Adventure Gamers - Forums

chrissie - 07 September 2017 11:59 AM

I decided by the end of this day that ...

You might change your view on that during day3

*** Day 3 Spoilers ***
After all he did rape their mother and killed their farther .. his own son!

chrissie - 07 September 2017 11:59 AM

My favourite character so far has been Lorenzo but I’m still not sure about him.

I’m also quite fond of Clara.

Sadly, just played this game a few months before this playthrough. I thought the game was great. I bought the game at half price books for five dollars. Money well spent. I played it.on a windows 8 netbook.

I am following this CPT - glad to see others like this game also.

Not sure Baina will get anything. What is called a Marriage Certificate in the game seems to me to be what we in the US would call a Marriage License. It means nothing until the wedding ceremony actually takes place. And since it didn’t, I don’t see why normal rules would not apply. Walter may have intended to dis-inherit his son and grandchildren upon his marriage to Baina, and that was implied in at least one of the documents. But he never married Baina.

Marco will not inherit anything for obvious reasons. The only living relatives are Billy and Sonia.

One can always hope that Billy will see the errors of his ways, pay off his gambling debts and repay Clara’s father, and go on to live happy, productive lives.

Sonia and Martin are a more difficult case. I give her credit for being the only one to stand up to Walter while he was alive. Something Walter, himself, stated in one of the documents. I hope she has a prenup with Martin. I hope the philandering jerk gets nothing when the divorce is final. May he find some comfort with Christina, although when she finds out he will not be part of the inheritance I doubt she will remain interested.

I, of course have no first-hand knowledge of Maldavian law. Just first-hand knowledge of the US divorce courts.    (Long time ago. Sue and I have been married for 31 years this past March 11.)

SoccerDude28 - 08 September 2017 03:14 PM

Actually if you talk to Baiina towards the end, Jack Norm will tell her that she will get the inheritance money.

I think that his words are something like [spoiler]that he will try to make sure that she gets what she deserves, or something along that line. My interpretation was that he would allow her to sign the document, pretend that it was signed when he found it, and that it would mean that they were legally married. But it is only alluded and not spelled out directly.[/spoiler]

I know that where I live, it is only priests from legally recognized religions that can perform a legal marriage, so members of non-recognized religions usually go to the city hall to get legally married before performing the ceremonial marriage. It could be something similar here.

rtrooney - 08 September 2017 07:01 PM

Sonia and Martin are a more difficult case. I give her credit for being the only one to stand up to Walter while he was alive. Something Walter, himself, stated in one of the documents.

I agree, we don’t really see her from her best side in this game, assuming she has a best side, but the whole situation probably wasn’t easy for her, especially since she had for a long time suspected that her grandfather killed her father. Martin on the other hand just appears to be a pretentious dick.

Not quite sure what to make of Kolio though, I kind of agree with SoccerDude here but also see Chrissie’s point.

One of the things I like about this game, is that like all good detective stories, it isn’t just black or white, with an evil murderer and an innocent victim, and it is also not just about inheriting the money, but more complex and more shades of grey.


Edit: I don’t think everybody has finished yet, so don’t completely forget the spoiler tags.

Even here in the US, while ministers of various recognized religions can perform marriages, they all still require a marriage license. (Side note: It’s possible to go online, find a site called the Universal Church of Mumbo Jumbo, pay them a $50 fee and get a certificate that certifies you as minister of their church. Which allows you to perform marriages. Still a marriage license is required.)

I know a fair number of people who took the second route you mentioned. Visiting the City Hall to get a marriage license, and getting married by the local judge or magistrate was simply a more expedient way to get married. Particularly in cases of “mixed marriages” where some form of religious education might be required for the church to agree to perform the ceremony.

The Maldavians are an advanced society even if a percentage of their poulation might appear primitive. They have a federal govermnent, and from what we’ve read in the documents, all sorts of administrative services and departments. It has a medical services department that is capable of performing competent autopsies. It has a judicial system, a functioning air transport system, etc. So it is unlikely that it wouldn’t also have a system that was capable of tracking the status of its citizens. It just doesn’t seem likely that a signature on a piece of paper would be sufficient to legalize a marriage.

