Previously on Nancy Drew: Midnight in Salem: After five years, Nancy Drew has landed in Salem, Massachusetts to help Deirdre Shannon investigate a fire that her creepy cousin may or may not have set. Nancy’s like, “Did you call me because I’m the first person you associate with arson?”
Getting into the car at the Parry house will automatically transport us to downtown Salem, where the rest of our characters can be found. Straight ahead, we see the courthouse, where a bunch of protestors have set up. I like the people walking around in this area a lot — it adds a lot of life to the game and you can even click on them to hear snatches of NPC dialogue about the protests and hauntings. The general look of the game isn’t nearly as well-designed or rendered as previous games, but I do think they were successful in creating a more lively, immersive setting.
Anyway, as we walk, we get a text from Teegan. She apologizes for flipping on us slightly when we met, and invites us to come meet her at the museum. We’ll do that in a minute, but first, we get pulled into a cutscene and move towards this little gathering up ahead.
Up on the platform is Olivia Ravencroft, Teegan’s ex-friend of the “fraudulent witch” notoriety. She’s putting on a speech-slash-show about how witchcraft is totally real and witches walk among us, even today. In fact, there was a coven right here in Salem who wanted revenge for the witch trials, and one Halloween, they did ~*~something~*~ that unleashed the “angry spirits of the past.” Hmm, I wonder if that coven has anything to do with the “coven” photo in Teegan’s room, since we can now see that Olivia is one of the ladies in the picture.
After her dramatic speech, Olivia throws down a smoke bomb, except she just stands there while the smoke floats around, so I don’t know what’s supposed to be magical about that. Then she adds that if anyone wants to know about witches, they can buy a ticket for her self-guided walking tour! Smooth. She asks if anyone in the audience wants to be a witch, which is a prime opportunity to step forward and start interrogating her.
Olivia immediately needles us for having red hair, which you’ll recall was a sign of witchiness way back in the Middle Ages. Nancy’s like, “I do have an uncanny ability to bend people to my will!” We snarkily ask if we need to take a test or get a diploma to be a witch and Olivia gets all pretentious about how real witches don’t bother with boring shit like permission and rules. “Bureaucracy is for persecutors,” she adds. Okay, hee.
We get down to interrogating Olivia with a quickness: we ask how often she does this show, to which she says she’s at it every night. Okay, first of all, are we referring to the show that she’s doing right now? Because it’s definitely not nighttime. Nancy slyly asks if that includes the night that the Hathorne House burned down, and Olivia just as slyly returns that she hopes we’re not the police. She says she already spoke to the police, and she was out of town the night of the fire. I feel like this is the sort of thing we should be able to needle her about, but we don’t.
Let’s see if Olivia will cop to knowing Teegan. We ask if she’s lived in Salem a long time, and thus knows the locals, and she says she was born and raised there. This is funny to me because everything about Olivia — from her voice to her mannerisms to her dyed hair and art school kid tendencies — actually reminds me of every single person I have ever met from Ohio*. I don’t believe Olivia is from the East Coast at all; she has strong Midwestern energy.
(* Disclaimer: I have met 2 people from Ohio, but they were completely unrelated and yet had the same personality, so I feel confident making sweeping generalizations here.)
Anyway, the point of this question is that Olivia claims to not know Teegan well, and says that they haven’t spoken in a long time. She also says she doesn’t know Mei very well either, although she’s sympathetic to the way that Mei gets blamed for things just because people think she’s weird. She doesn’t think Mei burned down Hathorne House.
Well, if Olivia doesn’t think it was Mei, then who does she think it was? “Do you really think some modern witch coven unleashed ghosts on Salem?” Olivia tells us that there’s a ~*~spooky~*~ rumor about a coven that, eight years ago, performed a ritual to bring the dead witches back to Salem for revenge. (Ooh, I get to use my “revenge!” tag.) Ever since then, Salem has seen an increased amount of spectral activity. Presumably this has been scientifically measured by those ghost laser pointers that show up in every single game.
Nancy wonders if perhaps there is a logical, normal, non-ghost explanation for how the fire started. Olivia’s like, “No, it was definitely ghosts.” She gives us a big speech about how the world is made up of a light side and a dark side, which surrounds us and penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together — oh, wait, I’m in the wrong franchise. The dark side Olivia is actually referring to is the unknown, magical world that’s usually hidden from us — but in Salem, the dark is everywhere. “That’s why they say ‘Don’t be out past midnight in Salem.’” Is that why they say that? I thought it was just an excuse to name-drop the game’s title.
“Also, did you know that Salem has more ghost-sightings than any other city in North America? If you want to learn why, you should go on my tour!” Alright, this is just a sales pitch now.
