Previously on Nancy Drew: The Final Scene: We found Maya! Oh, no, wait, she’s gone again. But at least Sergeant Mac finally agreed to help us out, because we now have inarguable, incontestable, beyond-all-doubt evidence proving that she’s in the theater. And someone tried to trap Nancy Drew in the basement, leaving her body to lie in the Chamber of Secrets forever. Or something.
So it’s day three, otherwise known as the final countdown, if you will. HAD IT seems to have given up and gone home, and the Palladium is all shut down and sad-looking. You know, Nancy kept saying that we had three days — or 72 hours, at least — but the wrecking crew is literally standing by from the moment we get there, so we really had more like two days, and a few hours now. Let’s get cracking.
So after we left yesterday, a ransom demand for $50k came in. This seems kind of weird, since it says the kidnapper called at 4:36 PM, and I feel like Nancy wouldn’t have left the Palladium so early, but — whatever. The call came from Granite City, which Google tells me is in Illinois, about 15 minutes away from St. Louis. Well, alright. And of course, the kidnapper used a voice distorter, so no one could tell if they were male or female. However, the monetary demand makes the police think that the kidnapper doesn’t actually care about the demolition, so they’re going ahead with it today. Sigh.
Joe has left us a little note telling us to come see him immediately, so I guess we’ll do that.
Nick, meanwhile, is not very happy with Brady. That said, his insistence on calling Brady “Charmstrong”, which isn’t a very insulting nickname, makes me think that he hates Brady the way Draco Malfoy hates Harry Potter.
Joe is, as always, all indignant — “Can you believe this ransom demand comin’ outta thin air?” No, we sure can’t. Kidnappers are never after money. This is like bizarro world. Anyway, Joe thinks the call is a hoax — apparently because it came from Granite City? Which is like 15 minutes away, so it’s not like the kidnapper couldn’t have driven. But now the police think Maya’s not in the building, especially since they never found the evidence in the magician’s room. Wait, what? Yup, by the time the police arrived, the pizza boxes and Maya’s shoe had disappeared. Joe tells us they searched the whole building, but it was all gone. Nancy flips out that the kidnapper must have moved the evidence — way to tell everyone where it was right after you found it, Nancy — but even Joe is kind of like, “You crazy.”
Now that that’s out of the way, we tell him about nearly getting killed by one of the lights yesterday, and the creepy message over the PA. Joe says someone must have snuck out of the press conference to get into the booth, but he didn’t see anyone, because he was so busy with crowd control. Hmm.
Finally, we can confront him about the brother who isn’t living in Greasewood, Arizona. We point out that if he’s not going to Greasewood, he might be feeling a little desperate, but Joe says no, he is going to Greasewood, and he’s not desperate. He still plans on opening up a theater, but he didn’t want us feeling sorry for him. Well, alright, I get that. We ask how he’s holding up, then, with the demolition, and he chirps that everything’s just fine, he’s been polishing the lobby and he’s even going to fix the old key-making machine for us, just in time for a wrecking ball to go through it. Thanks, I guess.
By the way, I mean, I know for the purposes of gameplay the theater’s interior has to remain intact, but you’d think the Historical Society would at least try to save the portraits and the equipment, instead of letting it all go down with the building. That stuff could go into museums or something. But anyway.
Nicholas is still hanging around the lobby, but we can’t talk to him about anything right now. Let’s move on to backstage.
His hand looks really weird here. Just saying.
Brady is kind of a dick about us spending time with Nicholas Falcone — like, hey, maybe it’s none of your business who we hang out with, Brady. Aren’t we kind of below his notice, anyway? Anyway, there’s a weird dialogue option where we ask how he keeps up with all of his emails, since he’s so popular, and he tells us that all of his email goes through Simone. It’s weird because the exact same conversation — literally, Brady gives the exact same response — occurred all the way back at the beginning of the game, when we tell him that he should’ve known that he had a meeting with Maya. Well, okay. I guess we wanted to see if we could needle him about what we found on Simone’s PDA, but he’s pretty up-front about it, so whatever. And we can ask where Brady was when the kidnapping happened, and his alibi is that he was getting his hair done, because he has a receding hairline. Ha!
In another weird moment, we can ask if he minds us looking around — another dialogue option that already occurred at the beginning of the game — and he lets us. Again. There’s a new object in the room — a bag on his desk — but we can’t look through it while he’s in the room. So much for letting us look around, I guess.
