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come-on-shitty-boys · 4 years

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//the fugitive. kuroo tetsurou//

Request: Not really?? But spawned from @janellion and I obsessing over royal kuroo like three weeks ago, so uhhh requested by me?? Peep the new TRT series ig ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Warnings: None

Word Count: 1.7K

Notes: i have come to the awful realization that i have ruined any and all of my dating expectations by writing so much fanfiction.

Everything about his current situation was far from ideal. The heavy downpour as the sky let loose all of its unshed tears flattened his hair against his forehead, his jacket with all of the intricate embroidery jacket and the silver crown that had adorned his raven hair had long since been cast away to better disguise the fleeing prince. It had been long expected, but a storm had unleashed itself upon the castle, bringing the day of impending doom upon them sooner rather than later. The people of the kingdom have finally had enough of the tyranny, of the constant feuds, the never ending debts and taxes and now, filled with rage, they had made their way to the castle, hungry for blood and refusing to yield until the king’s head was on a stake.

His feet sloshed through the puddles, soaking his socks as the rain continued to pour down all around him. The young prince only stopped long enough to catch his breath under the shelter of a tree before he was once again running through the night in the darkness of the woods. The last few moments he had with his family kept echoing in his head, eyes pricking with tears to match those of the clouds above him.

“My son, leave before they kill you too. Get out of the kingdom, please.”

“But, father-”

“Tetsurou, please. This is my final request. Head south until you reach Effingfil River. Once you get to the otherside, you’ll be safe. Quick! Make haste and don’t ever look back.”

Who was he to deny his father’s final wish before his end? He had set out into the night, a dark cloak adorning his figure to shield his identity. Although he knew better, Kuroo carried his silver circlet in his hands, a final memento of his royal life. If worse came to worst, it would fetch a good price at the market, enough to make ends meet until he could find some sort of safe haven in the neighboring kingdom.

But, the cloak, the crown, and every other royal thing about him had been tossed into a stream that had carried the articles away. There was no time to be sentimental when you were running for your life. Even so, now he secretly wished he had kept the woolen cloak. The icy rain had soaked through his clothes, chilling him to the bone as a steady wind picked up, pelting the droplets harder against him. His entire body shook in a mixture of cold and fear. Never in his life did he expect to wander through the woods all alone; hungry, freezing, tears mixing with the rain as the water ran down his cheeks.

Kuroo had no idea how close he was to the border. Honestly, he wasn’t even sure that he was going the right way anymore. He couldn’t see the stars through the thick branches above him and in the off chance that there was a break, the dark storm clouds hid his only compass from view. He did know one thing, though.

He knew the flicker of candlelight in a window in the dead of night. People. Someone. A broken sob of relief fell from his lips as he picked up his pace all over again. If they turned him in, so be it. He just wanted to be away from this nightmare, even if only for a moment.

Your life has always been relatively quiet. A small cabin on the edge of the woods didn’t boast many visitors, so the sudden pounding on your door that pulled you from your embroidery had made your entire body jolt in shock. Setting your needle and thread to the side, you took up your candle, only for the steady knock on your door to come again. “I’m coming. Hold on!”

You had been expecting a lot of things, really. Royal tax collectors coming to steal more money from you, the merchant from the other kingdom who smuggled the better quality threads from the other side of the border in the dead of night, maybe even a witch who had come to cast a vicious spell on you. A dashing young man barely older than yourself, eyes tinged red with sorrow, clothes muddied from trekking through the rain, a hand clutching his chest as if to hold onto his aching heart, however, was nowhere on your list of expectations. Before you could even stop yourself, you were ushering him inside without a word being passed between the two of you. A second and a third log were added to the fire, the temperature in your small home quickly rising as you tended to the flames. The strange boy at your door stood stiffly in the middle of your living room, the orange blaze casting dancing shadows across his features, amber eyes seemingly glowing in the low light.

“Sit, please. Let me see if I have anything for you to put on, so you don’t have to sit there in soaked clothes,” you say, pulling up a chair for him to be able to rest his weary feet, but when he took a seat, rather than sinking, taking pleasure in the opportunity to finally relax, even if it was only for the night, he sat with his back straight, slender hands folded elegantly in his lap. Every so often he would reach towards the fire to warm his chilled fingers, but they were quickly returned to his lap as if he had done something incredibly inappropriate. The soft rustle of your nightgown as you padded across the wooden floors shifted his attention away from the fire and over to you and the set of clothes that you held in your hands.

“I hope these fit you. They belonged to my brother before he passed in the war, so feel free to keep them. I have no use for them,” you say.

Kuroo gingerly takes the clothes from you, trying to hide the look of distaste on his face at the feeling of the material. It was cheap and stiff, nothing like he was used to, but they were dry and that’s what was more important. “May I ask for your name?” He asks, peeling his shirt from his body to replace it with the one you had given him.

“Y/N, sir. And who might you be and what in God’s name are you doing out in the woods at this hour? There’s all sorts of animals out there that don’t take kindly to people in their territory. You should consider yourself lucky.”

His eyes shifted to the window, peering through the night as if to check that there was no one who had seen him during his escape. “I- I really don’t think I should tell you that. At least, not yet. My apologies if that seems rude, but, you see, I’m in a bit of trouble, and well, I don’t exactly know who to trust right now.”

You nod simply and give a short chortle. “What’d you do? Commit tax evasion? Lord knows the king would have your head if that ever happened. The man is greedier than anyone I’ve ever met. You would think that he has enough money coming in, honestly. With the amount of citizens that he hounds for his outrageous taxes, you’d think he wouldn’t need to raise them again, but he has to pay for his wars somehow, I suppose. Sending innocent men off to die isn’t cheap, that’s for sure.”

You were so busy carrying on with your train of thought that you hadn’t noticed the way Kuroo’s body suddenly stilled as you continued to discuss his father so freely. Annoyance and bitterness dripped from every syllable as you spoke. The Kuroo family hadn’t been popular in the eyes of the people for many generations. They thrived off of starting unnecessary conflicts that would drag on for years. Even now, there were troops sitting off the shore of a small kingdom, blocking their trade routes, suffocating them slowly as they had been for the past seven years.

“I’m afraid that the monarchy has likely died today,” he says shortly, rolling up his pant legs. They had obviously been made for someone much shorter than himself as the ends rested just below the middle of his calves.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m from the capital city. Some of the citizens staged a coup. Before I left, I heard them say that they wished the king and his whole family dead. I don’t know what will be left of them by tomorrow.”

“Well, then let’s hope that this will finally turn things around in this country. It’s difficult to make a living and pay a ridiculous amount of taxes when you’re out here by yourself. My customers have been sparse since the recent increase. They can’t afford to mend their clothes, but I can’t afford to live without their business. Thankfully, with the border as close as it is, I get some business from the other kingdom, but it can also be a pain. The hassle of trying to make the trip across the river isn’t worth it for most.”

Kuroo’s ears perked up slightly at the mention of a river. “Which river is it?”

“Effingfil. Why?”

“How close am I to the border?”

“Only a few miles, sir. Is everything alright? You seem a bit frantic.”

“I need to get out of the country. Please, will you help me?”

