Rodney King's Quest - Let's Dunk on Police Quest: Open Season

[Timrod]

“There were a lot of people at the company that were horribly, horribly unhappy… that Ken and management would capitalize on someone as controversial and dark as Daryl Gates. And Police Quest 4 got [a] different name inside the company. We started calling it Rodney King’s Quest.” - Josh Mandel, former Director of Product Design, Sierra.

Police Quest: Open Season (aka Police Quest 4) is the final game in the Police Quest franchise, developed and published by Sierra and released in November of 1993. It is, as a whole, probably one of the worst games ever developed - a unique kind of bad that I don’t think could ever exist again due to the emergence of social media and online games journalism.

I’d like to start by reading the back of the CD case, because it has more lies and omissions per square inch than almost any other piece of marketing material I have ever seen.

Someone’s on a killing spree, and it’s up to you to solve a string of seemingly random murders.

“Created by the nation’s most experienced cop. Retired Police Chief Daryl Gates’ highly acclaimed police drama Police Quest (R): Open Season lets you taste firsthand the life of a cop in America’s toughest city.”

Open Season was a game made to sell on controversy, and to say that Daryl Gates “retired” from the Los Angeles Police Department, where he had been Chief of Police since 1978, is… a bit of an understatement. Daryl Gates “retired” in June of 1992 because the City of Los Angeles was about to pass a ballot measure that would have forced him out of office after several years of near-constant scandals - the biggest of which was the LA Riots of 1992 in which 63 people died and nearly 3,400 were injured.

That’s not the only lie, either. The second one is that Daryl Gates had almost nothing to do with this game. It was mostly written by Tammy Dargan, a producer whose primary experience before being hired to work on this game was as a producer on America’s Most Wanted, which as we all know is a hallmark of excellence in writing (it isn’t). Daryl Gates was basically there for name recognition and the controversy using it was going to stir up.

Let’s keep going, shall we?

“Track a criminal through the streets of L.A. and pray you find him before he finds you. Special CD features include exciting arcade sequences, a professional cast speaking over 10,000 lines of dialogue, and a “Making of Police Quest: Open Season” video.”

First, the “arcade” sequences suck, as we’ll see later. They weren’t even good for 1993. That’s not really the salient point here, however.

Lie number three is actually that there are other videos on the disc that aren’t just the “Making Of” video. You see, Sierra also recorded a series of video interviews with Daryl Gates… in which he calls for making alcohol illegal again and rails against the legalization of pot, where he insists the police did nothing wrong in responding to the 1992 riots, and tries to wallpaper over the beating of Rodney King, which occurred on his watch.

“[That was] one incident that did not demand the kind of attention that it got.” - Daryl F. Gates, on the beating of Rodney King.

On top of all this, though, Open Season is a really shitty point and click. I’m going to give this game a thorough dunking on. Expect a very deep dive: I’ve done a lot of research in my four attempts at starting an LP of this game, and I want to get this done before more of them go offline.

[Timrod]

Update 1: A Little Cocaine, as a Treat

: Welcome to Open Season. There’s an intro video that doesn’t really do much that I’m going to skip. This is the first screen you get after starting a new game.

: Our first order of business is to turn the game to Text mode - unfortunately, you can’t have both the voices and the subtitles on at the same time.

: I also turn the volume down because the background music on this screen sounds like a worse rendition of the Mansion Basement theme from Resident Evil: Director’s Cut.

: With that done, the first thing we want to do in terms of actual gameplay is open our inventory. We currently have nine items. I’ll give you the description for each.

: It’s your wallet.

: It’s your Beretta 92F.

: Daryl Gates had what I’d describe as a fetish for guns and violence. In the Vice article about this game, they mention an LA Times article in which he suggested allowing the police to shoot drug users.

: In fact, one thing you’ll learn pretty quickly about Daryl Gates is that his solution to almost everything was either “shoot it” or “beat it to death”.

: Loaded and ready for action.

: Spare change.

: These are your car, office, and home keys.

: Department issued handcuffs.

: Your department issued memorandum book and pencil.

: This is your Parker Center identification card.

: I skipped the badge on purpose - the first action we do in the game is examine it, which is a source of points.

: We can see that our character (whose name is John Carey) has badge number 612, which we’ll need later.

: You see the two guys - the one by the phone pole being questioned by a cop, and the other one standing in front of the fence? This is the game’s first possible point of failure.

: They will stay there for something like a minute and then leave the area unless we show them the badge. I believe this leads to a dead man walking scenario if you don’t talk to them.

: “Hello, I’m Detective Carey, LAPD. Would you mind answering a question or two?”

: I’ll be using a picture of Daryl Gates for the protagonist’s lines. In this case, this is talking to the guy by the phone pole.

: I will also be using Tammy Dargan’s photo for all civilian dialog. I’m doing this because I don’t believe a single person of color worked on this game, and because I want you to see who’s really saying this racist bullshit.

