the real wedding, as well as being disowned and arrested for treason
David: How did you get with Maria, I thought you hated eachother
Hopelessly Gay Spillane pretending to be straight: She’s such a strong female woman with nice heavy breasts
Hot take; De Bruijn came CLOSER than those 2 clowns in hurting us (esp if ur romancing maría, or liked bailey enough as a character, if only for a little while) and I think that’s a p nice difficulty glow up for the antagonists.
anyways once again I am just out here with love and agreement with everyone else, thank u for more scene consideration! and also honestly the amount of wishing for “oh my god… and they were roommates!” and “oh no, there’s only one bed…” energies has got me feeling VERY feral once again…
Laissez les bons temps rouler mom ami. In all seriousness that looks amazing chief the big easy always had some of the coolest stuff in the US and that comes from a New Yorker.
Yep, there’s good stuff in New Orleans. I’d highly recommend the WW2 museum, visiting some of the graveyards, and eating as much as possible. The bar scene is also great outside of Bourbon street.
Of course, from an American perspective who will gladly drive anywhere within 2000 miles (I once drove from St. Louis to Edmonton), New Orleans kind of sucks in the sense that all the other cool stuff in the US is a long ways away.
I have a friend who lives here and will be showing me the bars tonight. I think he wants us to go to Bourbon Street briefly, just to experience it, but his favorite places are definitely elsewhere!
In their 30’s maybe? Dunno. I guess you can headcanon it. I always picture them around the same age as Maria because they went for their PhD at the same time. She was born 1905. (The other RO’s have similar years of birth. 1906, 1911…)
There’s a problem in character creation. When going straight to chapter 3, Agent Bailey is defaulted as a female and I’m pretty sure that you said that Bailey can be male too. Also choice to kill Maria is first and therefore must not trigger questions about her relationship, etc. as they will be meaningless.
Found a typo When Bailey shoots Becker and shows the book to Spillane, there is a typo spelling William as Williamm
BTW @Schliemannsghost I came across some very interesting characters while reading, will we be seeing more of Marcel, Serge and Marie? would love to know about their stories and can we get Marcel as the sidekick of Amazonian? That’s one helluva pair.
OK, so I showed that puzzle in the new update to a couple of other guys who also use screen readers and we all agreed that there isn’t really any need to change it, it took a second to get used to, but that’s not really much of a problem solving it was still easy enough once you understand what the mechanics to it were