“Sir, right now you need to rest. You’re lucky that you didn’t get hypothermia or something like that out in the rain.”

“Then tomorrow? First thing in the morning. Will you take me to the border?”

“Why are you so keen on leaving, may I ask?”

“Because if I don’t, they’ll kill me too. Please, I’m not ready to die,” he whispered, desperation creeping into his voice. And in another odd twist of things you weren’t expecting, the stranger who had stumbled across your house in the darkness clutched onto your clothes as he hid his face against your shoulder. You could feel his body shaking against your form as you took him into your arms, soothing circles being rubbed against his lower back, the silence only being broken by his choked sobs and the gentle crackling of the fire.

#haikyuu!!#haikyuu #haikyuu imagines #haikyuu x reader #kuroo #kuroo tetsurou #kurootetsurou #tetsurou #kuroo imagine #kuroo x reader #trt #throne room thursdays #imagines #x reader #royalty au #damn kuroo pleading not to die kinda makes my heart ache no cap

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blackjack-15 · 4 years

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All Aboard the Hardy Boys — Thoughts on: Last Train to Blue Moon Canyon (TRN)

Previous Metas: SCK/SCK2, STFD, MHM, TRT, FIN, SSH, DOG, CAR, DDI, SHA, CUR, CLK

Hello and welcome to a Nancy Drew meta series! 30 metas, 30 Nancy Drew Games that I’m comfortable with doing meta about. Hot takes, cold takes, and just Takes will abound, but one thing’s for sure: they’ll all be longer than I mean them to be.

There will be an additional section between The Intro and The Title on the Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys Supermysteries, as this game is the first to pull from them and because the game (and the Hardy Boys) benefit from exploring and understanding that universe.

If any game requires an extra section or two, they’ll be listed in the paragraph above, along with links to previous metas.

These metas are not spoiler free, though I’ll list any games/media that they might spoil here: TRN, mention of ICE, mentions of WAC, mention of John Grey in SAW, SPY.

The Intro:

Yeah, I’m not sorry for that title.

Coming off a solid, in-joke heavy game like CLK, Last Train to Blue Moon Canyon could have been anything — and it rose to the occasion like few other games in the entire series. It was the unprecedented 13th game in a 12-game series, and boy did they start the next phase with a bang.

Our next jet-setting game, we leave 1930s Titusville behind in favor of the modern day — albeit the modern day inside a train from the late 1800s, staffed with every kind of celebrity from the 2000s — socialites, authors, tv personalities, and Miami-Vice-meets-Ice-T cops.

Honestly, had they included a teenybopper pop star, I would have said that this game wasn’t just an excellent game, but a time capsule for 2005.

This odd location for a game not only solidifies its place in the Jetsetting Games, it also behaves as a Locked Room Mystery, the first one in a while (FIN being the only other one so far). Nancy can’t leave the train until 2/3rds through the game — but neither can anyone else, resulting in not only the perfect place to commit a crime, but also the perfect place to interrogate suspects.

TRN is perhaps most famous for its on-screen appearance of the Hardy Boys, who invite Nancy with them on this invite-only trip to make it more fun for themselves (and so that HER could experiment with playing from a non-Nancy [and even better, a Frank] point of view, even if it is just to make cheeseburgers). Honestly, it should be famous for it.

Not only is this a huge mechanics change, but it also blasts open the Nancy Drew Universe — the Drewniverse, if you will — and introduces both the games and players to the world of the 80s/90s Supermysteries by basing itself on #8 of the series, aptly titled Mystery Train (which we’ll talk about in the following section).

TRN also boasts one of the largest casts in the Nancy Drew games series, with 7 voiced in-person characters, two phone friends, and 3 extras. The choice to put in more characters into a smaller location really helps the locked room feel of the game, and leads to a game that is slightly more centered around interrogation than concrete investigation (which is the correct choice for a locked room mystery).

While TRN’s historical backstory isn’t quite prominent enough to get its own section here, it is worth dipping our toes in it here in the intro section. This game’s backstory (handled with a light hand) takes place during the late 1800s and finishes early years of the 1900s — 1903, to be exact, during the Edwardian Era and before World War I — when Jake Hurley’s beautiful train is found abandoned with only the dead engineer onboard. It overlaps with the Colorado Gold Rush in the United States, where Americans and immigrants alike made a mad dash out west in order to strike it rich.

This was a time when trains were the beautiful and incredibly fast (relatively) way to travel in America, especially out west as they were safer and quicker than taking the route in covered wagons or handcarts. Public trains were well-furnished and comfortable, but private trains like Jake Hurley’s were luxuriously and gorgeously decorated with all the amenities that were possible at the time and were meant to entertain guests as well as convey them from point A to point B.

The lush decorations in Camille and Jake’s cars are especially good representations of just how comfortable and flashy private trains could be; these trains that exist today in museums or private collections recall a bygone age where travel was a thing to look forward to, rather than a necessary evil to be suffered through.

The last bit of introduction I’ll do for TRN proper before we delve into the Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew supermysteries is its wonderful way with locations. By limiting its locations to really one at a time, TRN very neatly creates a semi-linear playthrough while still allowing the player the freedom to solve Jake and Camille’s mysteries in most any order they choose. It’s a great trick to make the game feel a bit more open while still telling a linear story, and TRN pulls it off better than most other early Nancy games.

Now that we’ve introduced the game, let’s get on to the Drewniverse.

The Supermysteries:

Pairing Nancy Drew actively with the Hardy Boys (live and in person) was hardly a new thing in 2005, even though it was the first time it had been accomplished in the game series’ history. The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew TV series from the 70s was the first big screen meetup of the two sleuthing parties, both owned by the Stratmeyer Syndicate.

While the earlier episodes of the show trade back and forth between Nancy and the boys, the second season saw increasingly frequent mashups of the two separate storylines, allowing for much bigger risks and much more satisfying stories — and, of course, the now famous love line between Nancy Drew and Frank Hardy.

After the TV show, there was now an uptick in Nancy/Hardy Boys interest — the two had become linked by more than just the Syndicate. That interest created the space for the 80s/90s series of books referred to as the Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys Supermysteries (not to be confused with the series of the same name that came out after the turn of the millennium, which are less flirty, less well-written, and much shorter as a series).

Wildly popular, the Supermysteries have 36 titles to their name and span over a decade of heart-racing, Nancy-tingling fun. The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew are either assigned to sister cases or discover the other party on the same case, and take turns helping the other out. Often, Joe separates (sometimes with whatever party Nancy brings along or with a pretty suspect) and leaves Nancy and Frank to work in tandem, giving opportunities for the two sleuths to flirt (and sometimes more) in relative peace.

If there’s one thing that the Supermysteries are really famous for, however, it’s the relationship between Nancy and Frank. Seemingly every book starts with reminding us that Frank and Nancy both have “steadies” back home, to use Dave Gregory’s terminology, and then promptly describing Frank as an Adonis and setting Nancy’s “tingle” (80s/90s code for arousal) ablaze as they work in closer and closer quarters and have some Experiences together, including an on-screen kiss and a sexy fade-to-black — and then reluctantly going back to their boyfriend/girlfriend at the end of the book.