: “No shirr… I mean, yes shirr, I’ll answer ya…”

: “What is your name, sir?”

: “Jack. Two Jack.”

: I should mention that the voiceacting for this part sounds… very off. I’m pretty sure it’s because the voiceactors were (correctly) phoning this shit in for a paycheck.

: I am also transcribing all lines of dialog, ESPECIALLY those of Black characters, exactly as they are written in the game’s subtitles.

: "Sir, did you see any unusual activity, or unfamiliar cars in the neighborhood?’

: “I hear, hear shots… fast, like, pop, pop, pop, pop.”

: “What time might you have heard these shots, sir?”

: “I’ wuz… it, pop, pop, pop, pop… I just hear them shots, I wuz scare’.”

: “Any other information you could give me, sir?”

: “Pop, pop, pop. I kno’ dis sound, it killin’ the chil’ren.”

: I’d like to pause for a minute and continue my last thought. Daryl Gates, as I mentioned before, was a virulent racist. The fact that the Black characters in this game sounds so off-putting is almost indicative of his worldview - Daryl Gates really seemed to think that people of color were some kind of alternate species instead of, you know, people.

“It seems to me that… we may be finding that in some blacks when it [a police chokehold] is applied, the veins or the arteries do not open as fast as they do on normal people.” - Daryl Gates, on why he believed Black people were more likely to die from choke holds.

: We can then use the notebook on both men, which gives us a few points. Let’s show the badge to the other man now, the one by the fence.

: “Hello, I’m Detective Carey, LAPD. Would you mind answering a question or two?”

: “Wha’ever, man. I’ jest hangin’.”

: “Let’s start with your name. What is it and do you live in the neighborhood, or are you just visiting?”

: Has any real person ever talked like this?

: “Well, Raymond, if this is your neighborhood, then you must know what goes on around here. What happened here tonight? You see anything unusual? Maybe a different car, or some folks from another neighborhood?”

: “Ain’t seen nor heard nothin’. Jest out fo’ some fresh LA air.”

: You can probably imagine why people wouldn’t want to talk to the LAPD, but in case you can’t, I have a story about what happened when people did.

: In August of 1988, some homeowners near 39th and Dalton streets in LA called the LAPD about a gang that had taken over their street and was using it as a hotspot for drug deals. The LAPD determined that the drug dealers were based out of four apartment buildings nearby.

: In response, the police got a warrant, and then went against their own protocol by sending a team of 88 officers and exactly one sergeant to execute a drug raid. [Source: Christopher Commission Report, pp. 38-39]. The small army of cops tore the buildings apart, while doing shit like spraying graffiti and arresting and/or beating the residents there - when the LAPD later sent investigators to survey the damage, the investigators documented 127 different instances of vandalism done entirely by the cops.

: To no one’s surprise, the raid was totally ineffective. None of the drug dealers they were after lived in those apartments, and no one was ever charged with a crime. The raid cost the city $4 million in property damage claims and legal settlements with the residents who had been falsely arrested and/or beaten. The raid also left 22 people homeless.

: Our next action is to use the notebook on the wall here to “record the symbol”, which appears to be an incredibly bad MS Paint job.

: Next, we need to use the keys on the trunk of the car.

: This reveals Carey’s homicide kit (the box) and shotgun. That seems like a really dumb place to store a shotgun, especially one that is presumably loaded - if it were to go off, it’s going to blast you right in the kidneys.

: I know people will say that modern guns are specifically designed not to go off just from being jolted or bumped, but do you really want to take that chance?

: We grab the homicide kit even though we all know if this was Daryl Gates responding to a crime scene he’d be cradling that shotgun and waiting to shoot someone with it.

: A good game would have made it so that the homicide kit is one item, and you simply use it any time you’d need it. This game makes us open it up to reveal a second inventory full of shit.

: The worst part is that there are screens where you need an item in the kit, and if you don’t already have it selected you have to back out, go into the kit, pick out the item, and then go back to the screen you were on.

: The baggies hold evidence found at crime scenes.

: You know, evidence. Like all that cocaine in the evidence lockup.

: 24 inch prybar… very handy.

: I saw this and immediately went “I bet real homicide kits do not have a prybar in them” and I was absolutely right - I found a couple of companies that sell (extremely overpriced) evidence kits to the police, and not a single one had a prybar in it.

: I mean, unless this is meant to be a homicide kit in the sense that it’s a kit you’d bring to commit a homicide, in which case I suppose that would make sense. I imagine Daryl Gates would probably have one of those.

: The jar is used to collect samples when SID is not called for.

: SID stands for Special Investigation Division, and is simply a fancy name for the people who do evidence collection at crime scenes.

: Rubber gloves used against infection or decontamination.

: Department issued 9 volt anodized aluminum flashlight.

: Chalk, made in the USA.

