Summary
: We’re back to Open Season, and I hope you’re all ready for some pointless fucking busy work!
: It’s time for another long talky part in the morgue that no one gives a fuck about. I forget which dialog icon I used for the coroner, so I made my own.
: “How’s the world of the living, John?”
: Remember when I did an LP of Alf on the Sega Master System? I do, and I wish I didn’t.
: “I don’t know, Sam. I’m surrounded by death.”
: Most of this shit is pointless and not in an entertaining way, so I’ll cut a lot of it out.
: “Sam, I understand another body was found this morning in Griffith Park. What can you tell me about it?”
: “More than you probably want to know, John… more than you want to know.”
: “Let’s start with whether identification has been made, and a general description.”
: “Identification has not been made. The description is as follows: African American female, mid-thirties. Found under a tree in Griffith Park by park police at 10:00 AM. She was clothed, no ID. The body was being guarded by a stray dog.”
: Let’s be real here, these morgue scenes exist for exactly one reason, and that reason is Silence of the Lambs, which released in 1991 and wasn’t a giant cliche yet.
: “Has the autopsy been performed yet?”
: “As soon as she arrived, John. Same MO, the burns, injection marks, the glue. It’s all there. Body fluids and tissue samples have been taken. Both have been sent to SID. Your killer is keeping busy, John. Very busy.”
: I’ll just let the rest go. We can ask him if the victim had both shoes, which seems like the most idiotic question when you consider it’s supposedly been two days since we went to Yo Money’s house.
: I’m pretty sure this is meant to be a reference to Red Dragon, which is the first Hannibal Lecter novel. Red Dragon’s villain is a serial killer called the Tooth Fairy - though that’s because he bites his victims.
: The general creative bankruptcy is one of the things I hate about this game. This doesn’t feel so much like “inspiration” as it does a straight up ripoff.
: “Thus far, your killer has a finger, a full set of toes, a forearm, and a molar. You know what that means, don’t you?”
: “Yes, unfortunately I do, Sam. I’m looking for a serial killer who takes a souvenir of the kill. It means he enjoys the kill itself and wants to relive it through the object. I need to find this person fast, Sam, real fast.”
: Now that we’re done here, let’s go do some busy work.
: It’s really funny to me that Griffith Park (which is a big chunk of LA and borders most of the major Hollywood studios) isn’t even on the map.
: I have no idea where in Griffith Park this would be, given how fucking big Griffith Park is. In any case, it’s time for a really stupid puzzle. We have to get rid of this dog, and for some reason we can’t just call animal control in.
: We have to feed the dog the pretzels from the bar. I would think dogs in LA would make it a policy to bite the fuck out of any LAPD cop who comes near them.
: We need to use the dirt here. I’m surprised the game didn’t make us go hunt down an LAPD form 241.7.3 (Digging Implement Requisition) and hand it in, in triplicate.
: The game gets back at us by making us use the notebook and then the bags from the homicide kit on the bone instead. And now, more busy work followed by.. some bad shit.
: First, we have to go back to Parker Center, which means putting the stupid ID card back on, only to have Chester tell us that we brought the bone to the wrong place. Yes, this is a required thing to progress the game.
: I would say that it doesn’t make sense, given that Carey is a homicide detective and should know how this shit works, but this is Daryl Gates’s LAPD. Incompetence is par for the course.
: We then get to go back to the morgue to find out that the coroner is fondling his secretary. On the morgue table. Nothing weird about that at all.
: Now, I know that any real coroner or medical examiner will probably tell you that they sanitize the fuck out of those tables, but I still feel like you’d catch some horrible disease doing that.
: “Screw the dog! And screw the request for tests! I’ve got the City, the press, and my supervisors all over my ass! You’ve got the evidence in your hand, for Christ’s sake! Run the tests! This investigation does not have time for a red tape marathon!”
: You would think he’d just say something like “If you’ve got time to grope your receptionist, you have time to do the fucking test” but this is Tammy Dargan and we can’t expect even baseline competence from her.
: “You’re right, John. I’m sorry.. it’s working for the County, we tend to thrive on the bureaucracy. Trust me, John. I will place the tests on the top of my priority list.”
: Our next destination is Hollywood and Vine, where the police car was found.
: The strip club is just to Carey’s right, and that’s where we’re going. The sign for the strip club didn’t look edited in, so I went to see what this area looks like today.