TRN is based specifically on parts of Supermystery #8, Mystery Train, where the Hardy Boys are lured in by the promise of $25k if they can find the Comstock Diamond, stolen 15 years earlier. Nancy happens to be on the same train, accompanied by the best of the best sleuths of the day — and a beautiful actress that catches Joe’s attention.

You can see the ties to TRN — a ‘beautiful’ socialite, a band of detectives and researchers, a lost treasure — all present in both the book and the game. Though the game takes a slightly different course, it owes its strong foundation to the Supermystery that proceeded it.

The Title:

Harking back to Supermystery #8 (Mystery Train), Last Train to Blue Moon Canyon is one of the finest titles that HER ever came up with. Appropriately pulpy, it gives a sense of urgency, history, and mystery all at once while still pointing to the focal point of the game: the train.

After playing the game, it’s also a little ironic — it might be the last train to Blue Moon Canyon, but it’ll hardly be the last visitor to the historic spot, once the world gets wind of exactly what was there and the history behind it.

Last Train to Blue Moon Canyon is honestly a much better title than Mystery Train, and the title (plus the wonderful cover art) is part of the reason that this game is so well-known among casual and hardcore fans alike.

The Mystery:

Summoned by her good (phone) friends the Hardy Boys, Nancy embarks on a train ride to Blue Moon Canyon, the last known location of wealthy eccentric Jake Hurley’s personal train, and rumored to be the spot where he left his treasure. The train having been purchased and restored by socialite Paris Hil — ah, I mean Lori Girard, it once again houses the notable travelers of the day…and possibly the spirit of Jake Hurley’s wife, Camille.

Not 10 minutes into their journey, Lori disappears with a scream and a crash, and the hunt is on — not only to find their missing hostess, but to unravel the secrets of Jake Hurley’s train, Camille’s ghost, and the treasure that may be hiding in Blue Moon Canyon. It won’t be an easy task even for three seasoned teen sleuths, not with a cagey wonder-cop, irritable historical romance writer, and techy ghost hunter all trying to keep their motivations and actions a mystery.

TRN is superb in most respects, so it shouldn’t come as any surprise that the mystery is 90% perfect — barring one unfortunate plot point, which I’ll cover in at least 3 sections below, and the next paragraph. Tightly paced with suspicion spread thickly and nigh-evenly, TRN doesn’t run into the trouble of knowing who the culprit is from the first 20 minutes of the game and doesn’t feel the need to clear one suspect earlier than the others so that they can help Nancy — Frank and Joe take that job instead, leaving a pretty clear field through most of the game.

The biggest problem with TRN is the identity of the “final” culprit — that is, the culprit who leaves Nancy behind in the crumbling mine in order to generate some good publicity for herself and who knows about Jake Hurley’s final “treasure” all along: Lori. Her reveal as the first culprit is wonderful and logical, even if it’s not too hard to figure out that she kidnapped herself. Her reveal as the second culprit, however, is so odd and against her character that it doesn’t just feel like a mistake — it actually reads as a mistake as well.

To have the entire game culminate in a culprit that 1) doesn’t make any sense to be the culprit and 2) must behave in a completely out-of-character way in order to be the culprit is the one black mark on TRN’s otherwise spotless record. Other than that, this mystery is one of the best of the series so far and is a fully enjoyable ride from start to almost-finish.

The Suspects:

Lori Girard, Paris-Hilton-expy and socialite extraordinaire, is the hostess of the little trip down to Blue Moon Canyon with a streak of ruthless camera-whoring that nearly matches the level of the other camera whore on board (see next suspect).

Lori is, rather gloriously, the first culprit — the one who kidnapped herself, showing her love for flair, her smarts, and her enjoyment of detective stories. Kidnapping herself is right along with the character we see she has, and makes so much sense that it doesn’t feel like a let-down that the player (and a few other characters) figure it out — rather, it feels like her character is introduced strongly and well.

Lori is, completely unbelievably, the second culprit as well. Lori’s previous stunts — i.e. her previous ‘kidnapping’ before the story begins, the train disappearance — involve herself, have no danger to them at all, are intensely theatrical, and rely on the willing cooperation of others. Trapping Nancy in the mine and trying to kill her doesn’t involve Lori at all, has a ton of danger (not to mention a death toll), and isn’t theatrical at all — it happens all ‘off camera’.

We’ll get to more problems with this in The Unfavorite, but making Lori the second culprit was a huge mistake, and her character — and the game — suffer from it.

Tony Balducci is a self-described wonder cop and sometime lover of Lori who wants nothing more than to toot his own horn…provided he leaves out some of the less flattering notes. Having caught two bank robbers by luckily being in the right place at the right time, Tony now tries to live up to the name of ace detective — mainly by being a giant douchebag towards everyone.

As a culprit, Tony would have been an interesting choice, as someone driven by the hanging spectre of his own ego, desperately trying to catch it while knowing deep down that he’s just not good enough to do so. He’s just a little too obvious, a little too hateable, and a little too in-your-face to be the proper culprit for this game.

He instead lives to fight another day to show up in ICE, where no one asked for nor wanted him. A douche to the end.

Charleena Purcell of Secret of Shadow Ranch fame is live and in person this time, having accepted Lori’s invitation out of curiosity for what really happened to Jake — and a bit of a guilty conscience.

As a reoccurring character, Charleena wasn’t going to be the culprit, but I do love that she’s a character who does some morally questionable things — like taking Lori’s suggestions for a new book and incorporating them without crediting Lori. While legally she’s fine, it is a total dick move, and she deserves to get reamed for it.

I love that Charleena’s a bit uptight and snappy while still being a ‘good guy’ (or at least not a baddie), and I do love that she did something wrong that has no impact on the actual crime at all. While she’s not in my top 5 of reoccurring characters/characters that appear in more than one game, she is a nice representation of what most authors are like (dedicated researchers and hard workers, not people who have wacky hijinks with the mystical people in their head that talk to them).

John Grey is a ghost hunter who relies more on tech than on spiritual intuition and hosts his own TV show dedicated to proving the existence of ghosts and spirits. He’s convinced — or rather really hoping — that he can prove the existence of Camille’s ghost and attribute her power to all the wacky things happening on the train.

He also really hates it when Nancy plays the piano around his sensitive audio equipment, which is the biggest reason to play the piano around his sensitive audio equipment that I can think of.

Heartbreakingly, John is the perfect culprit; he lies just under the radar enough not to be immediately obvious, but isn’t immediately discounted either. He also has the perfect motivation: with his show failing, he really needs a show-stopping apparition like Camille’s ghost to boost his ratings and save his show. He’d be an Abby Sideris-type culprit Writ Large, but this time he’d be manipulating people’s perceptions of an actual ghost that truly exists on the train.

John’s status as, frankly, no villain at all is the single biggest flaw in TRN, and it makes me sad every time I play it.

Listed officially as a suspect, Fatima of Copper Gorge is a Charleena fangirl and taffy enthusiast, with a temper as wide as Copper Gorge itself. She constantly wears an old-timey miner’s costume — foam head mask and all — and can apparently even sleep in it.

