The End Of The ABC Murders
Mar. 19th, 2024 01:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrMasterlist
Overall that was pretty fun! Some of the plot points are pretty dated but there's still some fun character moments.
Content note: Sexism and iffy handling of domestic violence. A character is painfully dying of cancer. Characters express a lot of ableism though the story itself isn't too bad imo. Also, you know. Death. And spoilers!
Fiance: I was drunk and don't remember the night Betty died, and I keep dreaming about killing her, then she turns into her sister.
Poirot: That's just guilt about falling in love with her sister so quickly.
Fiance: So I didn't kill her?
Poirot: I didn't say that. I just interpreted your dream.
Thora: Oh, I forgot to mention that I saw a door to door stocking salesman on the day of the murder. He was just so harmless: [describes ABC]
Poirot: Would you have married Dr Carmichael if his wife was dead?
Thora: Dr Carmichael was like a father to me!
Me: Aw, she really is just a nice girl
Poirot: Ah, she really is a manipulative liar seducing rich men.
Hastings: She is NOT >:(
Haha Hastings was all grumpy afterwards but he turned out to be worried about a dentist appointment.
We see ABC circling "Doncaster" in his ABC guide and packing a suitcase of stockings.
I feel silly for not realising this until the game lead me to it, but: we saw that someone had been rifling through Dr Carmichael's patient records, and there were burned documents in his garden. Reconstructing them, we see records for the first victim Mrs Ascher, Betty, ABC, and a guy with initials D.D.
ABC has been arrested, and D.D. is safe!
ABC's landlady is amusingly INTO being the landlady of a murderer, she proudly tells Poirot about various Clues and gets very defensive when Poirot asks why she was rifling through her tenant's things before she had any good reason to think he was up to something.
I'm starting to think there are literally two voice actors for this game, a man and a woman, making some vague efforts at different voices. Now that I know to listen I feel like I can hear the hints of frenchness but it may be all in my head, I am very bad at
accents.
Poirot interviews ABC, a WWI veteran with a bad throat and mental health problems including bouts of amnesia, whose typewriter matches the one used to send the notes. He claims to have been sent to the murder locations for work but his supposed employer has never heard of him. Poirot gives him laudanum and a sedative to help overcome his cough and nerves, and is very sympathetic.
Japp: Welp, simple, he's crazy and he did it.
Poirot: There is no evidence the killer is a psychopath, and no sign ABC had any motive to kill these people that would surface during an episode.
Japp: Sigh, I'll just assume you're right again. So we have no suspect and no leads :/
TIME TO GATHER THE SUSPECTS!!
Beforehand, Poirot gives Hastings his gun, saying he can't explaine why or Hastings won't play his role correctly. I had the choice to use blanks or real bullets and decided to use blanks, gaining a "Gandhi Moustache" achievement. I was very tense to find out if this was the right approach but in general it is more IC for Poirot to choose kindness.
Everyone: So the crazy guy did it, right?
Poirot: He is the exact opposite of our self confident, seductive killer. Also he hated trains. It is clear the killer framed him, going so far as to create an entire fake job and planting the typewriter, all to hide that he had one specific person he wanted to kill. And if we examine the psychological profile of those who had a motive to kill any of the victims...
DUN DUN DUN RAILWAY CHILDREN ALERT
So yeah, it's Franklin Chamberlain. He saw that Thora was set to marry his brother and maybe produce an heir the moment Mrs Chamberlain died, which would make him no longer the heir.
He is all lol lol what a dumb theory until Poirot lies and says he left behind some fingerprints, at which point he grabs the gun from Hastings and is all YOU'LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE, lol. Sucks to be you, Franklin Chamberlain.
And then D.D., the hotelier who nearly got killed but who we never met, narrates the end, which...sure, I guess!
Thora, having failed to seduce a rich man twice, leaves England (I think maybe she was from somewhere Nordic originally?)
Betty's fiance marries her sister. She knew about the domestic abuse and thought it was all Betty's fault for being a cheater so, uh. Good luck with that.
Poirot helps the first victim's nice but poor niece get a job as Mrs Chamberlain's new carer. Mrs Chamberlain makes a MIRACULOUS RECOVERY and lives a long happy healthy life? I'd say maybe Thora was poisoning her but I don't think you could fake DEADLY CANCER like that.
Poirot helps ABC sell his story for lots of money.
And D.D's hotel has never been more popular!
The End
8 voice actors in the credits, fair enough. Using the same actor for Hastings and Franklin was a Choice though.
The extras contain a slideshow reconstruction of the crime, it has been building clue by clue all game and was fun to go through to see it all laid out.
461/600 ego points! I like this as a way of encouraging the player to think about dialogue choices without seriously punishing them for making the wrong ones. It felt satisfying to get the extra points when I played Poirot correctly.
Some definite issues with the game but it's kinda darkly funny that it's more compassionate and subversive in it's portrayal of the Crazy Serial Killer trope than many modern serial killer stories.
