Previously on Nancy Drew: The Silent Spy: We walked around and talked to all of our suspects a lot. I’m usually into having deep conversations with computer characters, but it was actually pretty boring, because the plot of this game is so weird. Anyway: Revenant is trying to mind-control Glasgow with drugs, or maybe just stage a coup, because they’re evil, or maybe they’re not. It’s unclear. Also, international spies wear hella eyeliner.
We try to go back to Cathedral’s base, but as Ewan’s changed the security, the button in the elevator won’t work anymore. Rude! How am I gonna do spy shit now, Ewan? The good news is, since we have Zoe’s glasses, we can use them to look at the elevator control panel. Our spy vision shows us that there are green lines around some of the numbers. We want to press them from largest green hexagon to smallest — so that would make 4 the first number and 5 the last.
When we get down to the base, Ewan’s not here, but Zoe is! What up girl!
Oh, no, wait, she’s stealing. Dammit, Zoe 🙁 She cuts a hole in the spy case and steals something, then peaces out.
We cut to Ewan, who’s kinda trying to put the blame on us — he’s all like, “So YOUR FRIEND got in here and broke into my spy shit. Not cool at all.” Uh, Zoe is definitely not our friend. Just ask her. Anyway, Ewan tells us that she stole some top-secret drone bugs. Oh, dear, what does she need those for?
We can back up and click on him, and he’ll tell us that he found out that “[our] boy” Alec is an only child. Ewan, can you stop trying to imply that we’re on friendly terms with any of our shady suspects? They barely even LIKE us. YOU’RE the closest thing we have to a friend, here, Ewan, which is really sad now that I’ve typed it out.
And then, despite the massive gaping hole in the back, when we click on the spy case, Nancy will derp that it’s locked. Oh my God, Nancy.
So we have to solve the puzzle on the lock to open the case up. Nancy notes that the colors have to be grouped up for the lock to open. That’s it? You couldn’t do this on your own, Ewan? This is why the cool spies don’t want you at their lunch table.
The puzzle is kind of like…well, I’m embarrassing myself by putting in this way, it’s like Destruct-O-Match on Neopets (I had to Google that because it’s been like 15 year since I was last on Neopets). You click on the groups of colors and they’ll disappear, and you want to click them in the right order so that all the colors will end up in groups so that you can clear the board.
We get the case open, and we can look through all the fun spy stuff. We find another bug that we can steal and the missing cipher disk.
Alright, and now to the archives! You’ll recall that Kate said to follow “the raven.” This means that the password to access more of the archives is “raven.” We enter that, and now we can find out more stuff about our mom and friends. I swear to God, if like, fucking Kyler Mallory turned out to be a spy, I’m quitting this game now and never looking back.
We find a note from Kate indicating that clues to finding the scientist in the Colony operation are in the Jabberwocky poem and in one of the records at Moira’s house. Cool beans. We also find out more information on Revenant, but it’s nothing we didn’t already know, so whatever.
As we’re leaving, we get another call from Revenant. They want us to tap Ewan’s computer. Man, you guys couldn’t have called while we were still down there?
So we’ll have to do that, because I didn’t really give a shit about breaking a trash compactor. I do, however, love to invade our suspects’ privacy! Speaking of which, let’s go bug Zoe’s room now. We zip on over there and place the bug in a vase of flowers. Get it, because bugs love flowers? It’s ingenious, she’ll never notice. Nancy says that we should give it a minute, then go over to the spy cabin to listen in on whatever Zoe’s up to.
In the meantime, let’s go spy on Ewan. The way to get rid of him is to fuck with the thermostat near the server hallway — Ewan will freak out and tell us that he has to make sure that the servers don’t overheat, so we DEFINITELY, ABSOLUTELY should not mess with the thermostat. So we mess with the thermostat again, and Ewan will leave his computer to investigate.
I should note that you have to avoid detection, though. If you get caught, you get treated to this mildly terrifying screencap of Ewan.
Now that Ewan’s abandoned his post, let’s tap his computer! We pull open a drawer and find a bunch of wires, and Nancy will note that we have to attach clips to them. We finally get to use the clips that we stole from Moira’s house. So what we have to do with these clips is match the symbols on the yellow ends to the symbols on the wires, and make sure none of the clips cross over each other when they’re attached.
Like so.