Let’s move on from Olivia. We can explore the square a bit more — this is basically the main area of the game; with the exception of the Parry house, all of the explorable areas branch off of this square. We can approach the crowd chanting outside of the courthouse, and — hey, can we talk to the NPCs?
What’s up, bro! Fight the power! We note that the protestors are holding “AW” signs, and we can ask what that means. NPC Bro here tells us that they’re part of a group called the “Accused Witches”; descendants of the victims of the Salem Witch Trials. They’ve trying to get reparations for all the property/money taken from their ancestors when they were accused of witchcraft, but somehow all their evidence for their claim has gone missing from the courthouse. The protestors have been trying to get Judge Danforth to address it, but he refuses to speak to the plebes. Wow, thanks for that information, random NPC!
Again, I think it’s cool that this game has NPCs populating the environment and who you can actually talk to, even as I realize they sacrificed decent graphics and puzzles for it. I respect the attempt, anyway.
Let’s go inside the courthouse. We find Judge Danforth’s office, but he won’t — or can’t — let us in, as he’s locked inside. Nancy’s like, “Well, we could just talk through this door?” but Judge Danforth’s like, “No, you have to solve a puzzle to unlock the door before we can talk because that’s how these games work.” He does say that he gave a spare key to Alicia Cole, so let’s talk to her.
We back up down the hall to another office, where we find Alicia Cole. We tell her that we’re here to see Judge Danforth, and she asks if she can help. Nancy says that we don’t need a lawyer yet, and Alicia snarks that the diploma on her wall really gave it away, huh. Nancy adds that she also recognizes Alicia’s cold cup of coffee and deluxe box of sticky tabs as classic lawyer hallmarks, and Alicia catches on that Nancy is Carson’s daughter. Nancy remarks that it’s a small world, but they don’t expand on when Alicia and Carson met. Anyway, Alicia does not have Judge Danforth’s spare key (I know, you’re shocked) so Nancy asks her for a paperclip, which Alicia forks over.
By the way, if you go to see Alicia before trying to meet Judge Danforth, Alicia will joke that she’d have no problem representing us if we committed a crime, because we look so innocent. Deirdre’s like, “Ha ha, it would be pretty funny if we were partners in crime, right Nancy?” and Nancy’s like, “NO. IF YOU COMMITTED A CRIME, I’D HUNT YOU DOWN, THROW YOU IN JAIL, AND BE A WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION.” My God, Nancy, calm down.
Back to Judge Danforth. Armed with our paperclip, we can now complete a puzzle to unlock the door for him. This puzzle is…not hard in the challenging-your-skills sense, but you know how the interface of this game is really clunky? This is annoying but doesn’t really interfere with the dialogue or snooping portions of the game, but when it comes to trying to click things into place for puzzles, it turns into a major pain in the ass.
This puzzle involves pushing all of the lock’s pins up in the right order. The game hints that the pin that gives the most resistance is the one you want to push up (this will change to always be the next pin in the sequence, so pins that are easy to push when you start will become hard to push once they’re next in sequence), but I kind of had a hard time pushing all of them up, I think because I was using a trackpad. And then you have to sloooowly push them up into the right position — if you push them too far up or release them too early, they’ll all fall down and you have to start over. I think I maybe should’ve turned my graphics settings down, too — I’m not sure if the problem was because the game was already a bit laggy and jerky, because I was using a trackpad, or a combination of both.
Anyway, once we get inside, we meet Judge Danforth. He immediately starts going off about the protestors outside and how they’re all a bunch of young whippersnappers stirring up trouble in their peaceful town. “You know, this town used to be a quiet place,” he sighs, apparently forgetting that Salem is, you know, literally famous for that time mass hysteria swept the entire town and got nineteen people killed.
Judge Danforth is a bit of a dick — he totally ignores Deirdre’s presence and would rather reminiscence about playing golf with Carson than discussing the protests. Charming. Deirdre reminds him that we unlocked his office door for him, so a return favor might be in order. The judge agrees to answer some questions, and we find out that the big deal about the Hathorne House is that its owner, Frances Tuttle, died a while ago. She apparently didn’t leave a will, and so the house is set to revert back to being public property in two days. Frances Tuttle’s caregiver, Lauren Holt, has been living on the property and is not at all pleased that the house wasn’t left to her. While Frances Tuttle died of natural causes, the fire itself wasn’t an accident, as they found evidence of an accelerant in the house. They don’t have any proof that Mei set the fire, but Judge Danforth’s like, “Well, she was involved in a fire before, so like…who else could it have been?” Deirdre is offended that everyone suspects Mei, but the judge adds that Mei’s refusal to give an alibi does make her look pretty guilty, despite the lack of hard evidence.
