I really really enjoyed this. I think I’ve played through more-or-less the same path multiple times already, just to see how many things I can get right.
Haze kind of rubbed me the wrong way from the very beginning. I pretty much avoided them as much as I could once I got off the train.
I generally considered “getting Figs and Mopsie together” as one of the challenges to “get right” in the story. So many playthroughs just to figure it out! The two of them really are kind of ridiculous and endearing. (In response to a couple of earlier posts: nah, I think they’re both a little too dumb to be properly manipulative. “Demanding”, maybe; “manipulative”, no.)
Getting into the Inner Circle … I’m not sure, but I think it doesn’t really matter what you do, as long as you do the “infiltrate Dr. X’s party” quest and burn the briefcase there. It seems to me that, as long as you manage that, you’re a shoo-in to the Inner Circle. It helps if Trina likes you, too, and I think you can earn extra points with her by a) asking her to come out into the light when she first hails you, b) accepting her as a partner, no questions asked and no teasing, c) asking her to fight for you if you get caught, and d) letting her have the last eclair. If you can successfully tag-team the guard, so much the better.
Getting the briefcase at Dr. X’s: all the times I managed to convince him to hand it over to me, I’d given him my real name; all the times I failed, I’d given him an alias. This leads me to suspect that giving him an alias either makes the challenge more difficult, or else makes it impossible. It’s also quite possible that this challenge doesn’t use stats at all, and depends entirely on your choices (some of which, admittedly, require information learned through earlier stat tests.)
In one of my playthroughs, Rory was arrested; in another, Valentine was. In all others, I was, as bait for Haze. I have no idea what causes this. The story seems to assume I have a thing for Haze, simply because I interacted with them on the train, when in fact I much prefer Valentine. The only time I messed around with Ambrose’s diagram was in my very first playthrough (in which I was still the one to get arrested.)
I think there are multiple ways to win the Exotic Animal Show. You can weaken Firesnuff’s confidence at various points; I think you only need one, as the first time I won the show was when I, disguised as Prof. Hickory, convinced him that his dream boded ill for his chances. I don’t think I did anything else in that playthrough related to the animal show. I think that if you can manage the trifecta of convincing the birds to choose you over the Grovers, calming Aunt Primrose at the show, and grooming the birds at the show, you might also win without doing a thing to Firesnuff; but I’ve yet to manage to get the birds to choose me. Finally, there’s the option of feeding the birds the “special spice mix”, that Mopsie obtains for you if and only if, way back in chapter one, you told Aunt Primrose not to post any added security around the house.
Honestly, the thing that impresses me most here is how the multiple plot threads all weave together, and how things done way back in the first chapter for Plot Thread A can come back in the final chapter to affect Plot Thread B. It’s just fascinating.
