Previously on Nancy Drew: Secrets Can Kill (Remastered!): We’ve traveled from 1998 to 2010…kind of, to re-solve Nancy’s very first case. Jake Rogers has been murdered, not that anyone gives a shit, because apparently he was kind of an asshole and that’s a good reason to kill someone. Also bizarrely, that means that three teenagers are our main suspects, because I guess when you say that you don’t like your classmate and that he’s a creep, it means that you’re capable of murder.
Alright! So we’ve met everybody and found out the main details of the murder: Jake was involved in ~something~ shady, likely leading to his murder. Everyone hated him, not that they like each other much, either. Paseo del Mar High School is just a seething hotbed of resentment and anger. It’s surprising that nobody’s gotten murdered there sooner.
After meeting up with Detective Beech, let’s go back to the high school and keep looking for clues. In the original game, this would’ve meant that you had to switch discs, hating your life all the while. I can kind of see their logic, in 1998, when user feedback about computers was still thin on the ground and nobody knew how annoying this would be: most of the game’s action takes place in the high school, so if you’re playing entirely linearly and collect all the clues when you’re supposed to, you can get a good chunk done before having to switch the discs out, and possibly didn’t have to switch them too many times to complete the game.
However, Nancy didn’t have a cell phone in 1998, so if you wanted to check your notes or call your friends for hints, you had to go switch discs to go back to Aunt Eloise’s house. Or if you were stuck in the high school and wanted to make sure you didn’t miss any clues in the diner, you had to switch discs. Or if you didn’t realize there was more stuff left to do in the school and wanted to go to the diner to follow up on a lead, you had to switch discs. Yup.
Hey, has Connie gotten that stick out of her butt re: letting us into the teachers’ lounge? No, no she has not. But since we’re in the student lounge, let’s peruse some of the reading material. We find this magazine about sports, lecturing us on the dangers of steroids (don’t do drugs, kids!): peer pressure or pressure to get into colleges might make you think that steroids are cool, but they’re not cool — the early gains from hectinol use may be “awesome”, but getting busted and going to jail is definitely not awesome. Hmm.
(Hectinol, by the way, is a name made up just for this game.)
Well, if we can’t break into the teachers’ lounge, let’s see if we can break into Jake’s locker. If we ask around, the characters will give us hints that the combo is related to Jake’s name and phone, which we can deduce means that it’s “JAKE”, spelled out numerically (5253).
Detective Beech told us there were no clues in his locker, but Detective Beech has only been a detective for like half a game, so fuck his opinion. We find a judo magazine, with an article about a recent tournament circled: apparently, a mysterious masked competitor known only as “Nineco” won the men’s tournament. It’s a good thing everyone at this school sucks at anagrams.
(Underneath the judo article is one about Hartmut von Schwesterkrank turning 80. Apparently he popularized judo in Germany. Was that before or after he was in the Wehrmacht and got his French girlfriend accused of being a Nazi, leaving her to clear her name only several years after her death via a complicated maze of puzzles?)
We also find a book of English essays, which opens to a particular essay on etiquette. By Prudence Rutherford! I call bullshit. There is nothing in this essay about whether it’s more appropriate to wear your pink bunny mask or pineapple purse to a dinner party.
There’s also a copy of the local newspaper, reporting on a break in at the pharmacy. Apparently, several vials of hectinol were stolen. We were just reading about hectinol! Oooh, SOMEONE in this town is on steroids~*~*~
Finally, we find a VHS(!) case, but when we open it, it’s empty. Dig the two rods that the tape’s spools slot onto! God, I’m old.
With that done, we can wander around the school some more. We’re still seeing a bunch of these messages on the bulletin boards, which have the clues we need to solve the mystery. There’s way too many of them, so I’m not going to bother to translate them, but I’ll try to mention when the solution to a puzzle comes from the bulletin messages.
Let’s stop by the library. I was in here last time, but Nancy won’t acknowledge this clue until we speak with Connie. There are lots of books with references to past games, but the one we’re after is this book of kanji. Nancy will recognize one of the characters — “crane” — as being the one on Connie’s pendant.