After that’s done, we’ll just have to wait to see if we intercept any shady shit from Ewan’s computer. In the meantime, let’s go confront Zoe about being a thieving thief.
She’s like, “It was glass. I had a glass breaker. What did you expect me to do?” Heh. And…oh, wait, that’s all we can talk to her about for now. Okay, we’ll come back.
Let’s confront Alec over being a lying only child! I thought we could bond over having siblings, Alec! (Well, I thought I could. I know Nancy’s one of those suspicious only children.) Before we talk to him, though, Revenant calls us and congratulates us on carrying out our task. They send us another recording of Kate — she’s found out that Moira lied about having protection, and says that there are two cars following her. Who the hell was she talking to during these? Whatever.
Anyway, now we can go talk to Alec. He tells us that he totally does have a sister — she’s two years younger and her name is Grace. Nancy’s like, “Oh yeah? What’s her favorite food? What school did she go to? Name a specific way she annoyed you when you were little!” Alec gets pissed at our interrogation and tells Nancy to fuck off.
We go back to the safe house to see what we get from Ewan’s computer. A message comes through from his computer, noting that the scientist from the Colony operation is still alive. Ewan managed to salvage an image of Kate that he suspects has clues in it. Does it? Let’s see!
We download the picture of Kate, but it’s scrambled. Nancy’s all, “Maybe I can enhance the image!” Then we sit there droning “Enhance, enhance,” Blade Runner-style. Just kidding. It’s a puzzle, so we have to rearrange the pieces until the picture is in place. It shows Kate standing in front of a wall with a bunch of letters on it, and Nancy muses that the letters must be a code.
Alrighty, now let’s check in on Zoe. We overhear her say a passphrase: “From where I come, there I go.” She notes that she doesn’t know what the phrase is for yet. Then she says that Nancy’s really fucking up her plans. HA! You would’ve gotten away with your spy shenanigans, Zoe, if it wasn’t for that meddling Nancy Drew.
Having overheard all that, we know now that we gotta investigate Zoe some more, so we casually zipline over to her room again, as you do. We put on the nifty spy glasses, and now we can see fingerprints on the painting on Zoe’s wall. When we click on it, it swings open to reveal a bunch of mysterious symbols on the wall. Zoe’s some weird hoodoo lady, guys! Just kidding, it’s a puzzle to open a safe hidden in the wall.
So we recall that Zoe says, “From where I come, there I go.” This is a reference to Mary, Queen of Scots, so we gotta open up our big old book on her and look it up. The symbols appear in the book and correspond to words, so we want to click on the symbols in the wall in the right order to form the phrase, “From where I come, there I go.”
When we solve it, we find a briefcase full of passports under a bunch of different names. How very Lisa Ostrum of her. Zoe apparently also goes by Bridget Shaw, Chloe Katsaros, and Samantha Quick. Dude! Zoe is Samantha Quick! Wow, was she ever gonna thank us for doing her job for her in Venice? We dressed up in a leather catsuit and we didn’t even get any of that sweet burglary money 🙁
We also find a list of Zoe’s Nancy-stalking activities, with a bunch of letters at the top. Nancy notes that we’ll have to solve that. No way, Nancy, I really thought I had finally encountered a bunch of mysterious symbols that I didn’t have to figure out -_-
Finally, we find a pack of mysterious playing cards. Nancy will say that there’s something odd about the backing on the cards.
We keep poking around Zoe’s room, and Nancy will trip over this weird cutouts. They’re scattered around the room, like next to the pillow on the bed, and on the dining table. There are seven in all, and Nancy will say that they must be for breaking the code on Zoe’s note.
We have to put the cutouts over the letters on Zoe’s note, and arrange them so that none of the pieces overlap. The cutouts reveal the word “Parnitha.” Mysterious! Nancy wonders if that will unlock a new level of secrets in the archives.
Back at Cathedral’s base, Ewan’s noticed that someone’s put a tap on his computer. By the way, I love the random pie chart on his computer. What is it for? A breakdown of villains Nancy has put away, by the percentage of them that were motivated by revenge, hidden treasure, and/or becoming a hermit trapped in a hut in a swamp who can only get around by jetpack?
Anyway, we deny it, of course, and Ewan says he’s going to get to the bottom of it either way. We have a few conversation options here — we can ask him about himself, but he says that he can’t tell us a literal thing. Well, except that he loves contradictions and Nancy’s fashion sense. He does make a reference to trying to keep his loved ones safe, so that’s something. Then we show him the cards that we found in Zoe’s room, and he says that there are only fifty-one cards. One is missing.
