The Last Express:
Act 3 of The Last Express begins as the Orient Express exits Munich (next stop, Vienna), and Robert Cath considers the many interlocking demands (Click here the previous article on The Last Express) imposed by his fellow travelers.
He needs to demonstrate to Herr Schmidt
he can purchase the German's weapons, by displaying the gold that he
doesn't have. He's buying the weapons to fulfill Tyler's promise to
the Serbians, so they defend their country against any
Austrio-Hungarian aggression. Cryptic Kronos expects Cath to deliver
an artifact, the Firebird, which disappeared from Tyler's
compartment. But first he has to find whoever stole the Egg from
Tyler Whitney's corpse. Was the thief also the murderer? And
finally, Cath desires a stolen kiss from the beautiful Anna Wolff,
who, he's noticed, has beguiled gullible Schmidt.
Where can he find any gold, learn of
the Egg's location, or overhear the murderer confessing their crime?
Let this author admit the truth. These
needs, wants, desires, and questions are obvious in retrospect, but
as time hurries past on the Express, it's difficult to distinguish
the necessary from the superfluous, and as the reader will learn,
most of these concepts only connected, or were even discovered after
the fact.
Fortunately, Kronos aids the player by
telegraphing his opening move aloud. He's not content to simply wait
for Cath to deliver the Firebird Egg, and actively searches for it
himself. Suspecting Frau Wolff, he invites her to participate in a
duet in his car: he will play the piano, and she, the violin. The
whole train, including Cath are expressly invited to attend, and many
do. But a suspicious, scheming player will suspect Kronos' motives,
and will arrange to overhear Kronos instruct Kahina, his servant,
bodyguard, and assassin, to enter Wolff's compartment during the
concert. Problem: Wolff, a frequent passenger on the Express, keeps
her a dog in her compartment, which it guards. No poodle, it bears a
similar semblance to its owners namesake. Solution: Kahina compels
Anna's neighbor to complain about the dog, and a conductor moves it
to the luggage car.
In her haste to attend the recital,
Anna forgets to lock her door, and Cath must slip inside before
Kahina arrives. A thorough perusal reveals one fascinating fact and
one crucial item. Anna's employer is the Austrian secret police, and
she boarded the Orient Express to ensure the Serbians successfully
purchase the weapons from Herr Schmidt. At the Serbian border, the
Austrian police will halt the train, enter, and arrest the Serbs.
More important useful though is the key. Somehow, Anna has acquired
a key capable of opening almost any door on the Express.
Unfortunately, this is where I missed a
step. Instead of locating the gold and the egg, Cath wasted the
concert breaking into everyone's compartment, to no avail. Sure,
there were inconsequential tidbits, and minor discoveries (Alexei's
compartment contains wires, a clock, and pliers) but the two items of
value vanished. There's a trick to breaking into the compartments.
Cath holds the key to open any door, but conductors rest at the end
of each of passenger car. If they notice Cath's attempt to enter a
room other than his own, they kindly remind him of his mistake. No
matter how many times Cath makes this “mistake” the conductor
never questions his motives. To successfully enter a room, the
conductor must be away, or a passenger must be between Cath and the
conductor, blocking eye contact. The Trick: Once Cath holds Anna's
key, he can repeatedly return to the Luggage Car and free Anna
Wolff's dog. With its new found freedom, it returns to her room, and
the conductor drag it back to the kennel.
That trick is how I made an irrelevant
and important discovery.
Eventually the concert ended, and
Cath's fruitless search for the egg/gold with it. Hopeless, he
milled about, and then, in an attempt to search another room,
returned to the Luggage car to free the Anna's dog. The time being,
5:55, he noticed a door in the Luggage compartment, previously locked
and impervious to Anna's key, ajar. Cath stepped inside, looked
around and discovered Anna's dead body! And I experienced anther a
fail-state, narrated by Sophie Sophie about how the conductors
discovered Cath standing over a fresh murder.
When a fail-state occurs, The Last
Express helpfully rewinds an interval of time, and in this
example, from 6:00 to 5:30. I immediately returned to the Luggage
Car, this time to discover Wolff alive. As Cath and Wolff angrily
debated Tyler's death and the disappearance of the Egg, one of the
Serbian's entered and tried to kill both of them. After a quick
combat, the woman fled and the train arrived in Vienna.
A short cut scene followed, with Cath
watching as Schmidt huffily removed the weapons from the Express,
because Cath couldn't pay him. But as Cath observes Schmidt, he
fails to notice Milo, and two Serbians approach. Just as Cath
observes them, one slips a dagger into his chest. Fail-state.
Again, the game returned me to 5:30.
This time, I wandered the halls, determined not to enter the luggage
car, but The Last Express ended abruptly at 6:15: no cut scene
or diary rendition. No explanation at all, and I was deposited,
again, at 5:30. Was it possible to win from this point? I assumed
it was, because the game kept returning me to it. I searched
diligently over two more attempts to locate the egg or the gold, but
both seemed to have vanished. I even tried to intercept Anna and
prevent her from entering the Luggage Compartment after the concert.
But here's a twist. The Last
Express cheats! Yes, it fosters the illusion of realism,
pretending the characters are real, not just phantoms. But when the
game needs them to, they vanish from one spot and reappear in
another. Anna never walks to the Luggage Compartment, she appears
there out of nothingness.
Eventually, I realized I had failed
Chapter 3, and I decided to voluntarily rewind. Here I compounded
error on error. At the time, I believed the player could only
voluntarily rewind to one of the five major stations. I returned to
Munich. I also succumbed to eagerness, and looked at a guide, which
is the source of my complete understanding mentioned earlier.
Without this knowledge, Act 3 is incredibly difficult. All the moves
must be made between 3pm, when the concert starts, and 5:30pm, when
it ends. The gold can be collected first. Using the Anna's key,
Cath exits the train and climbs onto the roof. Walking to the end of
the train, he discovers a glass roof on the second of Kronos' cars.
Breaking it before the concert will result in a fail-state, but the
music during it covers the tinkling of broken glass, and in the room
Cath accesses a secret compartment containing a briefcase of gold.
Depositing this treasure in his compartment, Cath must then discover
the location of the egg. Two ladies have whispered carelessly about
their secret, with the innocent agreeing to hide “it” under her
bathroom sink for the thief. If not found before 5:30, the Egg
vanishes into thin air (or maybe it flies away). One recollected, it
also needs to be hidden for later.
At the concert's conclusion, Schdmitt
demands to see the gold, which then needs to be returned to Kronos
before Kahina “recovers it”, and off Cath's off to the Luggage
compartment to rescue Anna. Now, in Vienna, the weapons stay on the
Express, and Cath's head stays on his neck. One could give Kronos
the Egg (easiest satisfactory ending), but Cath holds onto it for
later.
A few thoughts to conclude Act 3:
Replaying a section, such as I did for
the Munich to Vienna run, is tiresome. The first playthrough
develops tension by placing a time limit on the player with
uncertainty its companion. In a second attempt the frantic energy
dissipates, as the player watches events replay and waits for his
turn to act.
Just as the conductor never tires of
remind Cath that his compartment is number 1, people never complain
when he tries to enter occupied compartments. They ask, “Who is
it?” and he always replies, “Sorry, these doors all look alike.”
And if anyone ever enters their compartment while Cath is in it,
The Last Express deposits him in the corridor without incident, as if
he has spider senses.
For The Last Express, we're
still entrapped by unseen enemies, unsolved mysteries, and unresolved
conflicts. The Egg's been recovered, but why does everyone want it?
And what does it do?
Next Time on The Last Express: A
Bomb, A Hijacking, A New World.
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