Forum Overview :: Gemini Rue

Sanitarium and Blackwell Bundle plot lines by skip 09/10/2013, 8:46pm PDT A few months ago I played the Blackwell Bundle and Sanitarium back to back after getting them at a GOG sale. I'm going to skip analyzing the puzzles as I don't remember most of them, other than Blackwell's were better and Sanitarium had absolutely awful controls. The big thing that struck me was how much more realistic the Blackwell Bundle felt despite the fact it had ghosts and psychics and a lot of that was because Sanitarium felt like it was written by a fourteen year old who had some good ideas but couldn't actually put himself in the shoes of a married 30-something year old professional, which is still how most game stories feel. Every good idea is ruined by an inadequate understanding of how to tie together a story and properly motivate a character. Let's start with Morgan, the villain. He's actually not bad in broad strokes. I like that (most of) his motive is based on his insecurity. I also half-expected the twist to be that the pharmaceutical made the child-killing disease, which they thankfully didn't do. He's your mentor and we get glimpses of an overbearing dad. He stops you from telling the company of your cure, not because he ties women to train tracks in his spare time, but because he doesn't want to be outshined by his protege. They touch on the idea that he has a financial stake, which weakens it though. Where it really falls apart is that you never see Morgan look remotely upset for poisoning you. The game can't decide if he's a sociopath or an insecure genius. I get that they did it for ease of plot, but the poisoning also seems too deliberate for what should've been a crime of passion. There's also Max's hallucinations. I liked the Grimwall and Olmec levels, so I can forgive them for being only loosely tied to significant events in Max's life. In fact, it's better that they're not because far too often designers hit us over the head with Freudian nonsense, like with Sarah. The Sarah levels are easily the worst for being dull and unoriginal, her voice actress is terrible, and you could even skip the amnesia plot if they weren't included. Seriously, spooky clowns? Also, the section with the sea monster was incredibly tedious. They also just push the idea of a grown man being obsessed with his dead sister too hard. It may help explain why Max decided to devote his life to developing drugs for children, but it's been like 20 years. It really shouldn't be haunting him the way the game depicts, unless he's got her body stuffed and mounted over his bed. If anything, there's a better idea at the end of how his wife is expecting and this makes a much better motivation for him working long hours to discover a cure so his future kid doesn't end up dead. It shouldn't be past guilt driving him but fear of the future. Siblings aren't children. People grow up and move on. Heavy Rain could work the idea of family and obsession because the bond between a father and son is different than the bond between young brothers. The sanitarium levels also don't make sense in context that he's dreaming it all. I could imagine dreaming of being an Aztec warrior or a comicbook hero, but your dead sister or a loon in a nuthouse? The latter would make sense if you had had some nervous breakdown in the past but that was never shown. You could even nicely tie in Morgan as the one who helps you through that, making the betrayal that much or worse or throwing in a blackmail side plot. The other inmates are shown to be too crazy to actually be crazy like the guy who likes to dance with his giant fish. I guess this sorta fits into the idea that Max doesn't know what a true insane asylum is like, but it feels like more an excuse for the writers not to know what an insane asylum is like. The Blackwell series felt much more coherent, although probably the least ambitious of the Wadget Eye games I've played. It involves you inheriting a ghost and your job is to help ghosts that linger due to unresolved issues and refusal to acknowledge their death. The first is probably the weakest in terms of plot. But it does a decent job of outline the basic premise and characters. The second one with Laura as the medium was probably the best if only for showing how bitter and isolated you can become while doing this sort of job and being unable to truly be alone without Joey. The trade off is that if you don't do it, you go insane like Laura did when she tried to stop so she could raise Rosangela. The Countess plot was interesting until it wasn't and I really wish they had found something else do with game three. Game four continues the slide down with a secret soul-eating agency. Despite that, the ghosts are still written well. There's the lost college girl trying to fit in, the shut-in housewife, the obsessed mistress, the sax player who fell apart after his sister died (as an adult), etc. They're not particularly deep characters, but they're well-written and the game doesn't overdo it. It's implied that one ghost, a dead former coworker of Rosangela had a crush on her in his apartment, but he doesn't confess undying love before moving on. Both games play with the idea of legacies and family, but Blackwell does so much better because even when characters can't let go of the past, it's the immediate past. It's shit that was going on right before they died. They're not haunting a building because their hamster died there when they were in grade school.

Sanitarium and Blackwell Bundle plot lines by skip 09/10/2013, 8:46pm PDT