After the continue point, the game has a cutscene where the graphics take a nosedive quality-wise. I recorded this scene twice: once while I was doing the last update and again when I came back to start this update.
When I say I don’t play ahead, the exception is stuff like this where I can’t quit out of the game. The reason for this is that if I leave the game via alt-tab and kill the process, it crashes and causes me to not be able to get back to my desktop, even using the process manager. I think that’s a side effect of the wrapper plugin.
I think the reason it looks so terrible is because this is all prerendered and compressed to hell.
Ever since Gabriel confirmed that no one in the tour group matches the vampires that attacked him on the train, I’ve had a hard time figuring out what the fuck Emilio’s deal is. My first theory was that he was a vampire but through some bullshit plot device was able to go out in the sun.
There’s that fucking shirt again! Someone find me that goddamn shirt! Seriously, I’ve spent hours looking for it at this point and haven’t found anything even close to being the war crime that shirt is.
This is Chateau de Serres. I’m not sure if it was even on the map when we were playing as Gabriel.
The Chateau is divided into three buildings. This first one is the garage, which is locked.
The second one is the wine tasting room.
And third is the main house. We’re going into the wine tasting room first.
Is it just me, or does that guy look a lot like Guybrush Threepwood? We could talk to everyone here, but the only person that will give us points is in the back.
For some reason, Madeline REALLY does not want Mosely talking to Grace. She does this as soon as we walk by him, and will rebuke us if we try to go anywhere near him.
The person we need to talk to is Arnaud.
Montreaux, huh? His name is on the sign above the wine tasting room.
Outside, there is.. one other place we can go. It’s hard to see because this ENTIRE LOCATION absolutely hates the camera but there’s a little archway that leads back behind the house.
As soon as we get back here, the music changes and Grace will remark that she can hear a baby crying. If you move the camera, it gets louder and louder as you approach that cellar door.. which is locked.
What we have to do is climb. This entire area might as well have been a cutscene. In fact, about half this segment probably could’ve been a cutscene.
Now we’re higher up, but we still aren’t in the house. The vines on the side of the house will be familiar to anyone who has played Ocarina of Time.
Finally, we reach the house.
Right around the corner is.. oh shit, I think we’ve just hit plot.
I didn’t do this in the most optimal order, but from here on out we’re in for some Resident Evil style bullshit.
Graphics!
Someone is coming, and we need to hide. If you don’t know what you’re doing, I’d imagine it’s probably pretty easy to get caught here.
Right across the room is an armoire. That’ll do.
I feel like half of this game so far has been sneaking into places, and the other half is hiding in and/or behind stuff. And.. those look like cult robes.
Oh man. If that’s really the trunk that the baby was in, then this motherfucker is ABSOLUTELY a vampire.
He’s no dipshit either. Grace doesn’t close the armoire all the way, and he immediately notices. We are SO fucked-
Wait, what? Is he.. won’t that kill him?
What the shit? He HAS to be a vampire! There is no fucking way this guy has a baby in his creepy-ass mansion and he’s not a vampire!
With Montreaux gone, we can check the.. is that a baby?
Oh, it’s just an ugly low-polycount mess. Crisis averted. Let’s go take another look at those cult robes.
It’s really too bad that Grace doesn’t know that Buchelli is probably with the Vatican. A priest would probably come in handy right about now.
We’ll just use Grace’s notebook on that.
We can now go over to where Montreaux entered the room from and go downstairs.
The study is even worse than the rest of the house camera-wise. In fact, there’s several things we need to do in here that basically amount to pixel hunts. First, you’ll notice that desk right next to Grace.
The desk has a drawer in it, but it’s almost impossible to see. This is about as close as you can get the camera. What you have to do is use the “camera inspect” button to change the view.
I spent a good five minutes trying to figure this shit out. Note to the developers, the camera should never be a puzzle. Anyway, we can see the drawer now.