: The putty knife is made in the USA.

: Now that we’ve seen all of our items, we can finally deal with the dead body we’ve walked straight past at least twice without even looking at.

: It looks less like homicide to me and more like he was posing for the cover of a romance novel and fell asleep partway through.

: Our next action is going to be taking the chalk out of the homicide kit and using it twice, once on the cigarette and a second time on the body.

: Additionally, we need to use the notebook on the body and on the cigarette.

: Finally, we need to open the dumpster. I should probably put a gore warning here, but honestly it’s a bad photoshop job.

: I, uh… I don’t know what this crime scene is supposed to tell us.

: Clearly the kid was doing the “Walk Like an Egyptian” dance and then… I guess his neck ran into a really bad photoshop job?

: We use the notebook on the corpse, but nothing else.

: Next, we need to talk specifically to this guy. Now, here’s the problem with this. Let’s say instead of talking to this specific guy, you talk to the person standing next to the dumpster.

: If you do that, the scene ends immediately and you’re pushed on to the next one without getting an item, which I believe is a dead man walking scenario - not because it’s meant to be, but because this game is a bug-ridden mess.

: “Officer Woodbury, I’m taking over as lead investigator.”

: “Yes sir, Detective Carey. I have my crime scene log for you.”

: “Were you first on the scene?”

: “Yes sir. Officer Allen and I were on patrol, he was driving. As we passed the alley, I looked to my right. I saw the body. We radioed it in, stopped, set up the perimeter.”

: “I didn’t know it was Hickman until we got up to the body. I can tell you, sir, I was shocked. He was the last person I expected to see. He was a fine officer.”

: What the hell kind of writing is this? You just gave him a written report that probably has all this shit in it! Why is he even asking?

: There is some alternate dialogue if you talk to Woodbury before you open the dumpster that happens once you open it.

: “Detective Carey, have you found something?”

: “Officer Woodbury, when we’re finished here, I want the neighborhood canvassed to see if anyone’s missing a child, but has not yet reported it.”

: We can talk to Chester now in order to finish this area.

: This brings up a good 30-second long sequence of Chester taking photos of the crime scene. I should mention that the character sprites are photos of actors compressed to hell and back.

: There’s another sequence of a couple of guys coming from the bottom of the screen to bag the body up that takes an additional 10 or 15 seconds.

: We’re now at Parker Center, which used to be the headquarters for the LAPD until they moved out in 2009. LA’s city government tried to re-purpose it a few times, but ultimately demolished it in 2019.

: Of course, what that leaves out is that it was nearly burned to the ground in the 1992 riots.

"From past experience with riotous behavior I doubted anything substantial would happen until much later, or possibly the next day. Like the police, it takes rioters time to gear up, too." - Daryl Gates, as recounted in Official Negligence by former Washington Post journalist Lou Cannon, page 300.

: Let me establish a timeline here. At 3:00 PM on April 29, 1992, the judge overseeing the trial of the four LAPD officers who were caught on tape beating Rodney King while he was on the ground reads the “not guilty on all charges” verdict.

: By 5:00, shit is getting bad. There are reports coming in over the LAPD’s radio about riots, and people being attacked by mobs. There is a growing crowd outside Parker Center calling to burn it down and fighting the police, who were vastly underprepared… due to Daryl Gates, of course.

In fact, Gates made no attempt to justify the decision. He told me that attending the fundraiser was “a dumb thing to do” and acknowledged as much in the afterword to the paperback edition of his memoirs. - Lou Cannon, Official Negligence, Page 301.

: According to Lou Cannon, Daryl Gates spent around 3 hours shut in his office in Parker Center, and then at 6:30 made the brave move… of getting into his car and driving several miles away. But wait, it gets even better.

: The reason he left? To attend a fundraiser - specifically, a fundraiser dedicated to defeating City Charter Amendment F - which would have forced him out of office if it passed.

: I’m going to use the SIU director from Persona 5 for this guy, because I can.

: “As you know, you’ve been assigned the lead investigator on this case and I’m going to be turning to you for answers.”

: It’s always a sign of good writing when a character states something, and then two minutes later another character re-states the exact same thing that both the audience and the character are already aware of, especially when it’s prefaced by an “As you know”.

: Tammy Dargan makes Katsura Hashino and post-nutjob Satomi Tadashi look competent by comparison.

: “I’m going to ask you to put aside your personal feelings, deal with the investigation in a professional manner. If you don’t think you’re up to it, I want to know now.”

: Also always a good sign for your career when this guy, who you’ve presumably worked under for years, doesn’t seem to trust you enough that he doesn’t need to remind you of this shit.

: “Neither you, nor the public, nor the department can withstand not knowing the truth. I want you to comb that neighborhood. I want every rock turned over and every person interviewed. Remember, Hickman was not the only fatality tonight. The family of that boy is grieving also.”