As a culprit, Fatima would have obviously been a poor choice for a Nancy Drew style game — she barely appears, and is there for a puzzle and a task and that’s pretty much it. She is however incredibly intriguing, as…well, she never takes off the mask. As a fair-play mystery, Fatima was never an option; she does stand out among all masked characters as one of the few that is never revealed to the player/Nancy.

Though they’re not officially suspects, the Hardy Boys both deserve a breakdown in this area.

Franklin Hardy is the elder of the two and barely counts as a teenager (being 19), though he does work for ATAC (American Teens Against Crime, which is the funniest acronym in the world). Detail-oriented with a dry sense of humor, Frank is the de facto leader of the Hardy Boys and far less hot-headed than his brother Joe.

A great researcher and planner, Frank knows a little bit about almost everything, and is more cautious (as most older siblings are) about the danger of any particular situation than either Joe or Nancy tend to be. Fiercely loyal and indisputably protective, Frank believes in the power of teamwork and is constantly on watch for people who might want to hurt his friends and family. In SPY, his bio specifies a “strong connection to [Nancy]” as not only an example of this loyalty but also as a point towards his feelings for her.

It would do Frank a disservice to boil his entire characterization down to his relationship with Nancy, but it is worth mentioning briefly. There are hints of his affection towards Nancy pre-TRN, but it’s really post-TRN that it kicks into high gear (probably because of working in close circumstances with her during TRN).

TRN is, possibly coincidentally and possibly not, the last game where Wayne Rawley voices Frank, as the man/myth/legend Jonah Von Spreecken takes over in the next game Danger by Design. Not only is JVS’s Frank a little less subtle about his feelings for Nancy, he’s also a little younger sounding (more like his actual age) and a little more enthusiastic (while still being very dry). As any reader of any of these metas could probably tell you, I find JVS’s Frank to be the best of his VAs, and he’s only enhanced when Nik takes over from WAC on.

Joseph Hardy, to contrast, is the 18 year old younger brother (and, if HER is working off the supermysteries, skipped a grade to be in Frank’s graduating class) and the more impulsive of the two. Generally laid-back in contrast to Frank’s meticulous nature, Joe is no less quick and is noted in his character bio from SPY to be an “extremely proficient tactician” — a role generally reserved by lesser writers for more uptight characters.

While easily distracted and a bit prone to conspiracy theories, Joe is quick to discover interpersonal links and motives and is at least somewhat handy with mechanics. His seemingly odd fixations usually lead (in a roundabout way) to finding out the truth behind crimes and leading him to a cool treasure or historical fact along the way. He’s big-picture in a way that Frank is not, which helps him both as he sifts through Nancy’s mysteries, and when he and Frank are on the job for ATAC.

As of Lani’s departure as Nancy Drew, Rob Jones (Joe’s voice actor) is the only VA to have voiced the same character for the entirety of their presence in the series. As much as I praise JVS in all of his roles (Frank and others) Rob really deserves 90% of the credit for Joe being as loved and wonderful as he is. Rob’s voice gives Joe the correct amount of youthful enthusiasm, glee in bad puns, and continual just plain enjoyment of the world he lives in and the job he has.

The Favorite:

If it wasn’t obvious, TRN is one of my favorite Nancy Drew games — definitely in the top 5, almost definitely in the top 3 — and that makes this section really easy.

First off is the physical presence of the Hardy Boys. It feels really natural to have them appear after being in most of the games leading up to TRN, and they make every second of this game better. From Joe’s cheeseburger face to playing briefly as Frank and eavesdropping (a minigame that would reach its Pinnacle in WAC) to watching Nancy sit down with the boys and pow-wow to figure out the mysteries, the Hardy Boys are a delight from beginning to end,

My favorite moment in the game is that lovely moment where Nancy sees Camille’s ghost dancing along the train window. Camille’s spirit looks so cheerful and effervescent, gently bubbling along her beloved husband’s train, and it’s a beautiful moment.

It’s also a crucial moment in the Nancy Drew game series and lore as a whole, as it, for the first time, clearly and plainly establishes what it’s hinted at since MHM — that in the Nancy Drew universe, ghosts and spirits are real. They’re almost never the culprit, and they don’t often look like Scary Cartoon ghosts, but they’re real all the same. This moment does so much for the game and for the series that it will forever be one of my favorite moments in the series, not just in this game.

My favorite puzzle would have to be finding and placing all the gemstones. I’ve always loved gemstones, and this game really increased my love of them (and interest in their meanings/folklore). Figuring out which animal goes with which stone — and mastering what the “hand from the deep” actually looks like — is a lot of fun, and the animatic of all the different parts whirring and coming together is beautiful. It’s often placed alongside one of the best quotes of this game: “above all…let nothing happen to my train; it holds wonderful things”.

I also love the “true treasure” of the game; sure, Nancy’s line about friendship is a bit corny, but ND has always been a bit corny, and it’s a wonderful sentiment that a true gift can simply be your ability to make connections, rather than any material possessions or social standing.

Camille is one of my favorite “historical characters” in the series, and I know I’ve mentioned her ghost just above, but I love how personal and friendly she feels; you really do get the sense as the player that she’s there, helping Nancy along. It’s Jake’s mystery, and Jake’s mine, Jake’s friends, and Jake’s treasure, but to me, Jake Hurley’s train forever belongs to Camille.

The Un-Favorite:

As far as my least favorite puzzle in TRN goes…I don’t think I have one. I enjoy all of them for their varied styles, their tie-ins to the time period and to palace trains in general – they don’t exactly feel like puzzles, even, more like well-integrated plot points. I think this is one of the few — if not the only one — that absolutely no puzzle comes to mind, so good on TRN.

Alright, you knew it was coming. My least favorite moment in the game is where Lori reveals herself as the second culprit and tries to trap Nancy in the crumbling mine (and the fallout in the letter Nancy writes). I’ve already gone into how Lori makes no sense as the actual culprit from a characterization point of view — and TRN runs on characterization — so I won’t repeat it. But I do have problems with it besides that.

TRN feels like it was set up to have a “culprit” — Lori, kidnapping herself — and then an actual culprit. Lori wanting to find Jake’s treasure as a publicity thing is totally fine, but the whole mystery feels like there’s another sinister presence working on Lori and the rest of the cast the entire time, trying to steer them to where they want them for their own machinations.

It would shock me not at all to find out that this scenario was the original plan, cut for time. TRN came out in mid-September of 2005, not even two months after CLK. While I know that different games are worked on simultaneously, that’s still quite a quick schedule to keep — especially since game #13 (TRN) wasn’t in the cards at all, the game series meant to be 12 games in total.

The ending feeling slapdash — “ah, we don’t have time to work out a criminal, let’s just have it be Lori again” — isn’t shocking looking at the timetable and circumstances behind TRN even becoming a game. While I understand it, I feel like the lack of thought put into the last 5 minutes or so of the game is really noticeable, and undermines both character and theming.

The Fix:

So how would I fix Last Train to Blue Moon Canyon?

Unsurprisingly (and since the rest of the game is borderline perfect), the one change/fix I would make is to the identity of the final culprit. John’s ‘arc’ is somewhat anticlimactic — he’s the only character to sort of drop off the face of the game at the 2/3rds mark — and I truly believe that it’s because the seeds are there to reveal him as the true villain, but it was never carried out.