Unlike Arnaud’s drawer, this one doesn’t have any camera fuckery to it. Now, your first instinct might be to read the book or look at it. WRONG, IDIOT! You want to fingerprint it first. I didn’t care to find out myself, but the guide I read claimed this is missable if you touch the book before fingerprinting it.
So, here’s where my new theory about Emilio comes into play. It’s kind of a long shot, but.. you’ll notice in the book, the last item on the page is the “Wandering Jew”. I happened to find the entry for the Wandering Jew in SIDNEY back when we first used it as Gabriel to look up vampires.
Emilio has a picture of Jesus in his room despite Grace thinking it makes no sense. He also doesn’t seem to leave fingerprints, and Sidney doesn’t seem to know where he’s from. My theory when I saw this was that Emilio might be the Wandering Jew. It.. kinda makes sense, given that he’s probably not a vampire due to the whole being out in the sun thing. Unless the game is bullshitting that and the vampires have found a way to go outside.
If we flip the page, we get.. this. I couldn’t read it clearly because the game stretches the 640x480 window to 2560x1080 on my monitor, but in the screenshot I can see it pretty clearly. It looks like someone is tracking an immortal.. or at least someone they believe to be one. The only problem is that this can’t be the Wandering Jew, because it starts before the birth of Jesus.
Grace won’t even copy the stuff down into her notebook.
The next thing we need to do is move the desk chair over to the painting. Grace will say that she sees something weird in its eyes.
The problem here is that if you miss the handful of pixels that represent the left eye, Grace will get off the chair.
That guy in the painting.. he kinda looks like Gabriel.
Next, we need to zoom in on the desk. There’s a button underneath the desk that is a second pixel hunt to find.
There are five statues in this room, and each one is now shooting a laser out of its forehead. It’s almost like the developers played Resident Evil.
What we want to do is turn each of the statue heads to the left once, causing the lasers to form a pentagram.
This opens up a second staircase in the floor.
This is the chateau’s wine cellar, and it’s a giant maze. Why it’s a giant maze in a game where you control a free-floating camera, I have no idea.
Well, there’s no baby here. I don’t know how exactly Grace managed to mistake the noise that machine is making for a baby.
There’s a little old lady managing the press.
The last part of that translates to “So young, so pretty, so delicious!”
Google Translate translates this as “Blue Apples”, but I think she’s probably talking about the grapes.
This seems more like a misunderstanding than this lady being some kind of Bloodborne-style monstrosity.
Grace somehow escapes that room, probably through the hatchway we saw earlier.
I feel like you could replace Mosely and Grace with the genome soldiers from MGS1 and this would still work.
I have to wonder. Let’s say that old lady was one of those monstrosities. Would she in fact be able to bring herself to bite Mosely through that shirt? I feel like wearing that shirt makes you biteproof.
Meanwhile, back in extremely compressed cutscene land..
Wilkes looks like a lego man in this shot. Like his head is just a modular piece attached to a generic body.
Well, that’s.. something. Dunno what kind of vampire would bother cutting a slice out of the neck though.
In case you can’t tell from the poor graphics, these two guys are the Scots we ran into at the church and again at Larry Chester’s house a few updates ago.
And with that, another time segment comes to an end. I’m glad I got this one in before the weekend was over, since now we’ve got something approaching an actual plot - just as our score starts to reach the halfway mark.
Points Breakdown:
Previous Update: 342 points
Talked to Arnaud in the Wine Tasting Room: 2 points (344)
Climbed up to the second floor of the house: 6 points (350)
Opened the trunk: 2 points (352)
Hid in the armoire: 2 points (354)
Found the doll in the trunk: 2 points (356)
Took notes on the cult robes: 2 points (358)
Got Montreaux’s fingerprint: 2 points (360)
Read the Immortals book: 2 points (362)
Moved the chair and examined the painting: 4 points (366)
Solved the laser puzzle: 7 points (373)
Opened the door to the wine press room: 2 points (375)
Talked to the creepy old lady: 5 points (380)
Total: 380/965 points (39.3%)
Next time, we’ll probably go investigate those dead bodies.