Anyway, let’s talk to Simone. We can confront her about all the stuff we found in her bag yesterday, and she tells us that we must be imagining things, because of all the pressure. She’ll hook us up with her aromatherapist to help us chill out. Hee! But nah, Nancy’s not stressed out, she’s “livid” (oooh). She flat-out tells Simone that she went through her stuff, which is really funny to me for some reason. Simone threatens to sic the law on us, but Nancy’s just like, “You do what agents do, I do what detectives do. I’m sure you can appreciate that.” I see Nancy’s been picking up dialogue tips from Lisa Ostrum. Simone caves and admits that she bought the wreath — but it was just for the cameras; she’s not a kidnapper. Besides, it was a very tasteful arrangement! HEE.
That’s the end of that conversation, but you can just click on her again to keep it going. This time, we bring up the ransom demand, and Simone’s like, “Fifty grand? What an amateur.” I’m starting to love Simone. We tell her that Brady seems a little uncomfortable with her tactics, and Simone’s just like, “He’s just mad because I made him chop off his ponytail [HEE]. I don’t know what’s gotten into him with this ‘free will’ thing.” Also hee! This is a great conversation. Anyway, she’s convinced that Brady will flop without her, so she doesn’t care if he ditches her or not.
I don’t know if Brady had another hair appointment or what, but he’s gone now, so it’s time to go through his bag.
First of all, the purple notebook at the top left belongs to Maya! Brady, you fiend. If you open it, you can see the notes Maya prepared for her interview, which are quite interesting. Brady seems to have attended an event to save a historic theater in LA — is he also interested in saving the Palladium, Maya wonders? Does he have any history with the Palladium? Why does he want to have the premiere of Vanishing Destiny there (or is it Simone’s idea)? And then, at the end, Maya has made a note to hit Brady with “the evidence.” Evidence of what? We’re onto you, Brady. I don’t know what it is, but we’re onto it.
(Sidebar: I feel like Nancy could’ve solved this case a lot earlier — or at least figured out Brady’s motivations a lot earlier — if she had done what Maya did, and just Googled the guy. Or asked Jeeves, since this was 2001.)
Other stuff in the bag: hair regrowing treatment (heh), spray tan, and a pencil. We steal the pencil, because Brady is suspicious and suspicious people deserve to have their writing utensils stolen.
Just then, Brady comes back, and we can immediately start yelling at him about Maya’s notebook. He insists he hasn’t done anything wrong, and starts spilling the beans right away when we insinuate that he kidnapped Maya because her article might’ve been unflattering. As it turns out, Brady’s real last name is Thompson, not Armstrong. Brady is B. Thompson! What a twist. He’s the owner of the theater, and he’s going to bulldoze it because it doesn’t project the ~image~ he wants: it’s a money pit and a has-been. I’m not sure why he was going to hold his premiere at the theater, then, if he hates it so much. Brady doesn’t want to sell the theater, either, because he has plans for the plot of land: he’s going to build a theme restaurant called “Brady Armstrong’s Planet Tinseltown” on it. That’s one of the most fantastically terrible ideas I’ve ever heard. Brady isn’t a very good captain of his own destiny.
Still, he insists he didn’t kidnap Maya — he didn’t want her exposing him, true, but all he did was hide the notebook when he found it (along with the press pass). Still, as Nancy says, how could he withhold evidence like that? “How could you?” You’re not being a very good citizen, Brady. We try to convince him to call off the demolition, but Brady doesn’t think Maya’s in the building anymore, and nothing will stop him from being the captain of his own destiny. Nothing! We try to convince him in the following order, but he’s not having any of it: we found the pizza boxes and one of Maya’s shoes (“Evidence no one could verify”), Nicholas believes us (“He’s an outlaw [lol, Brady, this isn’t the wild west] and he’s using you”), Joe believes us (“He’s a confused old codger”). Anyway, he has a demolition to go watch.
“Brady, NOOO!”
Distraught by Brady’s dick move, Nancy runs into the arms of Nicholas Falcone. Help us, Nick, you’re our only hope!
Nick greets us with “Nancy, we could be golden!” which is a very nice thing to hear after Brady’s betrayal. Apparently the package from Sherman Trout has arrived and it “could” have information that will save the theater. I guess Nicholas couldn’t be bothered to open it himself, even though the demolition is like five minutes away.