: This is probably more of a thought than Daryl Gates ever gave to an actual non-white person. At the risk of this LP turning into nothing but stories about him, there was one in the Vice article involving two LAPD officers shooting a Black woman shortly after Gates took over as the police chief. They then handcuffed her as she lay on the ground dying.

: His response? The officers were the real victims, because they had to shoot someone. That woman’s name was Eulia Love, and she was murdered by the police in front of her kids.

: “Yes, sir.”

: “For your information, the boy has been identified as one Bobby Washington. As for Hickman, I think there is something you should know. Maybe you already do, but here it is straight. Hickman’s lieutenant, Jim Varaz, informed me that Hickman was having trouble with stress. Trouble at home.”

: “Varaz told me that Hickman had been in a fragile mind-set, that working undercover was getting to him. You know, the violence of the streets can get to anyone. I’m not knocking Hickman. I just want you to know how the department viewed his current capacity.”

: The way this guy talks sounds robotic as fuck. Like, I’m imagining this guy’s voice as Peter Weller doing the Robocop voice, only with less emotion somehow. I might have to do a playthrough with the voiceacting on so I can see what this actually sounds like.

: “OK, Carey, you know what you need to do. Go out there and do it. Find who killed Hickman, find who killed the Washington youth. Any questions?”

: “No, Lieutenant.”

: “All right then, get to work. And ah, Carey, when you see Katherine, please extend my deepest sympathies.”

: I have no idea if this is a real shot of Parker Center, or if it’s a set. If this is what it really looked like, I can see why people would want to burn it down - and also why they probably weren’t successful. This building looks like it’s easily 80% asbestos by volume.

: I feel like this is a bit toned-down from how actual cops working in the LAPD would have spoken, which probably would have involved a lot more swearing and also dropping the n-word every sentence.

: Normally, I’m not going to bother showing off every action for every character or object, but you have to see what this guy’s name is.

: Given that the guy on the other side of Carey looks like a clone of this guy, I think we can safely say ACAB - all cops are bottoms.

: I like to think the nametag is there because John Carey is a complete idiot who can’t find his desk without a map.

: I looked it up, and Form 3.14.00 is in fact the form for a “Follow-Up Investigation”. I was kind of hoping to find a PDF of one so I could fill it out myself as a gimmick, but didn’t have any luck.

: We then need to use the notebook with the 3.14.00 form (the one on the right).

: We can then click up here to find a memo from Lieutenant Block - that was the dipshit we were just talking to, the one who is probably a robot.

: What’s annoying about this is that we have several different inventory items that are all pieces of paper, and thus have a very similar icon.

: Next up is examining this drawer, which has a photo we need to look at.

: This is kind of confusing, so let me explain. The top part, “Gunner”, is Carey’s password to log in to the department’s computer. The bottom part is a phone number. Let’s see where that goes.

: I’m going to need to explain CRASH, because it’s yet another of Daryl Gates’s pet projects. CRASH stands for “Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums”, and on paper was the LAPD’s anti-gang unit. There was a CRASH unit in every police station in LA when this game was made.

: In reality, CRASH was basically a gang run by the cops and was dissolved in March 2000 after a series of embarrassing scandals. PBS did a very good series on this in the early 00s, most of which is still online.

: The best story from that is about the CRASH cop who had been stealing cocaine from the evidence lockup for years, replacing it with Bisquick, and then selling the cocaine on the streets. He didn’t get caught until he took six pounds at once.

: By the way, that drug raid I mentioned before? The one that cost LA $4 million in legal settlements? That was a CRASH operation.

: There are a bunch of references to CRASH in the games made in the early 2000s - Saints Row 3 had the STAG unit that is based on them, Dead to Rights (Hi, Slowbeef!) had the GAC unit, and I believe the villains in GTA San Andreas were outright part of a CRASH unit.

: “Hello, this is Detective Carey, over at Major Crimes, Homicide. Is Lieutenant Varaz there?”

: Why would he need to specify he’s from “major crimes”? Wouldn’t just “homicide” be enough? I mean, it’s not like this is The Silver Case where the Heinous Crimes Unit is a hit squad.

: We get points for doing this, and in an earlier version of the game, there was a bug where every time you dialed the CRASH unit, you’d get 3 points added to your score.

: I imagine a cop who did nothing all day except bug CRASH on the phone would technically be the best cop because not only are they not doing anything productive, they’re also stopping CRASH from raiding the evidence locker for cocaine.

: I mean, why did you think the homicide kit had all those plastic bags in it? It’s for sneaking a little cocaine, as a treat.

: We then need to give All Cops are Bottoms the 3.14.00 form we filled out and the crime scene report we got in the alley. This is followed up by me grabbing a second 3.14 form off-screen because we’re going to need it later.

: Now it’s time to use the computer.

: The server’s name is a reference to Sonny Bonds, the protagonist of the first three Police Quest games. He briefly shows up as an instructor in one of the SWAT games.