I’m thinking it’s possible that Baina and Kulio were every bit the financial schemers as most of the other players on the island. After all, Baina didn’t kill Walter outright. That was Marco. But she did push him off the cliff, and left him to possibly die of exposure. The only thing that saved her from a murder charge was Marco’s marksmanship.

Finally managed to finish the game!

I definitely enjoyed it, despite many small flaws, but I do have to say I think the ending was pretty silly. Having said that I’m not sure how else you could have ended it, needs some drama, and floating off in some weird sort of air balloon seems about as Benoit Sokal an ending as you could hope for!

I think it’s a “one-off” sort of game. So I enjoyed using the mandate system (even though the reason for one or two of the clues escaped me here and there) but overall I don’t think I’d want to play many other games that use it again.

TO be honest, I didn’t really feel I’d got “the hang” of the game until the end. Obviously lots of talking to people and chasing them around, but I never really felt like I knew exactly what to do next and how to do it. The Questions for the Mandates just seemed to come from nowhere and it felt more like the PPA was in control of things than I was!

Also, Jack’s wife - what was going on there?!

Character wise, I don’t think any of them felt particularly real. I’m all for shades of grey but none of them seemed particularly likeable. Obviously the things Walter Jones had done render him extremely unlikeable, but his whole size and shape just seemed so cartoonish somehow, it was difficult to believe in him as a person in the game world I thought.

Intense Degree - 11 September 2017 06:54 AM

Character wise, I don’t think any of them felt particularly real. I’m all for shades of grey but none of them seemed particularly likeable. Obviously the things Walter Jones had done render him extremely unlikeable, but his whole size and shape just seemed so cartoonish somehow, it was difficult to believe in him as a person in the game world I thought.

Well, Benoît Sokal has a background as a cartoon artist, so it is really no surprise that his games also reflects this, most obvious in the background graphics, but also in the story and the character portraits. In fact this cartoonish feel to his games is what I love most about his games. It is even more prominent in Syberia and Paradise, where large parts feels like they could just as well have been a cartoon, just more interactive, in fact Paradise is also a cartoon. 

A few closing word from me is that I still love this game, I was afraid that replaying it would diminish my memory of it, but it hasn’t. It is not a flawless game, but the best games never are, and the overall feel of the game is much more than just the sum of its parts, though it is hard to pinpoint exactly what it is I love about it.

Unlike some others here I also quite like the whole mandate / evidence part, despite it being somewhat erh.. uncooperative. But I generally always like systems where you have to back up your accusations / deductions by actual evidence, even though they are in my experience always somewhat flawed. Despite being somewhat annoying I also feel that the whole “musical chairs” with everybody changing location at certain intervals, add some realism to the game, especially since it is constrained to such a small location.

Finally I would like to thank all of you for participating in this playthrough.

I actually was very happy when I finished this game. Some of the last puzzles I found to be challenging. So, I am looking forward to playing this game again in about a year, although not the best adventure game I have ever played I was surprised when I finished it by how much I really did enjoy playing it.

I’ve been trying to rank the games characters. Here’s my list, ranked from most likable to least likable. Only my opinion.

1. Jack Norm - He’s the protagonist with no skin in the game. So he’s most likable.
2. Sonia - Stood up to WJ. Seemed to be the least interested in inheritance.
3. Lorenzo - Seems to be a guy in over his head.
4. Clara - Married into the dysfunctional family. Her family paid a price. Sympathetic
  character, if not necessarily likable.
5. Kulio) - These two have to be taken as a pair. They are either to be pitied or
6. Baina)  reviled. I lean to the latter, but have to put them in the middle.
7. Martin - Not a great businessman. Married to highly-likable character. Cheats.
8. Christina - A gold digger. If she could have dumped Marco for Walter, she would
        have.
9. Billy - An addict that put’s his wife’s family in bankruptcy because his father
        wouldn’t pay his debts. 
10. Lawyer - Corrupt from the get go. Tried to play all sides and lost on all sides.
11. Marco - Killed his father.
12. Walter Jones - Deserved to die.

Not mentioned above, but somebody questioned Jack Norm’s wife’s role in this. I don’t think there is one. Other than a distraction that takes Jack back to his room so that all the other players can re-assemble in other locations. But she is an annoying presence similar to the fiance and mother telephone characters in Syberia.