So Sherman Trout has sent us a slide that “seems to hint at the information you require.” How fantastically vague. Still, he did his best on short notice, so thanks, Sherman. He also writes that he hopes the package “arrived in time to be useful to you.” I find that really sweet for some reason. I don’t know.
Joe’s left the projection room — for whatever reason — which is good, because if you ever try to touch the projector while he’s in there, he gets a bit upset. Unfortunately, in order to work the projector, we need the projector key (which is missing). But remember that trick from the magician’s notebook, where you shade in an imprint with a pencil? We have a pencil now, so we just run that over the key imprint in the back of the projector manual. Now we know what the key looks like, and we can use the key-making machine to duplicate it.
I do so love how there’s a random key-making machine in the middle of a movie theater. Whose idea was that?
So you put the quarter we found all the way back on day one into the machine, and you have to save before you do it, because there’s only the one quarter, and you can’t mess up. I’m not sure if there’s a way around that, or if it’s one of those early game dead ends, like getting unavoidably blown up in Stay Tuned for Danger. Then you press S, I, V, and O to make the correct key shape. And now we have the projector key! Let’s go project stuff!
Back in the projection room, the bulb burns out the second we turn the machine in, because nothing ever works right on the first try for Nancy Drew. But we also stole a spare bulb the first time we ever talked to Joe, because Nancy is somewhat lacking in social graces, so that solves that problem. And when we go to put the bulb in, we see another slide tucked into the side of the machine. Let’s steal that, too. The theater’s about to be demolished, so who cares, right? The second we grab the slide, though, we hear one of the demolition crew saying that they’re doing a final sweep to make sure the theater’s empty before they smash it to bits. Obviously we’d rather get hit by a wrecking ball than leave a mystery unsolved, so we have to duck into a closet while they check the booth.
You know, now that I think about it, this game is pretty dark. I mean, if you don’t succeed, both Nancy and Maya die in the theater. Everyone will realize that Nancy was inside, but since they all think Maya’s been taken elsewhere, they probably won’t figure out what happened to her until they’re building Planet Tinseltown, at which point they’d probably dig up her remains. Creepy.
Anyway, once the demolition guys are gone, we can look at the slide Sherman Trout sent us: Dizzy Noshun (whose portrait is hanging in the hallway of the Palladium) sent a letter to Houdini, congratulating him from getting away from J.J. Thompson (heh). Dizzy is pleased that Houdini has decided to support a struggling artist by giving them 50% of a thriving theater — and a magician, too! But where did he find a woman magician? Gosh, who could this mystery owner be? Who?
Now for the next slide, the one we found near the bulb. When we go to focus it, though, the focus knob falls off and rolls under the table. Of course it does. But while we’re down there, what do we find but a tape recorder? And the tape inside is of Joe testing the PA system — the same message we heard before Maya was kidnapped. So Joe’s alibi has suddenly fallen apart — he might not have been in the projection booth at all. There’s another box under the table, too, with a “Voiceswap” label on it — it’s a device for altering voices. Oh, Joe.
It’s pretty obvious that Joe is the culprit, but we still have the other slide to look at, anyway. “Another secret passageway!” Yup, these are the missing blueprints — presumably from 1923, but I don’t think the Bradley Hand font had been invented then. Anyway, Joe stole them from the County Administration, and told us to look for them knowing full well they weren’t there. He also obviously lied about not knowing where the magician’s room and a bunch of the other passages were. Why you gotta do us like that, Joe?
Maya’s clearly being hidden in the passageway on the blueprints, so let’s go get her.
Aaaand then Joe shows up. It doesn’t matter what you ask him, he’s gone off the rails and will start babbling about how he’s going to fix up the booth tomorrow — “But Joseph, there isn’t going to be any tomorrow, not for this theater, anyway.” “I think a fresh coat of paint would really cheer things up, don’t you?” (Again, it doesn’t matter if you try to reason with him or threaten him with jail, his answer is the same craziness.) We try to ask what he was trying to achieve with the kidnapping — was he just trying to buy some time for the historical society, or what? “Do you think the premiere will sell out?” Yikes, he crazy. He insists that we don’t tell the police or the demolition crew that Maya is in here, no matter how many times we try to convince him to be less nuts. Then he locks us in the booth.