“Parnitha” unlocks the last of the folders in the archives, and we can read more about the Colony operation. Someone has made a note that Nancy has arrived in Scotland, and they’re like, “NATURALLY, she must be here because of the missing scientist.” Wrong, random Cathedral person! We came here because of a sketch letter and a random photo of our mom, and just kind of tripped over this mystery, as we always do. The next paragraph notes that the Colony bioweapon is designed not to cause too many casualties. Yawn. Who even cares about the actual details of the operation? This game tries to do too much, I think — it tries to give the terrorist plot and Nancy’s emotional journey the same weight, and like, only one of those things is actually important.
Another note in the archives indicates that Kate loved to hide things in codes — sometimes in plain sight! How very every other plot-instigating character in this series of her. The note says that Kate’s penchant for codes is probably why everyone thinks all her records about the Colony operation are still accessible.
The final note is from Kate, saying that she got the formula for the super dangerous and also super vague bioweapon. She says that she put the information in the cards, and they have to be soaked in water to reveal the writing. The formula is split up among the cards, and the most important card is the ace. Ewan said one card from the deck is missing. Bets on it being the ace?
That’s all we can look through in the archives. We step back and get a text from Zoe: “I just uploaded the funniest video! See, there’s this klutz who keeps zipping over to my room. You have to see it!” Heh. I KNEW Nancy wasn’t being stealth.
The cards need some time to soak. We put them in the flower vase in our room, and then we have to leave them for a bit.
So, Zoe, I feel like uploading a viral video kind of defeats the whole secret cover thing. I’m pretty sure it’s what busted Jake and Holt in that episode of Brooklyn 99. We ask her about being Samantha Quick, and she says, “Yes! I have been meaning to tell you about this. You don’t steal someone’s alias. That is so rude.” It was for great justice, Zoe! Also, you could’ve confronted us about this…like, anytime between 2008 and now. Maybe she got tired of all the fan speculation that Samantha Quick is the lady in the hotel room with Colin. Zoe would never hook up with a scrub like him.
We can ask her about the hows and whys of the Colony operation, but she refuses to answer. Okay, good talk, Zoe.
The archives indicated that Kate’s clues liked to hide “in plain sight.” So clearly, that picture of her where there were letters painted right on the was a clue. The only place where we’ve seen those letters before were in reference to notes played on a bagpipe. Playing the bagpipe! Gotta get some stereotypical Scottish activities in between investigating our mother’s murder by terrorists.
You’ll recall, however, that the bagpipes at the safe house are missing a pipe apparently it is called a chanter. The good news is, the souvenir machine in the station sells a lone chanter, all by itself. What the hell kind of janky souvenir is that? Whatever. So we buy one, and we hop off to Loch Lomond to put it on the bagpipes.
So the bagpipe book will tell you which holes have to be open and closed to play various notes, and we want to play them all in the order they appear on the wall in the photo, top to bottom: G C E E B A D F a C.
Playing all the notes opens up a vent in the wall, and we get this record.
Back in the cabin, we can put the missing disk on the cipher wheel. The key to solve the cipher was in the archives at Cathedral, and I’m getting puzzle fatigue so who cares. The solved cipher says “Music themes reveal ace.”
Nancy muses that Kate must have been talking about the song she wrote, and that we can call Carson for help. Man, all these international phone calls. Like, I know he’s too concerned with us potentially getting killed to think about it now, but Carson is gonna be PISSED when the phone bill comes.
We call Carson, and we can chat a bit about the cards if you somehow haven’t figured out to soak them in water yet. We can also ask him about the bioweapon from the Colony attack, but he doesn’t know much about it and frets that we’ll get hurt. He’s like, “Why couldn’t you have been a librarian? They rarely explode or get kidnapped. Although I’m sure you’d find a way.” Hee.
We ask about the song, and he says that certain notes in the song were meant to represent Carson and Nancy. He says he’ll try to remember what they were and get the song to us. Cool cool cool.