Let’s ask why Judge Danforth wanted the Book of Apologies so bad, as that’s the reason we’re in this whole mess to begin with. He frets that he would’ve never asked Carson for help finding the book if he had known Nancy would’ve gotten jumped by a thief, but Nancy’s like, “Whatever, he didn’t even try to give me a head injury.” We assure the judge we can handle ourselves, to which he creeps, “Yeeeees…I’m sure you can.” Uh, I don’t know what he means by that, but it sounds gross. Anyway, the judge blusters that he’s been under a lot of pressure from the AW group, and…he thought…he could get them off his back with the Book of Apologies? I don’t know. He tells us the same stuff we learned from the NPC outside — the descendants of the victims of the Salem Witch Trials want reparations, and in fact they’ve submitted a claim to the Hathorne House. The Book of Apologies apparently would have strengthened AW’s claim. And, on top of that, Judge Danforth name-checks Teegan as the leader of AW.
That’s the main bulk of our conversation with Judge Danforth. We can try to needle him a little more about his desperation to pin the case on Mei, but he’s just like, “Stop saying words.” On our way out of his office, though, he stops us and mentions that someone broke into the evidence room recently. Nancy’s like, “Well, did you call the police?” and he gets all shifty and is like, “Oh, what an idea! I’ll do that right away, forget I told you anything.” Suspicious!
That’s it for the courthouse. Let’s walk out — you can see the protestors through the windows, which is pretty neat — and go find Teegan at the museum.
The museum is kind of boring — there isn’t much action placed here, apart from talking to Teegan, and it’s pretty standard Nancy Drew fare, i.e. lots of dark wood and educational displays. It does look like a lot of the smaller museums around Boston and Salem, so nice job there. The light coming in through the windows looks nice, and this is pretty much the only building where it actually looks like it’s late afternoon inside — I didn’t mention this, but all the characters keep remarking about how late it is, which feels weird when most of the locations are lit like it’s the middle of the day.
(The lighting is pretty uneven, actually — it’s overcast outside the courthouse, looks like a sunny mid-afternoon in Judge Danforth’s office, and looks like the sun is going down in the museum.)
We can look at some of the books and statues — “They were people just like us,” Nancy muses, although I don’t know how that horrifyingly waxlike figure could remind you of an actual person.
Off to the side, we can also see the entrance to a shop that Olivia runs. So she and Teegan work in the same building? That’s awkward.
Let’s say hi to Teegan. Like Olivia, they made an effort to have her turn and look at you, but every now and then she’ll turn away and stare off into space while delivering her dialogue.
Teegan asks what we’ve been up to, and we tell her that we decided to take Olivia’s tour. I don’t know when we decided that, actually, but okay. Mentioning the tour will add a tour ticket to our inventory to use later. Teegan asks if Olivia is telling God and everybody about the coven that supposedly woke up all the dead witch spirits eight years ago, and Nancy’s like, “Why do you want to know?” Teegan doesn’t own up to the coven photo, and instead just huffs that she thinks it’s tasteless.
Watching Teegan talk to the wall is starting to weird me out, so let’s walk around the desk and start the conversation again. That’s better. When we click on her again, Teegan will ask after Mei, like we didn’t leave the house right after Teegan did. We let her know that there’s no progress and ask what she’s up to. Teegan refuses to tell us what she’s working on; she only says that it’s a new exhibit and we can check it out when it opens, on Halloween. Teegan, I hope you know that once this mystery is over, we’re gonna bail on Salem and never think about you again. Kyler Mallory invited Nancy to be her literal maid of honor, and we haven’t spoken a word to her since.
We ask if Teegan has any other witch-trial memorabilia she hasn’t shown us, and she tells us a bunch of her research is up on the museum’s second floor. She shows us a hidden staircase (not to be confused with the Nancy Drew book, The Hidden Staircase) behind a bookshelf and says we can go up there and poke around her research whenever we want. Speaking of witchcraft research, Teegan mentions that a lot of the work she’s done for the Accused Witches group is up there, which segues into her explaining what AW is up to, if you were asleep while talking to the NPC outside or to Judge Danforth.
We can also point out the pumpkins by her desk, which is just a segue for Teegan to explain a mini-game that you can do throughout the story: there are a bunch of candles scattered around town (you can see one at the bottom-right corner of the frame during our talk with Olivia), and you’re meant to carve some of the pumpkins in the museum and place them over the candles to make jack-o’-lanterns. It’s completely optional and unnecessary to the story, so I skipped it, but I guess you can do it if you want to spend more time in the game’s world (lol).