Let’s chat with Hulk. We can jump straight to asking him about steroids, but let’s pretend Nancy has some tact and ease into the conversation first. We can ask what he knows about Daryl Gray, and Hulk tells us that the Gray family used to sponsor the annual football dinner, although they stopped last year. Daryl seems “cool.” Perhaps Hulk is stuck in the ’90s and doesn’t know what Daryl looks like now. And hey, Hulk, while we’re talking about fellow students: do you know why Jake would have an empty VHS case in his locker? “I didn’t pay much attention to Jake. I’m tired of talking about that loser!” Hulk barks. Yeah! Let’s not investigate Jake’s death, because he LOST at LIFE by getting murdered!
This school is messed up, man.
Our last conversation option is the robbery at the pharmacy. “Why would I know about a robbery? All I know about is football!” Hulk says. Heh. Theory: Hulk is a robot and if we deviate too far from football-related topics, he’ll short circuit and explode.
Next to Hulk are these posters. I feel like my grammar school classrooms definitely had that “Get a Jump on Education” poster, or one that was very similar. What we’re looking at, though, is the Crane School of Self-Defense poster. Crane, you say? And judo, you say? I wonder if the mysterious winner of the judo competition goes to Paseo del Mar.
Let’s see if Hal knows anything about our new clues. He claims not know Jake was “interested in video”, like he collects VHS or something, and tells us that Daryl is a good politician, just like his dad. Daryl’s dad also owned a business, but they went bankrupt a while ago. HMMM.
Then there’s Connie. She’s immediately snappy with us: “Why all the questions? What’s going on with you, Nancy?” Sorry, I’m just super interested in the grotesque murder that took place here last week, is that so wrong? Why are YOU so chill about it, Connie?
We can ask her about Daryl, now that we’ve met him: Connie tells us that he’s the only boy in school she’d ever consider dating. Wait, really? Daryl “Benjamin Button” Gray over Hulk “Football Star” Sanchez? I mean, I wouldn’t go out with either of them (because I’m a human being, not a claymation doll, and I stick to my own kind), but overlooking the school’s star jock seems odd. Even Hal has a crush on him! Anyway, Connie gushes that Daryl drives a sports car and works at Maxine’s, which is uber-cool. Not to disparage Daryl’s work ethic, but wiping counters doesn’t seem like it would awe a lot of high schoolers. Nancy also finds this odd: “Drives a sports car and works at a diner? That doesn’t compute.” Maybe Maxine’s pays a lot. Like Costco.
We then bring up Jake and how he still owns a VCR in the year 2010, and Connie gets all mad at us. “Why are you so interested in Jake, anyway?” Because he was fucking murdered, Connie! Then she blows us off and ends the conversation. Joke’s on her, though, because they didn’t fix any of the dialogue, and we can just come back and bug her again. This time, we point out that the kanji on her necklace means “crane”, and the name of the judo school is also called Crane, ERGO CONNIE IS OUR MYSTERY JUDO COMPETITOR. Just kidding, we can’t accuse her of that last one yet. We can definitely imply the hell out of it though, and she ends the conversation. Again. Hey, can I just click on her again and keep interrogating her while she’s trapped at that table with no escape? No? Okay, fine, we’ll have to come back to Connie.
Incidentally, you’d think Hal, the Japanese exchange student, would have noticed Connie walking around with a gigantic kanji character hanging around her neck.
You’ll recall that ever since we got to the school, we’ve needed to find a way to get Connie’s overly-pedantic ass out of the lounge. She mentioned to us earlier that someone keeps setting off the soda machine alarm, so we have to do that to get her away from the teachers’ lounge door. If we set off the alarm right in front of her, though, obviously we’ll get in trouble. So we want to set off the alarm on the machine near Hulk.
Jake’s bulletin board messages will tell us that the code to set off the soda alarm is to press grape, grape, orange, and cool. Why does a soda machine have an alarm, anyway? So we run off to Connie and tattle on ourselves. When she goes to investigate — good luck with Hulk, I bet he’ll just tell her that all he knows about is football — we can get into the teachers’ lounge.