After this, I go to visit Moira. First we ask if she knows how to get into the locked letterbox that we found in her safe all the way back in part one. She’s like, “That was your mom’s, so nope.” Then we ask why we lost touch, and she says that Carson stopped Moira from seeing Nancy. After Kate had Nancy, she was like, “I’m gonna stop doing so much near-fatal stuff” and Moira was like, “But, but, the great justice!” She kept talking Kate into coming back to do Cathedral work, until one night they had a particularly close call, and Carson freaked out and hauled the family back to River Heights. Moira refuses to expound on what exactly the close call was.
We play the record on Moira’s turntable, and we hear Kate say, “‘Beware the Jabberwocky, my son!’ Take the first of green, second orange, third purple, fourth red, fifth blue, sixth brown, seventh aqua, eighth pink.” Okay, so that’s clues for solving the color coding on the Jabberwocky poem.
The unscrambled code says that the we’ll find the scientist’s number by typing in “caretakers” in the computer at the cabin. Sigh, okay, let’s go haul ass back to Loch Lomond.
We find a document stating that the scientist was moved to safe location, and he has a burner phone if he needs to be warned to flee. If the Colony operation ever resurfaces, the scientist has to be warned to go on the run. So let’s do that! The document lists his phone number — 020 7946 0837 — so we can call him now.
We have to introduce ourselves with a specific phrase — “This is Nancy calling for Archmides” — and the scientist is all, “Aw, hell no.” He plans to bail and leave the formula behind for Revenant to find, and Nancy’s all, “So you’re just gonna let them get their hands on a super dangerous formula that could kill tons of people?” and he’s like, “Yes.” Well, I guess this is why he’s a scientist and not a super sleuth. He tell us that Revenant threatened his family for him to make the formula the first time, and he’s not doing that again. “I care more about my family than a world full of strangers.” Okay, but a biological attack on the world would potentially affect your family, so — whatever. Who cares! So the scientist is a punk ass baby, so we gotta stop this thing on our own.
On the train back to Glasgow, we have another Kate flashback. She’s playing the piano, because Nancy has literally no memories of her mom standing up, and she shows us the notes in her song that represent Nancy and Carson. She tells us that she puts them in every song. Nancy’s like, “Not really a substitute for you staying here instead of running off to do spy shit, but okay.” As before, flashback!Kate refuses to say why she’s leaving. Baby Nancy asks if she’s coming back, and Kate says that she doesn’t know. Wow, that’s harsh. It’s amazing Nancy doesn’t have more issues.
After we get back to Glasgow, we get another call from Revenant. They creep at us that they could tell us what our mom’s last moments were like, as long as we give them the scientist’s phone number. Nancy refuses, which is good, because frankly the concept of listening to Kate’s death throes really freaks me out. Revenant plays part of our conversation with the scientist, and Nancy freaks out that they were listening to us. Revenant is all, “You won’t escape! Mwa ha ha!” and hangs up on us.
We go up to our room and see that it’s been ransacked. Then Alec comes up behind us and he’s all, “Dang, Nancy! Points for living like a rockstar!” Alec, can you please focus. Then we see a red line, and Alec’s like, “Holy shit, you have a red dot on your forehead.” There are gunshots, and we cut away to Cathedral’s base. Okay, well, I’m guessing they didn’t manage to snipe Nancy, then.
The base is empty, and we find Ewan tied up in the server hallway. After we rip the tape off of his mouth, he tells us that two men came in and tied him up. Sure, that’s specific. Nancy’s like, “Well, I nearly got shot, so top THAT.” Ewan says that we have to leave Glasgow, and he’s putting us on a plane tomorrow.
We go back up to our room, and see that it’s been completely cleaned up. Whoever attacked us stole the cards, though, so they have parts of the chemical formula now. Then we find a laser pointer on the floor, and Nancy muses that the attack might’ve been staged. And what the hell was up with Alec showing up like that? Clearly, it’s time to finally get to the bottom of his mystery.
So we rock up to him at the station and are all, “Here’s your laser pointer, thought you might want it back.” Nancy demands an explanation, and Alec finally sighs that he might as well, since if Nancy asks the wrong person the wrong question, she’s gon’ get herself killed. He shows us a note that he got from Revenant, threatening to kill his sister if he didn’t get the playing cards from Nancy. Alec also has a letter that he’s planning to send to the papers if the situation gets bad enough. The letter explains that Alec was a legit private investigator, and a few years ago he was investigating a car accident. A bunch of people told him to leave it alone, but he didn’t, and a mysterious organization told him that consequences would never be the same. Just a few months ago, his sister was kidnapped and the shady group told Alec to cooperate if he wanted to keep her alive. The letter notes that if Alec does ever end up going public about all this, it means that the situation has gone quite dire. It’s optimistic of him to think that the papers will take him seriously.