My proposal is this: the vast majority of the game stays exactly as it is. Lori kidnaps herself, is found by Nancy, and rewards her by giving her all the information she has about the location of the mine — there being a small reference to Jake receiving a letter from an “important friend” or some such descriptor.

Nancy, of course, wonders briefly about the letter and then moves on to solving the location of the mind, working in tandem with the Hardy Boys — but because John has listening devices all over the train, he hears about the letter and begins to research on a hunch that this letter has information that can help him “establish” Camille’s ghost better and make her hauntings more plausible.

In this canon, of course, John’s show really is on the brink of being cancelled without being picked up by any major network, and his paranormal tours that the player finds out about in SAW (and is referenced again in TMB) aren’t doing so well either, so he needs a huge boost to his credibility. Camille’s story — and the treasure/letter that Jake Hurley left behind — is the perfect thing to get him back on top, if he could just get the nosy detectives out of the way.

By listening in on Nancy and the Hardy Boys, John knows just as much as they do — and more, thanks to his research team for Ghost Chasers turning up a connection between Jake and Abraham Lincoln — and decides that the best way to frame this for his show is to have “Camille’s wrath” come upon the uppity teen detective, collapsing the mine to protect Jake’s treasure as soon as she finds it (and he can take it from her).

Used to working in the dark and moving quietly, John, directed by Lori (who he’s manipulated into having him follow Nancy with cameras to capture the moment), follows Nancy into the mine, helping out with a few “good guesses” (actually his knowledge from listening in and researching) and snapping a few pictures of the treasure when they find it. After asking Nancy to hand him Lincoln’s letter so that he can film it better, John runs out of the room and blocks up the exit, standing outside to gloat to Nancy.

John talks about how he manipulated Lori, how he listened in, how this is the thing he needs to boost his show up to be the most-watched program in the ghost hunting business, how clever he was to run rings around Tony, Lori, Charleena, and most of all the Hardy Boys and Nancy herself. He then tells Nancy that she won’t live to tell the tale, but he’ll get footage of “Camille” causing a quake in the mine to protect her husband’s treasure — running as the mine begins to collapse.

From there, the game would continue as normal until Nancy catches the culprit (the only difference being who the culprit is) and rides to safety.

While this section seems really long, this change isn’t actually that big in the scheme of things — it just makes far more sense to have Lori only be the first culprit while having the second culprit be someone with a lot more to lose and a lot more to gain. In general with mysteries, your culprit should always be the person with the most to lose (though the detective and/or player shouldn’t know how much everyone has to lose from the beginning), and John suits that far more than Lori does.

That being said, this is the only change I’d make; I think the rest of the game not only was great at the time of its release but has also stood the test of time a decade and a half later. The change I’ve proposed would simply take the game from being a classic with a slight blemish to a truly perfect game.

#nancy drew #last train to blue moon canyon #clue crew #nancy drew games #TRN #nancy drew meta #long post #video games #my meta

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nofomoartworld · 7 years

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Hyperallergic: Required Reading

Seoul-based designer Sukwoo Lee designed the medals for the 2018 Winter Olympics, which will take place in Pyeongchang, South Korea. The jagged front are based on the letters of Hangul, the Korean alphabet that dates back to the 15th century. More images at Dezeen. (via Dezeen)

Bendor Grosvenor writes about museum image fees and how they’re out of whack:

But for ‘old’ art the situation is very different. Many museums will have you believe that because they are licensing newly taken photographs of, say, a Hogarth, then they have copyright over that photograph, and can therefore charge what they want for it. But this is not the case. There are variances, but essentially in both US and UK law a straightforward photographic reproduction of an old painting does not generate any new copyright implications. For a new photograph of a Hogarth to have any copyright vested in it, it must in some way be original (ie, amended, added to, written over, distorted). So don’t let museums tell you that what you’re paying for is the right to legally reproduce their photograph of their painting. They’re not. In fact, all they’re doing is hustling you.

The designer of the Papyrus font justifies his invention after SNL lampoons it:

“I designed the font when I was 23 years old. I was right out of college. I was kind of just struggling with some different life issues, I was studying the Bible, looking for God and this font came to mind, this idea of, thinking about the biblical times and Egypt and the Middle East. I just started scribbling this alphabet while I was at work and it kind of looked pretty cool,” Costello said.

He added, “I had no idea it would be on every computer in the world and used for probably every conceivable design idea. This is a big surprise to me as well.”

Curator Andrew Hunter explains why he quit the Art Gallery of Ontario:

I have always been concerned about the role art museums play in the wider world, about how truly engaged they are with the critical issues of our times. I’m fortunate to be able to teach regularly on museum and curatorial practice (currently in the graduate program at OCAD University). We often begin with the origins of the contemporary museum, which was born out of the private collections of wealthy Europeans who had built their fortunes on the extraction of resources, and people, from the most vulnerable nations in the world.

Out of this dubious practice evolved public educational institutions, or so they self-described. Really, they were outward displays of power that reinforced class division and validated the corporate and colonial systems that had made their founders rich. From wealth came power and then cultural dominance: museums set social rules, coercing the broader public toward shared values they deemed to be “acceptable.”

Saudi king’s gold escalator gets stuck (no comment):

Saudi King Salman's travel companion, his gold escalator, let him down during his historic visit to Russia http://pic.twitter.com/xgTaqV8WWG

— TRT World (@trtworld) October 5, 2017

Is the internet changing time? Laurence Scott writes:

The computer scientist and cyber-philosopher Jaron Lanier, who coined the term ‘virtual reality’ and who has written with both optimism and despair about the trajectory of the internet, believes that digitisation’s prodigious memory will be key to a sustainable global economy based primarily on exchanges of information. In Who Owns The Future?, he outlines a possible world in which data is the central commodity and all of us are properly remunerated for our contributions, conscious or involuntary, to the profitable crunching undertaken in Big Data’s storehouses. A simple example is that if you and your spouse meet on an online dating site and eventually get married, then you will receive a ‘micropayment’ every time two other people in the future are successfully matched up based on algorithms of compatibility to which your own happy coupling contributed. Lanier argues that since the data you provide – interests, profession, goals, politics – continually refine and improve the dating site’s ability to pair people, then you should own a share in the efficiency that your information nurtured. In this system, our digital pasts, archived across the network as data, resemble an actor’s filmography or an author’s back catalogue, an ongoing source of royalties. Such a model echoes Airbnb’s desire for everyone to ‘build a history’ online. Here the past is privileged in the way of all valuable things, as unforgettable as any personal treasure. Lanier’s design proposes an economy of remembering, whereby not even the smallest link in a lucrative data chain is forgotten. There is zero tolerance of structural amnesia in this system. As Lanier remarks, ‘Cash unfortunately forgets too much for an information economy.’

You know those orange-handled scissors that are in homes around the world? This is their story (I love design history.):

According to Jay Gillespie, Fiskars’s current VP of marketing, the company decided to vote on what color the final scissors design would be before it went into production. At the time, Gillespie says, colors like orange and lime were very popular, so they decided to stick with orange. “An icon was born from [that vote],” he says.