Overall that was pretty fun! Some of the plot points are pretty dated but there's still some fun character moments.
Content note: Sexism and iffy handling of domestic violence. A character is painfully dying of cancer. Characters express a lot of ableism though the story itself isn't too bad imo. Also, you know. Death. And spoilers!
Fiance: I was drunk and don't remember the night Betty died, and I keep dreaming about killing her, then she turns into her sister.
Poirot: That's just guilt about falling in love with her sister so quickly.
Fiance: So I didn't kill her?
Poirot: I didn't say that. I just interpreted your dream.
Thora: Oh, I forgot to mention that I saw a door to door stocking salesman on the day of the murder. He was just so harmless: [describes ABC]
Poirot: Would you have married Dr Carmichael if his wife was dead?
Thora: Dr Carmichael was like a father to me!
Me: Aw, she really is just a nice girl
Poirot: Ah, she really is a manipulative liar seducing rich men.
Hastings: She is NOT >:(
Haha Hastings was all grumpy afterwards but he turned out to be worried about a dentist appointment.
We see ABC circling "Doncaster" in his ABC guide and packing a suitcase of stockings.
I feel silly for not realising this until the game lead me to it, but: we saw that someone had been rifling through Dr Carmichael's patient records, and there were burned documents in his garden. Reconstructing them, we see records for the first victim Mrs Ascher, Betty, ABC, and a guy with initials D.D.
ABC has been arrested, and D.D. is safe!
ABC's landlady is amusingly INTO being the landlady of a murderer, she proudly tells Poirot about various Clues and gets very defensive when Poirot asks why she was rifling through her tenant's things before she had any good reason to think he was up to something.
I'm starting to think there are literally two voice actors for this game, a man and a woman, making some vague efforts at different voices. Now that I know to listen I feel like I can hear the hints of frenchness but it may be all in my head, I am very bad at
accents.
Poirot interviews ABC, a WWI veteran with a bad throat and mental health problems including bouts of amnesia, whose typewriter matches the one used to send the notes. He claims to have been sent to the murder locations for work but his supposed employer has never heard of him. Poirot gives him laudanum and a sedative to help overcome his cough and nerves, and is very sympathetic.
Japp: Welp, simple, he's crazy and he did it.
Poirot: There is no evidence the killer is a psychopath, and no sign ABC had any motive to kill these people that would surface during an episode.
Japp: Sigh, I'll just assume you're right again. So we have no suspect and no leads :/
TIME TO GATHER THE SUSPECTS!!
Beforehand, Poirot gives Hastings his gun, saying he can't explaine why or Hastings won't play his role correctly. I had the choice to use blanks or real bullets and decided to use blanks, gaining a "Gandhi Moustache" achievement. I was very tense to find out if this was the right approach but in general it is more IC for Poirot to choose kindness.
Everyone: So the crazy guy did it, right?
Poirot: He is the exact opposite of our self confident, seductive killer. Also he hated trains. It is clear the killer framed him, going so far as to create an entire fake job and planting the typewriter, all to hide that he had one specific person he wanted to kill. And if we examine the psychological profile of those who had a motive to kill any of the victims...
DUN DUN DUN RAILWAY CHILDREN ALERT
So yeah, it's Franklin Chamberlain. He saw that Thora was set to marry his brother and maybe produce an heir the moment Mrs Chamberlain died, which would make him no longer the heir.
He is all lol lol what a dumb theory until Poirot lies and says he left behind some fingerprints, at which point he grabs the gun from Hastings and is all YOU'LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE, lol. Sucks to be you, Franklin Chamberlain.
And then D.D., the hotelier who nearly got killed but who we never met, narrates the end, which...sure, I guess!
Thora, having failed to seduce a rich man twice, leaves England (I think maybe she was from somewhere Nordic originally?)
Betty's fiance marries her sister. She knew about the domestic abuse and thought it was all Betty's fault for being a cheater so, uh. Good luck with that.
Poirot helps the first victim's nice but poor niece get a job as Mrs Chamberlain's new carer. Mrs Chamberlain makes a MIRACULOUS RECOVERY and lives a long happy healthy life? I'd say maybe Thora was poisoning her but I don't think you could fake DEADLY CANCER like that.
Poirot helps ABC sell his story for lots of money.
And D.D's hotel has never been more popular!
The End
8 voice actors in the credits, fair enough. Using the same actor for Hastings and Franklin was a Choice though.
The extras contain a slideshow reconstruction of the crime, it has been building clue by clue all game and was fun to go through to see it all laid out.
461/600 ego points! I like this as a way of encouraging the player to think about dialogue choices without seriously punishing them for making the wrong ones. It felt satisfying to get the extra points when I played Poirot correctly.
Some definite issues with the game but it's kinda darkly funny that it's more compassionate and subversive in it's portrayal of the Crazy Serial Killer trope than many modern serial killer stories.