: Those games were mostly about grooming a sex worker into becoming Sonny’s wife, which… yeah, not great. There’s a part in Police Quest 3 where she’s in the hospital and you have to adjust her medication because obviously a cop would know better than any doctor how medicine works.

: We have to go into the Gang Information section. I did try going into the thing on hate crimes and typing Rodney King’s name in hoping I’d get personally chided by Daryl Gates.

: I see the cops are committing crimes against punctuation in addition to stealing cocaine from the evidence locker, robbing banks, and shooting each other.

: The game takes five screens to fit in a paragraph of text one sentence at a time, so I’ll quotebox it.

Rude Boys Get Bail
This symbol is found on buildings near to where the gang has committed a crime.

RBGB is a violent South Central gang led by Ragtopp Spiff. It is believed that Spiff is an alias as no social security number exists under his name.

: This is the second lamest gangster name I’ve ever heard.

Gang activity centers around gun trafficking. This includes both imported and stolen goods. The gang has claimed responsibility for many violent and torturous deaths. This gang should be approached with caution. It is believed that this gang has international connections. Various members of the gang are suspected of being involved in several unsolved murders and disappearances that have taken place over the past few years.

: …Hold on a second. Why would they need to “import” guns? This is the United States in 1993, guns are easier to get than a mortgage and the assault weapons ban won’t pass for another year.

: We’re pretty much done with this update - the only thing left to do is go to the gun range and I’ll handle that next update. However, there’s another gang entry here that is… pretty racist, honestly.

Snub’s
Symbol found on stores after they have been a victim of a robbery.

This is an all girl hispanic gang. Very violent. The name is derived from the snub-nosed handguns all the girls carry. To enter and stay in the gang a girl must rob at gun point a retail business. Many of these girls are unwed mothers and receive public assistance. Targeted area: Echo Park.

: First off, holy fuck could this be any more racist and misogynist? Second, I’d like to point out that this is not based on any of the actual gangs that were in Echo Park at the time. You know why?

: Well, here’s a list of a few of them. One of them (the Diamond Street Locos) had a side business protecting the LGBT community in Echo Park in the 80s.

: Sure, there were fights and murders, but for the most part, there’s no Ronald Reagan “super-killers” wandering the streets with guns and blasting people like it’s Grand Theft Auto.

: Next time, we’ll do the shooting range. I’m pretty sure there will be another Daryl Gates story almost immediately.

[Timrod]

Update 2: Yo, I Be Fly Today

: Now that we’re done dicking around in the office, we can head out of the building and into even more of Daryl Gates’s bullshit wonderland.

: Here’s another shit game design thing. This screen makes it seem like there’s two different exits… only both go to the same place, rendering this entire screen pointless.

: If you go down the left-side exit from the last screen, you instead wind up on the other side closer to the buttons, so technically going left is speedrun tech.

: I’d like to point out that while this game does have a page on Speedrun.com, no one has ever submitted a run of it. I hope no one ever does.

: We have to call the elevator for some more confusing bullshit. We want to go down to the lobby - I didn’t even bother trying the other options and I’m not sure half of them actually go anywhere.

: We can optionally use Carey’s change on the vending machine to get a candy bar. This doesn’t do anything and isn’t worth points.

: Any kid who grew up in the 90s will recognize that logo instantly. DARE (short for Drug Abuse Resistance Education) was another Daryl Gates program.

: DARE was a school-based program dedicated to promoting abstinence-only education about drug use. It usually involved a cop coming to the school to tell kids about how so much as looking at pot would kill you.

: I had to do DARE when I was in school, and I remember even then that everything they were saying seemed really suspect - one of their key lines of bullshit involved pot being a “gateway drug” that inevitably turned anyone who so much as touched it into a heroin or coke addict.

: Spoiler alert: I have in fact touched pot (never smoked it, but had a college roommate who did and got the shit everywhere) and have not morphed into a coke addict.

: This is the message you get for touching the poster, and… pfft. DARE was not only completely ineffective, it was also a GIGANTIC waste of money.

: See, what you have to keep in mind is that DARE revolved around cops - cops who were billing their time doing the DARE program as overtime. One paper from 2001 estimated the cost of police overtime alone at somewhere between $537 million and $635 million per year, and PBS estimated the total cost per year at nearly $600 million in 1998.

: What’s especially infuriating is that DARE still exists as far as I know, even though it has been documented by study after study to be totally ineffective. If we assume that the cost of the program remained constant from 1993 until today, that’s $18.6 billion (probably more than that) in police overtime alone.

: Daryl Gates died in 2010, so that means he’s managed to waste some $8 billion from beyond the grave.

: Oh no, it’s Daryl Gates’s worst enemy: THE NEWS MEDIA.

: This scene makes no sense if you know anything about Parker Center. Carey wouldn’t leave the building through the front door. Those cars you see in the background? That’s the visitor parking lot.