: There is a strip club in that area, and I think it’s the same one, just remodeled several times. If we look at the older images for this spot…
: Yeah, I can kinda see it. The record store turned into the tattoo place, and I think that’s meant to be the theater from the in-game newspaper next door.
: This entire scene makes no sense. It’s still daytime, but there’s a dancer on the pole.. dancing for the all of no one who is going to be in a strip club at 10AM on a weekday.
: We have to show this nameless stripper the badge first before she’ll talk to us, which is just.. I dunno, kinda weird when you think about it. If you’re someone who really doesn’t want to talk to the police, the cop showing you their badge really isn’t going to make much of a difference.
: “Hello, I’m Detective Carey, LAPD, Homicide. I’m investigating a series of murders,. I was wondering if you’d talk to me?”
: I bet if you look closely, one of those pictures in the background is of Carey with a “WE DON’T TALK TO THIS GUY” underneath it.
: “Umm.. so you’re a real cop. Tell me, handsome, is everything you’re packing real?”
: And now it is time for one of the dumbest fucking exchanges of dialog in this game. We have to show the stripper the shoe from Yo Money’s house.
: “I found this shoe in Yo Money’s garden… Money told me he had strippers at his house the morning Officer Garcia’s body was found. Do you know if any of the girls from the Kitty know Money or were at a party at his house this week? Does this shoe look familiar?”
: Does.. does Carey think she has some kind of shoe database she can compare it to? A secret stripper crime lab?
: The way he’s offering it to her makes it look like he thinks she doesn’t know what a shoe is.
: “Well, it’s true all us girls know celebrities, and Money does come here. We’ve all been invited to parties one time or another out at his place. As far as this week, I don’t know. I do know it’s not mine. I’m very petite and that would never fit me. Barbie might know though.”
: Here’s what I want to know. Has anyone, at any point, ever said the phrase “I’m very petite” to a person in the same room who can clearly see them? I mean, outside of making a joke.
: What I’m saying is that I think Tammy Dargan might be from the same planet David Cage is.
: “Who’s Barbie, and why might she know?”
: “Barbie runs the place, handsome! Barbie Cann, never heard of her? She’s infamous! She’ll know if any of the girls were at Money’s this week. You ask her.”
: “Where is Barbie? Can I talk to her?”
: “She’s taking a nap right now. She’ll be up later, you could come back.”
: This is another moment that makes no sense. You see that little red thing on the bar, right in front of Carey’s hand? That’s a lighter. She’s.. asking him for a light when she has a lighter right there.
: I get that she’s supposed to be flirting, but at the same time, who the fuck would flirt with Carey? He’s got all the charisma of a rock.
: We take the lighter and light her cigarette, and then just kinda keep the lighter because we need it for the dumbest fucking puzzle in the game.
: On the way out of the strip club, a random passerby walks by and smashes Carey’s car mirror, which we pick up. That random passerby is the best character in this game.
: We then, of course, go right back into the strip club because now Barbie has spawned. I imagine she’s got psychic cop senses that woke her up the moment they sensed a cop in the vicinity.
: Barbie also won’t talk to the cops, but we only really need to show her one thing.
: “This shoe was found on Yo Money’s lawn, after the party, and after Officer Gracia’s (sic) body was found. Could it belong to one of your girls?”
: “Darlin’, I don’t think so. It’s large.. even too large for me and I am a big woman. I think it would fit you better than it would fit me..”
: I think you might be able to see where the game is going with this, and yep, it’s transphobia.
: Clearly, Carey is going to pick up a record and then there’s a twenty-year timeskip to his dipshit son, Alex.
: At this point, the game breaks and I don’t know why. We can talk to the guy here, he doesn’t have much to say, but the game won’t let me advance the plot for some reason and I don’t know why.
: What’s supposed to happen is that you go back to Parker Center, do more paperwork, and then go back to the coroner. For some reason, the game won’t let me progress.
: I tried re-playing through the entire day, starting from fighting Dennis Walker in City Hall, and had the same thing happen. My conclusion is that there is something profoundly fucking broken in this game’s scripting.
: I then tried going on to GOG’s forums to see if anyone else had run into the same problem. I didn’t find anything specifically related to this bug, but there are a whole lot of other points (almost all involving the morgue) where the game can break like this.
: At this point, I’m going to have to unfortunately invoke the Gabriel Knight 3 rule and end the LP here. I’m not going to put more time into this game. It’s just not worth it.