Nina Burleigh of Newsweek takes a look at Trump’s relationship with God:

Trump’s long and sometimes confounding spiritual journey started in Jamaica, Queens, at the bite-sized First Presbyterian Church, and later, at the WASPy Marble Collegiate Church on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, where prosperity prophet Norman Vincent Peale preached that you could think yourself to success. In 1952, Peale published The Power of Positive Thinking, a New York Times best-seller for 186 weeks that sold more than 5 million copies and was translated into 15 languages. That tome and his hailstorm of follow-up titles trained a generation of Americans to grin and fake it all the way to the bank. His theology was well summarized by the mantra Fred Trump pounded into his boy, Donald: “You are a killer. You are a king.”

That nugget may have been as close as young Donald ever got to Scripture. During the recent presidential campaign, he called the biblical book Second Corinthians “Two Corinthians,” a transgression on par with referring to the Holy Trinity as the Three Amigos. He has called Communion “my little wine” and “my little cracker.” More alarming for the truly pious, he couldn’t come up with a favorite Bible verse when asked during the campaign, except to say he liked the Old Testament’s “an eye for an eye.”

This investigation by Buzzfeed gives very credible evidence for the close relationship between alt-right troll Milo, Breitbart and lots of other figures (including Peter Thiel) with the white nationalist movement. This is a must-read:

And the cache of emails — some of the most newsworthy of which BuzzFeed News is now making public — expose the extent to which this machine depended on Yiannopoulos, who channeled voices both inside and outside the establishment into a clear narrative about the threat liberal discourse posed to America. The emails tell the story of Steve Bannon’s grand plan for Yiannopoulos, whom the Breitbart executive chairman transformed from a charismatic young editor into a conservative media star capable of magnetizing a new generation of reactionary anger. Often, the documents reveal, this anger came from a legion of secret sympathizers in Silicon Valley, Hollywood, academia, suburbia, and everywhere in between.

In case you wondered what equivalent climate regions around the world were for the US, this map is interesting:

US climate with equivalent cities from around the world [OC] [1513 x 983] from MapPorn

Mona Kareem writes about popular fascination with fiction by Arab dictators:

The news of this new release provoked me, specifically because it reflects a demeaning western approach to modern Arabic literature. Back in 2003, Saddam’s novels were widely discussed among Arab intellectuals exchanging accusations of writing for dictators for money, or under threat. It was an exhausting and embarrassing battle, but nevertheless necessary. At least in these debates, no one claimed to be “politically neutral.” Political neutrality is the discourse of the dominant, they who take their individuality for granted and in such they assume that their actions can be abstract, ahistorical, and isolated of all contexts.

The interest in “Saddam Hussein’s world,” as one Iraqi novelist once described it, was a serious western fetish after the Iraq war. Despite the fact that the man ran a bloody and exciting life, in all impossible ways, the scale of horror and violence was not satisfactory for western eyes. They needed play-cards, movies, novels, video games, private recordings, and all sorts of things to complete a picture of the enemy. It was the best way to abstract the mass destruction of Iraq as something far, far away, on another planet, in Saddam Hussein’s world.

If you buy a US flag made in the United States, there’s a good chance it was made by a prisoner:

I was born and raised in California and certainly took my fair share of California history classes from elementary school through college. In high school, I marched in protests against Proposition 21, the 2000 ballot initiative that made it easier to prosecute young people, and I was educated by the types of teachers who gave extra credit for attending demonstrations in downtown San Francisco against the Iraq War. But even I was surprised to learn that our country’s symbols of freedom were made by women who had none.

What should Canadian Twitter users with the new increased character count? Well:

All true Canadians know there is only one proper use of the new 280 character limit on Twitter. | Tous les vrais Canadiens savent qu'il n'y a qu'une bonne utilisation de la nouvelle limite de 280 caractères sur Twitter.

— Matt BB-8 (@tederick) September 28, 2017

Required Reading is published every Sunday morning ET, and is comprised of a short list of art-related links to long-form articles, videos, blog posts, or photo essays worth a second look.

The post Required Reading appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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blackjack-15 · 5 years

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Not Horsin’ Around — Thoughts on: The Secret of Shadow Ranch (SHA)

Previous Metas: SCK/SCK2, STFD, MHM, TRT, FIN, SSH, DOG, CAR, DDI

Each meta will have different distinct sections: an Introduction, an exploration of the Title, an explanation of the Mystery, a run-through of the Suspects. Then, I’ll tackle some of my favorite and least favorite things about the game, and finish it off with ideas on how to improve it. Unique to this game is a section in between The Mystery and The Suspects titled The Historical Background, as the background in SHA is so important and takes up nearly a third of the whole game that it deserves its own section.

If any game requires an extra section or two, they’ll be listed in the paragraph above, along with links to previous metas.

These metas are not spoiler free, though I’ll list any games/media that they might spoil here: SHA, non-spoilery mention of TRT, non-spoilery mention of CAP, non-spoilery mention of DED, non-spoilery mention of SPY.

The Intro:

Secret of Shadow Ranch is one of those games that invariably ends up in every “Best Of” list of Nancy Drew games. Unlike another mainstay of those lists (watch this space for the next meta, where I will Make Enemies), SHA actually deserves to be on it without reservations.

Unlike a few other “Best Of” games, SHA doesn’t actually do anything new with its story — there’s no beat, no bare-bones plotline, no mystery that hasn’t been done in the previous 9 games – but it just does it more completely. There’s more effort, more time, more thought, and more care obviously put into SHA (which itself is one of the most popular Nancy Drew books) than a lot of the other games. This isn’t to say that the other games are bad, just that SHA has a uniquely huge amount of care and detail put into it.

I should take the time to note here that I don’t believe that SHA is the best Nancy Drew game of all time, nor is it my favorite game of all time. The first designation shifts according to time, and the second is wholly dependent upon my personal style of play, so elevating a game based on that is less than pointless. When I say SHA deserves to be on “Best Of” game lists, it’s because it genuinely ticks all the boxes to make a fun, challenging but not hard, atmospheric, and honestly engaging experience.

Any introduction to Shadow Ranch would be incomplete without addressing the largest visual change it brings: the full-screen visuals. The bulky 2/3-of-the-screen interface is retired here and instead a (relatively) sleek task bar is added at the bottom, allowing SHA to look, as well as feel, bigger than any other game that came before it. Not only does this result in a smoother visual (especially as Nancy turns around) style, but it allows for more visual puzzles (significantly, the puzzle at the end with the stones marking the correct (and incorrect) path for Nancy to take).

While I won’t go too much into the Historical Background (as it’s significant enough in this game to get its own section in this meta), it’s impossible to talk about SHA without mentioning its wonderful historical setting and story. There are few other games so entrenched in the past (SPY, GTH, and TMB are a few others that fall into the same category), and it’s a joy to play through.

All in all, SHA is an honestly just wonderful, solid game that owes much of its well-deserved praise to a fantastically executed historical background, solid (if not showy) characters, and enough simplicity on top of its moving parts to encourage the player to go steadily and happily through the game.