We can’t talk to Alec any more about all this — yet — but the note from Revenant told him to put the cards in locker 36. We go and find them, and now we have all the cards.
Carson sends the sheet music for Kate’s song, highlighting the parts that belong to Carson, Kate, and Nancy. Thanks, Carson, for getting off your ass and finally helping us in the last like twenty minutes of the game. Classic Carson!
We finally have the clues that let us open that box in Moira’s house. So we waltz back in and go to her closet. The letters correspond to the musical notes, blah blah who thought it was a good idea to put literally 3/4ths of the puzzles here in the last part of the game blah. Nancy’s part is E F G G F E F E D E, Carson’s is G F D B G F D B A, and Kate’s is D A A A E B B B B.
Then we get a text from Ned, which says — nope, I can’t do it. It’s too embarrassing. DAMMIT, NED, I WANT TO LIKE YOU.
The missing ace is in the box, and we go back to the hotel to soak it. Sure, the hotel, where Alec staged a whole attack on us with multiple participants. Is there no other glass of water in all of Scotland?
When the card is done soaking, we see part of a chemical compound on it. Now we can put together all the cards and get the formula for the super-dangerous bioweapon that could destroy Glasgow! Why doesn’t Nancy just destroy the cards? It’s not like she — or anyone else — wants the formula to stick around, the scientist basically peaced the fuck out, so they can’t ask him to do anything with it either. JUST BURN THE CARDS, NANCY.
Case in point: Zoe shows up and steals the cards from us. We’re all like, “This is very morally wrong of you, Zoe!” and she just tells us that the cards belong to the government and gets on the elevator. We manage to follow her, but then the elevator gets pumped full of gas and we pass out. Before we lose consciousness, Zoe tells us to sit down so we don’t wake up with a concussion. Heh. What’s one more head injury for Nancy, right?
Nancy has another flashback of her mom, and remembers screwing up at the piano while Kate tells her to keep trying. Then we have a trippy nightmare about Zoe’s eyes and the fake attack in our hotel room and Alec being weird and basically the all the crazy shit that’s happened here.
We finally wake up. Zoe says it seems like we’re in a dumpster, and Nancy realizes that we’re in the trash compactor in the station. She’s like, “We’re going to be crushed to death, and we don’t even have a cute droid friend on the outside to help us!” Zoe’s like, “Yeah, seems likely.” Heh. She just does not give a shit.
Luckily for us, there’s a puzzle that will stop our imminent crushing to death! “Not reassuring,” Zoe snarks. So we get to pushing the sliders around, with the goal being to clear a path for the dark orange piece to read the other side. The whole time, Zoe sighs behind us that her death is going to be brief, painful, and full of garbage — “But that’s life, isn’t it?” “There’s just no way I’m spending my last moments on Earth with you,” Nancy says. “How do you think I feel? You’re you,” Zoe snaps. Hee! I’m starting to love her, guys. Zoe tells Nancy that she’s not helping with this whole international spy shit, she’s just a pain in everyone’s ass — more E-rated than that, obviously — and Nancy gets all inspirational that she may be in everyone’s way, but that’s never stopped her from going after great justice before. “It’s dark, imagine I’m making a thoughtful face,” Zoe says.
On that note, we solve the puzzle and escape from the trash compactor. I guess nearly being crushed to death has bonded Zoe and Nancy (but not literally, the way being compacted would have), and Zoe’s willing to work with us now. She asks what our plan is, and Nancy says that Ewan took our computer tap offline, so it’s time to confront him about THE TRUTH!…or whatever. Zoe gives us some clips to tap the computer again, and she’s all, “Let’s go crack some skulls.” “I don’t do that,” Nancy says. No skulls except her own, anyway. Zoe’s like, “Me either, just let me say it.” Heh. It’s a pity that Zoe only gets fun in like, the last ten minutes of the game.
We get a text from Moira telling us that the men who kidnapped her came back. She had to leave, seeing as she didn’t bother to improve the security on her house or even like, lock her door at all after that experience.
