[Kurufinwe]

Originally Posted by Snarky

Now now, don't be mean. There's no way to know just from the intro exactly who's getting throttled in that cabin. Sure, you can pretty much figure out that Carrington's dead in Chapter 1 (what with Steve lugging that heavy chest and all), but many of the other pieces don't come until later.

I was mostly teasing you, yes. But you could really figure out the whole 'steamer trunk' thing just from the intro. But, anyway, I actually really liked the fact that, by the end of act 1, you've already discovered much about the characters before having even met them, and I'm not going to complain about that. I wanted to mention it in the review, but it got left out at some point in the writing process; and, anyway, I thought it best to mostly leave act 1 (as well as 5) as surprises to the player.

Sure, the plot doesn't ultimately come together as one whole, but the individual pieces are big enough and good enough that I don't think it really matters that much. I'd rather have a story that's a bit incoherent but told with energy and enthusiasm, than a more pedestrian affair that takes care for everything to make sense.

You know, Jack had to make me go through quite a lot of soul-searching before I found what really bugged me about LB2. And it was exactly that: that the designers threw in every element that looked nice, even if they did not fit together (and even if most of them were just tired clichés). You seem to agree with the factual assessement, even if it was not a problem for you. Well, if the mechanics of the game are accurately laid out and my subjective appreciation of them clearly labelled as such, then the review does its job and, as a reviewer, I am content.

Of course, as a forum poster, I reserve the right to defend my opinions to the end of my days. I don't really hope to make you change your mind, though --- only your replaying the game might have a chance of achieving that. You should try to do that at some point, if you have the time; you might have surprises. Or maybe not.

For instance, I prefer the over-the-top carnage (and real suspense) of Dagger of Amon Ra to the pretentious nonsense of Gabriel Knight.

We'll never manage to agree here. I've replayed LB2 recently (obviously) and am currently replaying GK, and I certainly prefer the intelligence and emotional relevance of the latter over the soulless, shallow farce that is the former.

Well, in The Big Sleep, none of the writers nor the director had any idea who committed one of the murders. And that's still a detective classic. It's been too long since I played the game for me to tell whether your questions have answers, but there are two things to keep in mind:

1. The murderer was obviously batshit insane. He/she kills, what? a dozen people in one night.
2. If slasher movies have taught us anything, it's that serial killers are capable of superhuman feats of strength, speed and hiding.

Spoiler:

That's something that really bugged me. The game never manages to decide whether the murderer is crazy or if he's just a cold bastard who's just tying up some loose ends. The game points in both directions, and the questions at the end clearly ask you to choose the lattter. It never made sense to me.

Even disregarding that Monkey Island doesn't have any major inconsistencies (or any at all, as far as I'm aware), this double standard is a bit unfair, don't you think? Yes, I do think it matters; it's definitely one of Dagger's flaws. I just don't think it's critical.

*cough* ... H.T. Marley ... *cough*
And no, I don't think it's unfair. The MI and SQ games promise to be comedies, to make me have fun. If they do that, then I'm glad and can easily consider whatever inconsistencies they have as minor flaws. LB2 promises to be a detective game, something that will stimulate my intelligence; if it insults it instead, then, yes, I feel I have every right to feel cheated.

You criticized the conversations from a characterization perspective, but didn't really consider how they worked in terms of revealing information, which is their gameplay function. As I recall, they're pretty well designed in that respect.

As I said in the review, they lack subtlety. That includes lacking subtlety in delivering information. Frankly, when you ask the Countess W-C (What a great pun that name was, BTW. Even better than a stevedore named Steve Dorian. But I digress.) if 1926 had been a good year for her, and she starts answering 'yes', before correcting herself and mentioning that her rich husband died, it just screams 'black widow'; it's vaguely funny, and not necessarily bad, but I would have wished for a little more subtlety. That's a purely personal and subjective wish, though.

And the conversation systems in those other games aren't really comparable, as they don't allow you nearly the same amount of freedom in interrogating people.

In GK, the Tex Murphy games, Cruise for a corpse, they do. You have the same list of topics for all people, just like in LB2. The difference is that, in those games, you initiate the conversation and are brought to a conversation screen where you just have to pick the topic you want to discuss. In LB2, you have to click on the character, get the notebook screen, turn the pages of the notebook to the topic you want to discuss, select the exit cursor, click with that, to then be returned to the main screen and get your answer. And then, you have to click again on the character and repeat the whole process to ask the next question. That's a terrible interface. And with all the conversations being lumpted together in the first two acts, it is painful. At least, it felt so for me, every time I've played the game.

It's not really a question of inconsistency, though. It's a matter of stylization. Like chess fails to realistically model battle, Dagger of Amon Ra fails to realistically model people walking around in a museum. The convention of the game is that people only appear for set-piece scenes, or very occasionally wandering around for you to interview.

If only the inconsistencies were limited to that. As I said in the review, it's the location of the characters, the main plot, and everything in between.

I think if you were to judge it on what's clearly its number one priority, that would have to be the atmosphere. And I think it pulls that part off with flair.

I wouldn't be entirely sure about that (though I think it is mostly successful in that respect, and I said so in the review), but, well, the atmosphere never struck me as the game's main promise. As I said, I think it promised to be an intelligent, original, and fun to play murder mystery --- not least because it was a sequel to The Colonel's Bequest, which was exactly that. But I'm starting to repeat myself.