The Title:

As far as the title for this game goes, they stuck exactly to the book to ensure that readers would know that one of the best-loved mysteries was being adapted to video game format, which was a pretty good idea.

The Secret of Shadow Ranch is also just a pretty great title; it indicates a mystery, a location, and sort of tells you the type of mystery you might get based on the location (historical; revolving around the Wild West). It’s not fussy, and not overly evocative, but it’s also not a “haunting” game (despite the ghost horse on the cover), so the simpler title is acceptable.

The Mystery:

Nancy’s just off to visit Bess and George’s Aunt Bet and Uncle Ed in their ranch (Shadow Ranch, to be exact) when the two cousins get delayed (why they didn’t all fly together…well, the plot demanded it) and Nancy arrives alone and immediately gets sucked into the strange happenings at the ranch.

It wouldn’t be a Nancy Drew game if something wasn’t hinky right off, naturally.

Uncle Ed and Aunt Bet are currently in the hospital after Ed was bitten by a snake that showed up in their bedroom, so Nancy’s left to deal with the ranch hands as she tries to help the ranch to run smoothly and investigates exactly how Ed might have gotten hurt.

The game ditches the plot of the original book and takes two-thirds of the plot of the revised yellow hardcover version, focusing around a strange phantom horse that seems to leave accidents and misfortune in its wake and around the historical plotline of the famous outlaw Dirk Valentine’s hidden treasure.

While it would have been cool to deal with the original mystery of Shadow Ranch — involving a missing father found with amnesia and an NPC in the form of another of Bess and George’s cousins — HER didn’t really have the resources nor the writing to deal with such a personal plot yet, and they instead (wisely, in my estimation) chose the plots that could be dealt with in what had become typical Nancy Drew PC Game fashion. This decision made Shadow Ranch one of the most tightly plotted of the early games and allows the player the time (and space, with the new layout) to explore the beautiful Southwest visuals as a trade-off.

As is commonplace with Nancy’s “vacations”, she soon finds herself embroiled in two mysteries where everyone has motive and opportunity, where the “means” belongs to everyone, and where no one will tell her the truth until she exposes them. Because Nancy can’t really contact the only victims of the accidents (Bet and Ed), there’s overall less to do on the phone in this game and Nancy has to make do with four suspects.

As far as mysteries go, Shadow Ranch isn’t the most involved that HER has ever attempted, but it is fairly complex for the Classic and Expanded games, and it takes pride in being easy to follow and engaging. The Dirk Valentine plotline specifically is tightly plotted, well-delivered, and…well, as perfect as you could get, really.

The Historical Background:

Normally, the Historical Background of a game is covered in the Mystery section, but SHA’s historical background is so far at the forefront of the game (not to mention so well done and memorable) that it would be a travesty to try to include it in another section.

The history behind the game centers on an outlaw, Dirk Valentine, and his forbidden romance with the sheriff’s daughter, Frances Humber, who lived at Shadow Ranch. Frances’ father Meryl disapproved of the match and relied (unbeknownst to her) on his daughter’s knowledge to find and arrest Dirk.

Dirk is then hanged for his general outlaw-ery, but not before mentioning a treasure that he wanted to give to Frances in a letter to her before he died. After his death, Frances left her father and headed east, leaving Meryl regretful of hanging Dirk and wishing to have his daughter back with him again.

The only remaining bit of Dirk left behind is his treasure, which Frances has no interest in and tells her relative about and which the Wild, Wild West finds an intense desire in. Since then, many have tried to find his last legacy to Frances, but all have failed…

Dramatic ellipses aside, the best part of this background isn’t that it involves outlaws and treasure and family drama and all that — it’s that it is all told via narrated letters and diary entries that Nancy finds hidden around the ranch. While this story would be effective on its own, the fact that it’s told to Nancy (and via Nancy, the player) makes it even more gripping than it would be on its own.

The biggest reason why the historical background gets its own section, however, is that it’s one of the best historical backgrounds in the entire series, and certainly the best of the series so far (even though I prefer TRT’s, SHA’s is told more effectively). SPY is up there, but it cheats a bit by having its backstory tied directly to Nancy, so I won’t count it as high on the scale. The only other game (once again ignoring SPY) that gets quite as somber and effective without being melodramatic is CAP, which presents the backstory through another character and thus works just as well.

(As a side note, I’m not including DED here, since it’s less “historical background” and more “incredibly recent background”.)

The only thing that this background sours for me slightly is the present-day plot, as it’s not quite as tight, but that’s to be expected since that plot has to last the whole game. That, and the fact that it makes me bitter that we don’t get all of our historical background narrated for the rest of the series.

The Suspects:

Tex Britten is the surly ranch hand that assumes authority while Ed and Bet are at the hospital. He dislikes “city folk” (though after ASH, one can hardly call Nancy anything but “upper-middle-class suburban folk”) and trusts Nancy so little around the ranch that she’s not allowed to do anything without him hovering — except for be responsible for the horses’ nutrition and survival.

Not really circumspect, but I wouldn’t trust this 18-year-old who claims to be a friend of the family’s with anything fun either.

Gruff, rough, and difficult to deal with, Tex is set up as the “mean” suspect from almost the first moments of the game (though after Dave shows up at the airport in assless chaps), and he plays the part par excellence. Never is Tex any warmer than barely civil, and he doesn’t need to be “reformed” by the end of the game because, well, he’s just grumpy.

As a suspect, Tex is a pretty good one, and honestly my preferred suspect. Not because he’s mean or gruff or anything like that, but because it would have been a great analogue between him and Mary and Frances and Dirk (more on that below). While it would be boring to have the “mean suspect” be the culprit every time, at this point in the series (with only MHM boasting a “mean guy” culprit) it would honestly count as a subversion, and would add a bit of depth to his character beyond “mean guy with a soft spot for the women in his life”.

Shorty Thurmond is the cook at the Rawley’s ranch and is voiced by HER’s resident pinch-hitter and man of a thousand voices Jonah Von Spreecken. He’s a money-grubbing lazy cook with more interest in yelling at those helping him than in doing actual work.

Shorty, to no one’s surprise, is the culprit (what?? the get-rich-quick guy wanted to get rich quick????), and does make for a decent suspect in that you could say he’s “lazy” because he’s actually working hard to find the treasure. He’s creepy enough to set the player’s teeth on edge, but ultimately not sinister enough to really convince the player that he’s up to no good.

Dave Gregory, snatcher of panties and quickener of libidos, is not only the Figure of Sexual Awakening for fans who came in after FIN, but is also one of the canonical “love interests” for Nancy — aka, boys who show an interest in her while she alternately doesn’t or feels-like-she-shouldn’t reciprocate. Nancy can even not really tell him about Ned, for bonus “good girlfriend” points (points that really start appearing from TRN on). His aunt is the relative that Frances told about Dirk’s treasure, and so he’s been looking during his downtime on the ranch.

He’s also fairly smitten with Nancy to the point that he helps her the entire game, asking nothing else in return. But, since I’m not really commenting on realism right now (in any of its forms), I’ll let that one slide.