There’s a whole ton of stuff that we can look at in the teachers’ lounge! First up, we can look in the file cabinets, where we’ll find Hal Tanaka’s senior essay. Nancy immediately recognizes it as Prudence Rutherford’s etiquette essay. Hal is a plagiarist! Does this school not use Turnitin.com?
We can also look at a business magazine, which informs us that Gray Enterprises has been losing money, and their stock is sinking rapidly. The CEO, Eugene Gray (Daryl’s dad?), has announced a new missile defense system that they’re hoping will put the company back on track. A further paragraph down notes that Gray Enterprises is in the “military hardware” business. Hmm.
We can use Aunt Eloise’s login to access the computer, where we’ll find passwords for everything around the school. The only one we need is “NOTE”, which will unlock the maintenance room. Speaking of maintenance, a company called “Dillon HVAC” is working on something in the boiler room. We can also check her emails, and see that Jake Rogers was on bulletin board duty, which is how he’s been leaving us weirdly prophetic poems about his death.
Finally, we can print out the security report for the night that Jake died. Literally everyone was in the school that night, except possibly Connie. Hal forgot his homework and came inside to get it; Jake and Hulk were seen arguing in the stairwell; and Daryl was busted doing a senior prank. The security guard found Jake’s body at around midnight. Hmm!
Once that’s done, leaving the teachers’ lounge will trigger a threatening phone call. My favorite kind! Our mysterious culprit threatens that we better stop our “NOSEY NOSING” or “it’ll get bent way out of shape”! What will get bent out of shape, Mitch? At no point did you use “nose” as a noun in that sentence. Anyway, it’s the exact same shitty voice and line delivery as in 1998, which leads me to believe that either they just reused the original recording, or the actor hasn’t improved at his craft at all in 12 years.
Sadly for him, Mitch Dillon doesn’t realize that in 2010, we now have caller ID. So we can just call him back and be like, “What the hell was that?” Mitch blusters that he totally didn’t call us. “Yes, you did,” Nancy says. “I saw your name on my phone.” Heh. Mitch snarls that he’s sorry we’re having A/C problems, and they’ll send someone to find a PERMANENT SOLUTION. Thank you for calling Dillon HVAC! And now we know he works for Dillon HVAC, the same people who were messing around in the school’s boiler room. Oh, Mitch. Culpriting is really not his forte; although being that he’s the first villain of the series, I guess he didn’t have anyone to set an example for him.
(Nancy writes in her diary: “Some yahoo named Mitch Dillon wants me off the case.” Oh, Nancy, never stop being an 80-year-old woman at heart.)
Let’s continue busting everyone’s lies wide open and making them really uncomfortable. Next up: Hal Tanaka! We confront him about plagiarizing his senior essay, and Hal breaks down and confesses that he is greatly shamed, for he has caused his family to lose face and brought dishonor to them all. I mean, not in so many words, but it’s implied. Because he’s Asian.
Hal tells us that he took on extra coursework to try and win a scholarship, because without a scholarship, he’ll have to go back to Japan. Not Japan! Hal says he couldn’t keep up with his workload, so he copied the essay. Jake found out and started blackmailing Hal into doing all of Jake’s homework. “I was desperate,” Hal wails. Nancy’s like, “Desperate enough to KILL?” Hal’s like, “…what the hell, no.”
If Hal didn’t kill Jake, does he have any idea who did? Hal tells us that the last time he saw Jake, Jake mentioned having a meeting with Daryl Gray. Interesting!
All this triggers a scene between Hulk and Connie. When we go down by the gym, we stop and overhear them arguing: “So what if I did,” Hulk says (dig the lack of a question mark). Connie’s like, “Ugh, you’re such a LOSER!”, because that’s the sickest burn at Paseo del Mar, I guess. Hulk flips his shit at being called a loser, and starts threatening Connie, then Connie does something to him (with her SECRET JUDO SKILLS, MAYHAPS?) and he starts wailing for her to let him go.