: The people who worked at Parker Center used an underground parking garage which was attached to the main building.

: “Heading up the Hickman investigation is veteran homicide detective John Carey. Carey is best known for solving the murder of Lane Blair, the stunning actress who featured in many of the action-adventure Straight Shots movies.”

: “Detective Carey has been unavailable for comment and all requests for a formal statement from the department have been denied. However, we have been told by an unofficial source that the department is looking at this as a gang killing.”

: No TV reporter is going to report on a murder by standing outside the police department. They might get some B-roll there, but they’re not going to report from outside the police department. They’re going to report from outside the crime scene, preferably from inside if the cops are gone.

: The reason is obvious: the cops aren’t going to answer shit if you have a camera with you. Hell, I had to call a police department recently to get a report on a car crash (for work) and they were stonewalling me on shit that is supposed to be a matter of public record.

: You also would not see a reporter saying “an unofficial source”. There are essentially two levels of anonymous sources in journalism. The first is called “background” and sounds like this:

: “An officer in the LAPD with knowledge of the investigation told KTLA that officers in the Rampart station frequently stole cocaine and other drugs from the evidence locker.”

: The second is essentially full anonymity and sounds like this:

: “A source with knowledge of the investigation told KTLA that Daryl Gates had at one point attempted to freebase the cocaine in the evidence locker, only to wind up with a very dry pancake.”

: There is a third level, which is going fully off the record, but that’s technically not a source because you can’t use or attribute that information.

: Finally, you wouldn’t see the LAPD “refuse to issue a formal statement”. Their PR person is going to tell you that they don’t comment on ongoing investigations. This will happen 100% of the time, and that’s what you report. The only reason people call is to see if the PR person fucks up and leaks something.

: “Detective Carey, would you care to make a statement concerning the murder of Officer Hickman?”

: “No comment.”

: The reporter will block us if we try to move past her, which is again not something a journalist would actually do, because again - they all know the cops aren’t going to say shit.

: To progress, we have to push the reporter out of the way - which is the way Daryl Gates would handle this situation (he’d probably also punch her) and is also the wrong way to handle it.

: After leaving Parker Center, we get the world map. Our list of possible destinations includes Hickman’s house (in Area 11), the Morgue (in Area 3) and the alley from the start of the game (Area 12), but we want to go to the police academy. It’s time for the gun range.

: Let me explain what a “bonus shoot” is. Bonus shooting is a thing the LAPD actually does where you’re given 30 rounds to shoot targets and get a pay bump depending on your score.

: I wish my desk job offered something like that only with golf, because I am Happy Gilmore level dangerous with a driver in my hand.

: The first thing we need to do is pick up Form 13.5.1, which as far as I can tell is not a real LAPD form.

: Carey fills it out automatically, which… what was the purpose of making me do this? There’s no challenge here, other than clicking around until you find the form - I think the guy behind the desk will tell you to fill one out if you haven’t.

: In return, he gives us a box of 9mm ammo. Let’s just take that…

: This may or may not be entirely bullshit, I can’t really tell. I could not find a single source anywhere about cops having to pay for ammo except for two circumstances: if they’re using their own gun, or if they’re using a gun that isn’t the standard department carry (some departments, for instance, offer the option to carry a .45 instead of a 9mm but you have to pay for the .45 ammo).

: It may be, however, that we have to pay because we’re not here for the qualification (which we have to come back for later, regrettably).

: He also gives us some ear protection, which we can’t put on immediately for some reason.

: Welcome to the uh… “exciting” “arcade” sequences.

: You go through four “phases” of targets at different distances. The goal is to hit them as many times as possible, which seems… kinda counterproductive.

: The goal is to aim for the white dot in the middle, but I’m gamer-pilled and forced to go for headshots.

: I get a little over 310 points, which would be enough to be a “marksman” and get $4 a day in extra pay. The City of Los Angeles can feel free to get in touch with me to pay me my $4 stipend.

: For extra “realism”, you occasionally have to reload your gun in the inventory by clicking the box of bullets on it, because that’s how a gun works. You just kinda dump a box of bullets on your gun and it reloads. That’s just science.

: Our next destination is the morgue, which has a lot of optional dialog in it. In fact, we only need to go in here for two things and there is a screen that is entirely skippable.

: By the way, I checked, and the address on that isn’t current - the Coroner is actually at 1102 North Mission Road.

: Quick shout-out to this kid, who I imagine is in some kind of necromancy club. That kid knows how to summon a skeleton. I can just tell by looking at him.

: What IS at 1104 North Mission Road is the County Medical Examiner, which is in a different building. Here it is, for reference:

: If I was writing this, the receptionist would be desperately trying to pretend she didn’t notice Carey, the way the people at Sierra did when Daryl Gates was around.

: “Hello, Sherry. I’d like to see Deputy Nobles. Is he available?”