We cut to the hotel, and we can talk to Zoe again. We suggest that we kidnap Ewan the way Zoe threatened to have us kidnapped, and she admits that she doesn’t know any kidnappers — she was just gonna pay off some EMTs to knock Nancy out and take her to a hospital. She works alone, quite literally. Uh, okay. Zoe has a weird interest in geopolitics for someone who seems to mostly be a professional burglar or something.
We tap Ewan’s computer again, and it’s the same puzzle as last time so I won’t show it to you. This time, we find proof of CRIME! He’s been keeping an eye on the scientist and blah blah something formula something vaccines blah, who even cares. He writes that “no further leverage [is] needed” from Alec, and that he’s feeding Zoe information that will lead to Alec. He’s going to leave one of his coins as a key in locker 42.
So…Ewan is evil, right? Is that what we’re getting at here? I mean, I guess he’s our only suspect left — Zoe’s on our side, Alec is being blackmailed, and Moira…I guess is probably not evil since she got kidnapped and all.
So we go look at Ewan’s coin case. Per his notes, the coin to open up the locker has a “two-toned” animal on it. It’s the coin in the middle of the second row from the bottom, with a…horse? bull? something anyway on it, and a silver ring around the middle.
Then we go to the station and put the coin in as payment for locker 42. A whole chunk of lockers opens up to reveal a doorway. Oh my God, is this the only secret passage in the entire game?
At the end of the passageway is basically proof that Ewan is either evil or a Revenant fanboy, in which case he’s evil and kind of embarrassing. We can poke around a bit, and we find a bunch of shit hidden over by the chairs and suitcases. There’s a note from Revenant: “You have attracted our attention. Your assumptions are correct. Carry on.” Then we find the rest of the letter from Kate’s journal in the cabin, the one that started with her saying that she shouldn’t have come to Glasgow. The rest of the letter goes as such: Kate knows she’s gonna die here, and she wishes she had time to teach Nancy everything she needs to know — Ewan has underlined this bit, and I guess this is where they got the idea that Nancy knows about spy shit from. Then Kate tells a story about how even baby Nancy loved ugly horse shirts, and the kids at school all made fun of her for being such a square. Kate says that Nancy has always wanted to be herself and have people like her for who she was, and that’s what makes her so special. Being You is Most Definitely Cool. And honestly, it’s a really sweet letter.
Her postscript says that if Carson knows what she wants to say, he can look up “apology” in the dictionary. Ewan’s all like, “OMG, is that code about the scientist?” because I guess we’re supposed to think his cold terrorist heart can’t comprehend love.
There’s another note from Kate. The last two lines are “Go to where I stood a while in thought / And listen.” Ewan’s notes muse that he doesn’t know what that means, and Moira isn’t helping. But Nancy might know! Nancy realizes Ewan is the one who lured us here.
So…Ewan’s definitely evil, then.
We also find a list of Ewan’s communications with Revenant. It’s kind of sad because they clearly don’t give that much of a shit about him. Also, apparently Ewan’s real name is “Sean Kent Davis.” Nancy says that Ewan is going to stage the attack on Glasgow from the train station — he’s set up bombs all through Glasgow that will release the formula. Wow, he made that really fast, considering he knocked us out like twenty minutes ago.
We go back to the hotel and tell Zoe what we found. “This all points to Ewan,” Zoe says. “Spoiler alert,” Nancy says, in the most obnoxious teenage voice ever. This might be the only time in all 30-something games that Nancy sounds like a teenager. Anyway, Zoe says that she’ll put a team together to look for the bombs in the city. Meanwhile, Nancy should go to the base and “neutralize” Ewan. Wait, where is this team coming from? I thought you worked alone, Zoe! Whatever. She tells us that we’ll keep in touch via the spy glasses.
We go to the base with Zoe chattering in our ear. She loops in Moira and Alec, too, so we’re all just one happy crime-fighting family.
Ewan’s added a password to the thermostat and OH MY GOD IF I ENCOUNTER ONE MORE PUZZLE!!! This game is so lopsided. Ugh, so the solution to the puzzle was in one of Ewan’s notes in his evil lair. I’m too tired to explain it, let’s keep this shit moving.
So we want to set off the thermostat alarm and send Ewan into the server hallways, then put up the firewall so he can’t get out. If you don’t hide in time, you see…the exact same screencap of Ewan that we saw earlier.
Because the appropriate reaction to someone foiling your terrorist plot is “glare at them and give them a stern talking-to.” Right.