At this point, the little “Day 3” in the clock near the dialogue box will turn into a sort of pie, with the “slices” disappearing as time runs out. But luckily, the secret passage on the slide is accessed from the booth (you’d think Joe would’ve known this, but then again, maybe he’s just too crazy to care at this point), so we go to the outlet near the door, open it, and flip the switch that brings down a ladder into the passageway. At the end of the passageway is a locked door, and we don’t have the key. But that’s okay, because it’s not like Joe has it or anything, either — to the left is a locked box, and we do have the key for this one. Remember the key we found in the puzzle box in the basement? Day one was so long ago.
Before we try to unlock the door, though, there’s some loose ends that have to be tied up. The two letters in the key box are the proof Nicholas Falcone has been looking for about his grandmother: one is a letter from J.J. Thompson, and one is a legal document, but both pretty much say the same thing — J.J. never paid Louisa Falcone, and Houdini decided to help out by handing over his ownership of the theater to her, which was settled as the equivalent of payment for her work on the theater. J.J. decided to hide the evidence because he didn’t want anyone to know he was in business with a giiiiirl. Louisa Falcone has obviously been gone a while, so that makes Nicholas Falcone the other owner of the theater! That’s convenient. He’ll be pretty happy about this, provided we make it out alive to tell him.
Now for the keys — there’s no right key for the door; it changes every time. You just have to grab them all and try them all on the door.
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
We finally get the right key, and to our left as soon as we enter the room is a…fridge? Boiler? I have no idea what it is. But Maya’s locked inside, and it looks super uncomfortable.
If you look out the window, you can see the theater marquee outside, which gives Nancy an idea: if we turn the marquee on, everyone will know someone is still inside the theater. To the marquee controls!
Joe, weirdly, is also still inside the theater. I guess he’s decided to go down with it, which is fine for him since he’s like a million years old, but we’ve got our whole lives (and 26 more games) ahead of us, so we can’t be having that. He still can’t be reasoned with, so we’re going to have to make him move. You can pick up a hacksaw and a mallet (I think) somewhere in this room, but sadly(?), we don’t defeat Joseph by dismembering him or hitting him the face. No, instead we use the flash paper we got on day one to blind him — the instructions for it have popped up twice, but you don’t need to know them, you just have to click on Joseph with the paper. It blinds him long enough for us to get past him and flip the marquee switch. The marquee lights up and someone says, “Look at the marquee! Stop the demolition!” Yay! Day saved!
“Armstrong: Uh, do we still like him or what?” HEE.
“Crime seems to follow Nancy Drew…coincidence?” Also hee! Also, check the reference to the next game in the series at the top right.
Nancy recaps the end of the game in a letter to Bess — who, by the way, was the abductee in the book this game was based on, but was changed for this game because it takes us until like, 2009 until we actually see Bess and George’s faces. Joe initially meant to kidnap Brady, since obviously no one was going to demolish a theater with ~Charmstrong~ in it, and Simone might’ve used her connections to save the theater, but he panicked and grabbed Maya instead. His next plan was, as Nancy guessed, to use Maya to stall the demolition until the historical society could have the theater declared as a landmark. Obviously, that didn’t work (somewhere, Nicholas Falcone is laughing). And Joe, despite looking fantastically creepy, isn’t really a criminal at heart, so his plan kind of went awry. But he was very nice to Maya about the whole thing, and I guess she’s going to testify to that effect — which I’m kind of torn on. On the one hand, I do feel sympathy for Joe, but on the other hand, he was seriously going to get Maya killed, and I’m not sure the game sticks on that point enough. Well, whatever. Nicholas Falcone, now the co-owner of the Palladium, obviously isn’t going to let the theater get knocked down, so Brady is going to have to move Planet Tinseltown somewhere else. I’m sure that restaurant will last for a good five months.
Brady’s also donated his half of the theater to the historical society. That’s nice, I guess. And Nicholas Falcone says HAD IT’s success is thanks to Nancy Drew, so I guess he’s friends with us now. How far we’ve come in three days!
Simone’s gotten reprimanded by the National Press Corps for the wreath thing. I try to care.
Anyway, the premiere of Vanishing Destiny is happening again at the Palladium — I don’t know if they’re getting a new projectionist or what — but Nancy says she’s going to wait for it to come out on “video tape.” HEE!
Also, the magic wand with the wad of used gum on it is still in the inventory, because Nancy’s been walking around with it for three days. Gross.
THE END.
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