: Boy, I sure do love pointless busy work in games.

: "How can you tell when someone’s been choked to death instead of by accidental ligature strangulation?’

: “I don’t know.”

: “By occluded blood vessels and thyroid fracture!”

: This feels like a Harvester cutscene. I feel like Steve from Harvester was more of a protagonist than Carey is.

: What we’re here for is… you see those little brown bumps on top of the counter behind the coroner?

: These are the envelopes containing the belongings of the two people who died in the alley at the start of the game, and are in fact the only reason we need to be here.

: The one for Hickman is identical but has a “BH” on the envelope.

: What I’ll do now is summarize the optional dialogue. There’s a bunch of questions we can ask and the coroner will just go “I dunno”.

: “Sam, have you completed Hickman’s autopsy? What are your preliminary findings?”

: “The autopsy is complete. Beyond the surface evidence, I found a ruptured gastrointestinal tract. Fluids were sampled and I’m having toxicology tests run, including all known poisons.”

: I’m not a coroner, but I’m pretty sure this isn’t how autopsies work.

: “Sam, will you go over the physical marks on the body?”

: “Yes. There are the two injection marks in the upper left arm, the burn marks to the face and upper torso, the epoxied eyes, the missing index finger, and then there are restraint marks.”

: “The restraint marks appear where you would most expect to find them, on the ankles and the wrists. At these points I found fiberous [sic] material. All very consistent with what you would expect to find at a torture scene.”

: “Sam, do you have a preliminary back on the toxicology tests?”

: “Not yet, John, but I believe we’ll find that Hickman died of poison, as opposed to say, a heart attack. If Hickman was killed by poison, it could have been a slow and painful, and quite obviously, tortuous [sic] death.”

: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. Now we can go and ask about “the youth”.

: “Sam, what can you tell me about the youth?”

: They think you’re an asshole and are glad you’re dead.

: “Exactly what would you like to know, John?”

: “The boy’s identification? Confirmed, and by whom?”

: Who the fuck talks like this?

: “The Lucky Mini Mart owner confirmed the body as Bobby Washington, a local neighborhood boy.”

: Real creative naming we’ve got going on here, these two dead Bobs.

: “Has the boy’s family been notified?”

: “Yes, and as I am sure you can imagine, the mother is near hysterics. Her name is Bernadette Washington and she lives just around the corner from the alley. The poor woman is so upset she can’t yet bring herself to come down and claim the body or the few small trinkets we found on the boy.”

: “Sam, do you have a preliminary on the boy’s cause of death?”

: “I counted seventeen points of entry, John. The boy was mowed down, execution style. Cause of death, gang violence, if you want a personal opinion. Professional opinion, the youth was killed by gunshot wounds to the head and body.”

: That… isn’t what “execution style” means. Granted, the term is almost meaningless because reporters overuse the fuck out of it (this was something they told me even back in college) but it’s usually used to describe a single shot to the head from point blank range.

: Our next destination is back at the start of the game, in another move that really doesn’t make any sense. The game is never really good at indicating where the exits are, but there’s an exit at the top of the screen (where Carey came from at the start of the game) that we couldn’t take before.

: Apparently the police simply forgot to check this wall that has been riddled with bullet holes. I mean, it doesn’t surprise me given how generally incompetent the LAPD is.

: And now we get to do more busy work. We have to use the putty knife from the homicide kit to dig out all sixteen of the bullets from this wall.

: But wait! That’s not all! We also get to do the tedious bullshit task of clicking each hole again to put the bullet in a bag.

: See, a good game would have had it so simply using the putty knife on the wall automatically removes all the bullets and bags them, but this is not a good game.

: We can exit through what is… apparently a wooden prop wall set up in the middle of LA. Gotta love that DARE billboard in the background - LA’s taxpayer dollars at work (or rather, not at work).

: We have to show the badge and use the notebook on these two guys, who don’t really have much to say. I’ll show you some of it. The other person talking is the guy in front wearing what looks like the Takoroka Windcrusher from Splatoon 2.

: “I’d like to ask you fellas a couple of questions.”

: “You be da Man, ask away.”

: “Last night there was a double murder… a police officer and a neighborhood boy, Bobby Washington. Do you know anything that might help us solve what happened to them?”

: That last sentence sounds like it was badly translated from a different language, only it wasn’t.

: “I be knowin’ nothin’. Dat copper, wha’ he be doin’ down here anyway?”

: “Did you know Bobby Washington?”

: I had no idea who the fuck they were talking about, so I searched the name and came up with about 20 different Wikipedia pages. They’re talking about this guy, who was a pitcher for the Dodgers.

: “You a big baseball fan? I see you’ve got a baseball.”

: “Yo baby… I like all dem sports… dis here ball, I find it… find it in da field. What’s lost is now mine.”