Anyway, so we fuck around with the firewall controls so that Ewan is trapped over by the thermostat. He says that it doesn’t matter, since we can’t stop him anyway. We’re like, “Ewan, why would you launch a terrorist attack on a place where you live?” and he’s like, “Because I can!” That’s a terrible motive, Ewan. At least get a jetpack and haunt a few castles.
We’re about to speechify at him some more, but Alec and Moira and Zoe come back and tell us that they’ve found the bombs, and they have to be taken offline in a specific order. We have to collect the USB drives from the servers in the room in the order that Alec/Moira/Zoe specify for us.
Zoe says the first USB to remove is the red drive from the Forbes server. Yup, we’re back to studying clan kilts again. All the servers have a specific tartan on them, so we have to find the correct tartan, then remove the right color drive from it.
So for example, the Murray tartan is the green and black one on the lower left, and we have to remove the yellow drive. I already did that, so you can’t see it in this picture, but you get the idea.
Then we have to go to the main server in the first aisle and place the USB ports in order. It’s kind of like sudoku; the colors can’t be repeated horizontally or vertically.
We’re all like, “Haha! The evil has been defeated!” but then Ewan’s like, “I just remembered, I have another bomb.” And it’s right here in the room with us! So, what, Ewan was just gonna blow himself up? He didn’t think this through. Alrighty, so we gotta disable this bomb too.
Zoe tells us that the squares have to be pressed in the following order: small, small, medium, and then large, in numerical order. Clicking on the sequence of squares will remove the number from the board, and you have to go through three rounds, with more numbers appearing each time. You also have to click on squares that are touching the previous square clicked, so you have to be careful which squares are connected to which numbers.
We defuse — or diffuse? I can’t tell if the game is spelling it wrong on accident, or if it’s meant to be diffuse because it’s a bio bomb — the bomb, and Zoe’s like, “Cool, I’m gonna go help Alec find his sister. You…call the police or something about Ewan, IDK.” Thanks, Zoe.
With the bombs disabled, Revenant’s attack falls apart. Ewan gets arrested, and I guess Cathedral takes care of the rest without telling Nancy. Nancy muses that Ewan seems to have just been a guy who “felt small” (heh) and decided to feel more important by becoming a terrorist, only to get used as a pawn by Revenant. That’s pretty sad, bro. Like, not sad-sad, just kind of pathetic. On the other hand, it does feel weirdly pertinent in today’s political climate.
Revenant goes back into hiding, and Nancy muses that it’s not her fight — “Not yet, anyway.”
Zoe and Alec go off together to track down his sister. Presumably they fall in love on the way. I’d watch that TV show. Nancy notes that Zoe was on a mission to expose and bring down Revenant, which is an odd thing to have never hinted at throughout the course of the game at all, but whatever.
Nancy decides to keep in touch with Moira and forgive her for her part in Kate’s death. Somewhere, Hannah Gruen is seething. All this work she put into being Nancy’s mother figure, only to get bumped aside for some rando who was just invented for this outlandish game.
Nancy says that she’s glad that she came to Scotland and finally figured out what really happened to her mom, but at the same time, she didn’t need to: she already knew who her mom was, and she sees her when she looks in the mirror every day. “And I hear your song, whenever the world is quiet enough.” Awww. Gosh, this is actually quite well-written, very sad but also cathartic and self-assured. I do like the emotional beats in this game; the way the characters’ grief and guilt is communicated through letters and diary entires could have been so flowery and cheesy, and I think in the hands of earlier writers, it would have been. But everything here is very quietly emotional and powerful in how simple they keep the wording.
It’s just…the spy shit, man. It’s dumb as fuck.
Also, I forgot to mention it earlier, but the graphics took a weird dip in this game after being so excellent in the last few. Zoe-as-Bridget in particular looked very odd and had a lot of jagged edges around her hair and face, particularly when the characters had been so smooth before.
Story-wise, too, I think Ghost of Thornton Hall was where this series peaked. After the excellent run of SAW through GTH, this was the first misstep — the emotional writing is wonderful, but the plot is bizarre and the puzzles are all squashed into the last third of the game, which is frustrating. While dialogue is always fun, the beginning of the game does sort of feel like you’re being led around without actively solving much of anything, while the end loses all its momentum because every step you take hurls another puzzle at you. It’s solid enough, but it’s nowhere near as good as the games preceding it, and the series never really had the chance to recover. Oh, well.
THE END.
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