As a suspect, Dave doesn’t ever qualify. The game never sets him up to be suspected, his “gotcha” moment with Nancy is so piddling as to be inconsequential, and he aids and abets Nancy the entire time. It’s probably a good thing, honestly, as Tex and Shorty are set up from the start to be the most suspicious, but I do think it would have been better to at least play along with him being suspicious until the one-third mark, especially since Mary is such a non-player as well.

Rounding out our cast is Mary Yazzie, who sells art and stones near Shadow Ranch and is banging Tex like a drum in Secret. Her area of interest is in the Pueblo people, and has tried repeatedly to purchase some of the land of Shadow Ranch in order to, according to her, look for more petrified wood artifacts. Ed and Bet refuse to sell, however, which sets them at odds with Mary.

As a suspect, Mary isn’t fabulous. Other than her offers to buy part of Shadow Ranch (and her taste in men), there’s nothing sitting against her. The game doesn’t bother to really implicate her in anything, and she more serves a helping role (if not The Helping Role). Her presence does open up the game to include Native American themes and stories, but other that that Mary’s really only there to make the numbers fit.

While Mary is the only female suspect, she’s not the only woman in the cast, which includes Charleena, Frances, Aunt Bet, Bess, and George (of important/speaking roles, 6 females to 8 males, by my count, making this an average-sized cast).

The Favorite:

Charleena Purcell is a delight and a treasure here and one of a small number of reoccurring characters. I’m a sucker for author characters since they’re usually slightly unpleasant (and I value that in a character who gives information to a detective), and everything from being a great phone character to her voice acting is A+. Jonah Von Spreecken’s additional role as Charleena’s assistant should also get a mention here. Honestly, what can’t that man do?

A big — possibly the biggest — thing that HER gets so, so right in this game is the voice acting. While Lani is her usual early-game self (quasi-invested and missing some native inflection, but not yet the incredibly old-sounding voice that happens a bit further down the line), Rob Jones’ Joe Hardy, Jonah Von Spreecken (as mentioned above), Max Holechek’s Meryl Humber, and above all Gary Hoffman’s superlative Dirk Valentine elevate this game far above the sum of its parts.

It’s a very lucky thing that this game was released before the (misguided, in my estimation) feature that lets you skip dialogue, because if you could, I truly believe that SHA wouldn’t be half as memorable or well-beloved as it is. Hearing Dirk’s assurances and Meryl’s increasing sadness is far, far beyond anything that reading them could give you, and I honestly believe that HER knew this and planned accordingly.

Sure, it was more expensive to record that dialogue rather than simply read it, and additional voice actors had to be hired, and more time had to be spent — but the end result is the main takeaway from SHA, and that is to the game’s incredible benefit.

My favorite moment in the game, to no one’s surprise, then, is the reading of Dirk’s letters. It only takes a few sentences to get wholly invested in him Frances, and their love story. It’s the height of Americana to root for the outlaw of the Wild, Wild West, but it’s taken one step further with Dirk who has been given some of the best lines in any HER game.

It’s a simple moment, but effective, and it stays with me not only every time I play but even when it’s been a few years since I’ve cracked open the game.

My favorite puzzle is the horse-trivia-on-a-horse one, as it tests the player’s thoroughness in exploring and reading, and also is incredibly hilarious to see Nancy riding around a pen while an angry ranch hand spits questions at her like he’s investigating her for murder. It’s fun and side-splitting in its absurdity, and I do love good-natured absurdity.

The Un-Favorite:

For a book famous for introducing Bess and George, I can’t help but feel that it really was a missed opportunity not to include them more in this game. Sure, it helps Nancy to be on her own so that she can investigate without being hamstrung by anyone else, but this was a perfect opportunity to be able to play as another character for a while and to see more of Bess and George than witty puns and suspiciously prescient clues, so I will count this missed opportunity as a least favorite thing in the game.

*metal piece picked up* *metal piece put down* *metal piece picked up* need I say more??

My least favorite moment in the game is the “Heeeeere’s Shorty!” bad ending. It’s breathtakingly unnecessary, creepy as all get-out, and makes you stare at a Shorty face that looks like it was rendered with Windows 1 running on oatmeal for processing power.

My least favorite puzzle in the game isn’t actually the metal maze I mentioned above (though that would get an honorable mention, definitely) — it’s the arrowhead hunting. If you’re looking all along (and know to be looking all along), it’s not too tedious, but if you have the bad luck to miss one or two along the way, what follows is a half hour of pouring over every spot in every location to find them. Generally, my least favorite things in games tend to be those that are essential yet easily missable, and the arrowheads fit that bill exactly.

The Fix:

So how would I fix The Secret of Shadow Ranch?

First, I would honestly remove the Hardy Boys from the game. They don’t get the time they need to shine, and the game is busy enough to not need them. Move them to CUR and you get at least two characters I care about in that game.

As mentioned above, I would make the connection between Mary/Tex and Frances/Dirk clearer (rather than sub-sub-subtext) and switch him and Shorty’s position as the villain.

Make Shorty guilty of being exactly what is he is — a man obsessed with get quick rich schemes — and have some of the incidents be his fault (the snake is a good one to hand to him, as any cook in the desert on a ranch knows how to catch and cook snake) so that he has room to look for the treasure, but maybe stop him from finding a few key things (like the secrets in Dry Gulch) and take out his bank robber connections (which is easily the silliest part of the game). Maybe Tex uses him and slowly siphons off information that Shorty leaves lying around until he knows All.

Meanwhile, Tex is a gruff man who cares about his sister and his girlfriend and is thankful to the Rawley’s about his job…but he’s also a man who needs money to pay for his upcoming engagement/wedding to Mary Yazzie, who’s helping support his sister, who’s a bit angry that the Rawleys fired his sister, and who figures that if anyone can find a cowboy’s treasure, it’s another cowboy who knows the land like the back of his hand.

His expertise with horses makes it easy to coat one in phosphorus and safely release and get it back, his omnipresence around the ranch makes it easy to sabotage, and his natural reticence gives him a reason never to have an alibi — he just doesn’t like to be around people. Tex is, in fact, so perfectly set up to be the villain that it doesn’t feel like a twist that he’s not, it feels like a mistake.

For the finale, while Shorty chasing Nancy down is scary enough, the image of Tex doing so is even worse. This fix strengthens motive, adds multiple narratives, and spreads out the guilt enough to make most characters interesting. It would also give Mary more of a presence and add in the possibility of her being an accomplice (which I would love), and firmly sets Nancy at odds with three-fourths of the cast.

I’d also include Bess and George more heavily in the game. Since they handle the beginning of the Charleena Purcell line already, I’d have that whole storyline shifted over to them. You play as either Bess or George finding the novel, calling Nancy, and taking the lead to wheedle their way in past Charleena’s assistant (definitely a Bess-type job, but George attempting it would be hilarious with Bess whispering instructions) and get the information Nancy needs. The airport itself would be easy enough to limit to a small explorable area, and HER could even pass the contacting Ed and Bet to their actual nieces.

These changes would expand the game slightly and add to the runtime, but it would also help SHA to be even more of a landmark game and to be an appropriate end to the era of Expanded Games.

#nancy drew #nancy drew games #clue crew #secret of shadow ranch #nancy drew meta #SHA #my meta #long post

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