: “If you can think of anything that might help us, why don’t you give me a call down at Parker Center. Just ask for Robbery Homicide, Detective Carey. You never know when I might be able to repay the favor.”

… What. What the fuck is this writing?

: Has… has anyone ever said the phrase “I be fly today”? Is that a phrase human lips have ever uttered? Who the fuck at Sierra looked at this and went “This is okay. We can release this.”?

: That’s a disingenuous question, because it was Ken Williams. I do want to mention that at one point, years ago when I was doing research for this LP, I found a source that I have not been able to find again that talked about this game’s development.

: There was a story involving Daryl Gates being in an elevator with Tammy Dargan and some other people, and she’s running some stuff past him and he looks at it and goes “That’s… kind of racist, isn’t it?”

: I wonder if this was what he was talking about.

: Oh look, it’s the two guys from last night. We have to talk to Raymond Jones III again - for reference, he’s the guy in the blue shirt.

: “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

: “Yeah, OK… sure. Ya got som’ spare change a fellow could have?”

: We have to use the change on him three times. This doesn’t get us anything, but if we try to use the change a fourth time…

: Fuck you, Daryl! Fuck you too, Tammy Dargan! Holy FUCK this pisses me off.

: I work right near a major road that connects three towns. There are little “islands” in the middle of the road that divide it, and those islands are a hotspot for panhandlers.

: I personally saw the cops arrest one of them and throw all his stuff in a garbage can a few weeks before I started this LP.

: The cops also had a car parked nearby that had a sign reading something like “DO NOT GIVE PANHANDLERS MONEY, THEY SPEND IT ON DRUGS”.

: Shortly thereafter, as a personal fuck you to Daryl Gates, I took the lane that put me closest to the panhandlers and gave this guy who reminded me of Frank $50. I then went to the grocery store, picked up some stuff, and came back past the same spot.

: Was the panhandler doing drugs? Fuck no he wasn’t! He was eating dinner outside a Popeyes right across the way. I wanted to give him the rest of the cash in my wallet but couldn’t get to where he was from that road.

: And if he had been buying wine? Let him! He deserves it! Fuck, I’d have gone and gotten him a bottle of the good stuff if he asked.

: We now have to go into the convenience store for some more racist bullshit.

: “Everybody know who you are. You big cop, bring big trouble.”

: The TV plays a highly compressed shot of Carey pushing the reporter.

: “Not too smart, big policeman. You push girl on TV.”

: “I… it wasn’t like that, she…”

: “Yeah, yeah, you save for others. I see TV. I see you in neighborhood. You not come but for dead cop.”

: Now, in a good game, Carey would be forced to come to terms with the fact that he really is only here for a dead cop and it might be a moment for character growth. This is not a good game.

: “Can you tell me your name, and what your position is here?”

: Let’s just set the casual racism aside for a moment (fuck you, Tammy Dargan!) and focus on something worse - that being the person this character is a reference to.

: The clerk is a reference to Soon Ja Du, who owned a number of convenience stores with her husand in LA in the early 1990s. One of those stores was Empire Liquors, which was located in the middle of a hotspot for gang activity.

: According to Lou Cannon, Empire Liquors had been robbed at least 30 times prior to 1991, including an armed robbery by the Crips in December of 1990 while her son had been behind the counter.

: On March 16, 1991, Soon Ja Du shot and killed an unarmed Black girl by the name of Latasha Harlins with a single shot to the back of her head. The entire thing was caught on video.

: Soon Ja had accused her of stealing a carton of orange juice, which was completely false - eyewitnesses to the murder saw Latasha Harlins with money in her hand going to the counter to pay for it.

: There was a physical altercation. Soon Ja picked a fight and lost, and then proceeded to pull out a gun from behind the counter and shot Latasha Harlins as she was trying to run away.

: Soon Ja Du was arrested, tried… and sentenced to 5 years probation and a $500 fine for a shooting that was caught on video and where the prosecution had multiple eyewitnesses. It also became pretty clear that this was a hate crime - again, from Lou Cannon:

"Soon Ja Du acknowledged her fear and dislike of African Americans. She confided to a white probation officer that blacks were lazy and used welfare money to buy liquor instead of feeding their children." - Lou Cannon, Official Negligence, page 112

: Let’s look around the store, because the descriptions of some of the shit sound like a cross between a robot that has never seen LA before and Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory.

: We need to take an apple from the bowl.

: Of course they’d be Red “Delicious”, the worst apple in existence. I imagine Daryl Gates refused to eat any other kind.

: I’m willing to bet there was no way Daryl Gates didn’t drink.

: We also need to get a tube of superglue from the rack to Carey’s right.

: And of course, we need to pay for it. Wouldn’t want the owner to shoot Carey in the back of the head… actually wait, yes I do.

: Next time, we’ll meet Bobby Washington’s mother. We’ll also do another pointless gun range segment (not shown) and meet some more racist caricatures.