Well shit, Hulk, what was that all about? Hulk snaps that he’s “not into pushy girls. Do me a favor and bother someone else.” Everyone in this game is so rude.
By the way, one weird change is that the original game took place in May (the banner in the hallway is for Senior Prom), but now it’s been changed to September, with the banner now advertising Homecoming.
Speaking of pushy people, let’s go to Maxine’s and check in with Daryl. He greets us with a totally creepy, “Hey, gorgeous.” Nancy tells him to back off, to which he says, “I’m just saying what I’m seeing.” Ew.
Daryl tells us that if we’re looking for “Uncle Steve”, he’s not here. He leans in to gossip about how last week, Beech lost something at the diner and seriously flipped his shit on Daryl, thinking that he stole it. Intriguing. Anyway, we can move on and ask Daryl if his dad is Eugene Gray, the CEO of Gray Enterprises. Daryl affirms, and tells us that thanks to nepotism, he has an internship in the company’s computer department.
There’s a whole list of questions we can ask him, and we can pretty much run down them in any order. It’s pretty clunky. I can’t say that the interrogation options in the other games are much smoother, but I think they did a better job weaving the questions into the dialogue as the series went on, instead of this awkward jumping around. So, to start: does Daryl know why Jake has an empty VHS case in his locker? “Why were you in Jake’s locker?” Daryl wants to know. Because I’m fucking nosy, Daryl. Keep up.
We have two options here: we can lie and say we’re doing an article about his death for the school newspaper, or we can confess that we’re an undercover teen detective who graduated high school 80 years ago. Doing the latter will cause Daryl to bust out laughing and then say, “But seriously. [incredibly long pause] I have no idea.” Saying the former will skip the laughter and Daryl will just be like, “[incredibly long pause] I have no idea.” Helpful!
Let’s tactfully bring up his dad’s bankruptcy, shall we? And by “tactfully”, I mean “not at all tactfully.” Daryl snaps that his dad is working hard to recover the company, and he doesn’t need VULTURES like us gloating! “I didn’t mean to gloat,” Nancy says, because that’s not what we were remotely doing at all.
Well, now that we’ve gotten Daryl into an emotionally fragile headspace, let’s ask him about finding one of his classmate’s corpses. That’ll make him feel better, right? He tells us that he and some of his friends were in the school soaping the windows as a senior prank; he didn’t realize Jake was also there. OR DID HE? He tells us that he had come into school the next morning for a student council meeting, and as class president, he has keys to the school. I would never give a teenager the keys to a place they’re forced to spent 6 hours a day in and probably hate, but whatever. So Daryl came in to school early and tripped over Jake’s corpse: “It was the worst thing I ever experienced in my entire life. And…I really don’t want to think about it right now.” Daryl, your trauma means nothing to Nancy Drew. We once aggressively interrogated an elderly man with severe brain damage. You’re not special!
That said, I appreciate that Daryl is like, the only person with a human response to the murder of his classmate. Jesus Christ, Hulk and Connie.
Finally, we can bring up Daryl’s mysterious meeting with Jake that Hal witnessed. Daryl blows us off and says he probably just had to talk about work with Jake. Wait, did I even mention that Jake worked at Maxine’s? He did. It barely comes up, though.
Once the conversation peters out, Daryl will tell us that someone came by with a note for us. When we open it up, we see that it’s an ominous message: “I have the solution to your mystery. Meet me in the basement of the maintenance room at the high school.” Creepy! It’s clearly a trap, and I would be pissed at Daryl for not having a description of the guy trying to lure us to the school, except Mitch Dillon is a dumbass and delivered the note in his very own Dillon HVAC stationary.
I’m starting to love Mitch Dillon. He’s such a relic of the original game, before they had figured out how to effectively introduce villains and weave them into the story. God bless him and his complete incompetence at villain-ing.
There’s nothing left to do except walk into Mitch’s trap, pretty much. I tried calling Ned, but as in the original, he’s only there to give hints.
So off we go to the school! Up next: Nancy has a date…WITH DEATH! (Death: 1, Ned: still 0).
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