Finally, let’s ask Teegan if we can show her something. I thought this was going to be an opportunity to hit her with that coven photo, but instead we merely ask about the torn-up piece of paper we found in Parrys’ trash can. Weirdly, Nancy calls it a “letter” despite the fact that it is two words. It’s barely a note, Nancy. Anyway, Teegan gets all mad and says that it’s just trash, and asks Deirdre if she can keep “[her] assistant” out of their garbage. Hey, fuck you, Teegan! (“Assistant isn’t really the right word,” Nancy says, to which Deirdre supplies, “I can think of others.” Hee! God, I love her.) Funnily enough, Deirdre goes on to defend us and suggests that Teegan tell us the truth, but Teegan doubles down and says she doesn’t know who wrote it.
We go upstairs to look around, but there’s not much to do; if we click on the books, Nancy will just remark about how old they are. Huh. Deirdre, what do you think we should do?
Deirdre says that we ought to go on Olivia’s tour, so I guess that’s what we have to do to progress.
Before we leave, we can look at two books: Bloodline of the Accused and The Salem of Yesterday. The bloodline book opens to a page about the Johnson family, while the Salem book talks a bit about the founding of Salem and what the town was like at the time of the trials.
We go back to Olivia and give her our tour ticket, and she gives us a tablet with a list of locations to visit. Fancy. If you can’t suss out which locations are which from their names, they also all have a little raven placard next to them.
So we wander around town — oh, hi, Deirdre.
The first place on our list is the “Salem Sinkholes”, which are basically just holes in the ground that are blocked off by “Road Closed” signs. Clicking on it will start Olivia’s narration, telling us about the tunnels under Salem that were used by smugglers during the Prohibition. The tunnels are now collapsing — most people believe that they’re just old, but could something ~spookier~ be causing the ground in Salem to open up and ~reveal~ the underworld? This is just foreshadowing for the end of the game; we can’t get closer to these actual sinkholes.
Our next stop is the museum, where we literally just left. We have to click on both the statue and the board on the wall listing all the names of the accused. Olivia dramatizes about the humanity of it all, but she doesn’t say anything that we don’t already know. This tour is kind of a rip.
Our next stop is the graveyard! Love a good graveyard. We’re looking for John Hathorne’s grave, specifically.
I like the graveyard a lot; I think it’s very pretty and atmospheric, with the piles of fall leaves and bare trees. The light shifts a bit over the ground, which is also pretty cool, although I could do without the fake depth-of-field blurring effects.
John Hathorne’s grave is right across from the bench in the above screencap, so it’s not hard to find. Olivia is once again super overdramatic about how Judge Hathorne villainously sentenced a bunch of people to death for being witches and then claimed their property for his own. I mean, that is pretty villainous, but Olivia is taking this way too personally. You can tell that she started self-identifying as a witch in high school and latched onto the Salem Witch Trials as her generational trauma. I bet she was a theater kid.
Another item on our list, the Little Liberty statue, is also here in the graveyard. Olivia explains that the statue is of John Hathorne’s sister, Abigail, who defied her brother and helped the accused escape from their jail cells. (This was invented for the game, by the way; there was no Abigail Hathorne, and I couldn’t find any info about people openly helping the accused.) Anyway, in the game’s lore, John Hathorne eventually caught Abigail and locked her up inside Hathorne House.
We walk around the side of the statute, where we see the initials “AW” carved onto the side of the statue. Nancy realizes they’re the same initials as the ones we saw in Moosham Castle. Yes, the initials we saw right after reading about Abigail Hathorne Woodley, who seems like she might be the same person as Abigail Hathorne, right Nancy? Nancy?
“What a strange coincidence,” Nancy muses. COME ON, BRO.
Nancy still refuses to cotton on that AW just might be Abigail Hathorne Woodley, so let’s move on for now. Our next stop is the Hathorne House, but that actually just means stopping at the trail up to the house, because they’re saving the actual house for a more dramatic scene later. Olivia tells us that the Hathorne estate was built on the lands that Judge Hathorne took from the accused — or, more accurately, bought once they were sold off after the accused were jailed and/or executed. Again, we knew this.
The last thing we want to look at is this kneeling statue. It’s right in front of the Hathorne House sign; you can see it as soon as you turn around from the sign. These are a bunch of unmarked graves, believed to belong to people executed for witchcraft, since it was technically forbidden to bury witches on consecrated ground.
Once Olivia’s narration finishes, Deirdre will automatically say that she’s exhausted, which is our cue to go back to the Parry house.
We can’t stick around and talk to anyone either, so unless you want to carve pumpkins with Teegan for a while longer, there’s nothing else to do but go back to Deirdre’s car. There’s still a bit more to do on day one back at the house, but this post is getting long and there are so many images that my browser crashes every time I try to power-scroll to the bottom to write more, which I’m taking as a sign that part one should end here.
Up next: We see a ghost, dig into everyone’s backstory, and Frank Hardy tries to snake his way back into Nancy’s life.
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