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You've got the wrong link Bobbin. EDIT: What a great new page. Bobbin Threadbare posted:
The right link should be this one.
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Jul 25, 2016 17:40
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Psychotic Weasel posted:While that's certainly a good point I think the risk way out weighs the reward for me in situations like this - in a stock market you still have a certain degree of control over your money and can shift it around or withdraw what you have left if things aren't going your way (in most situations). You also generally have the option to just stick with it and try to recover your losses over time if you're patient. Yeah you get people who get screwed over badly either because they made the wrong call, weren't paying close enough attention or invested in companies like ENRON or Nortel but with betting at the end of the match you're either leaving with $55 or $0 and there's nothing you can do about it once you hand over the money. The trade off for the increased risk is the much MUCH shorter turnaround time. Two people with immutable physical characteristics and a public professional history are also not really any more vague a thing to gamble on than the public perception of a company's future value. Sure it's more of a risk than an index fund but people take higher financial risks all the time for similar potential gain.
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Jul 25, 2016 18:34
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THAT SAID, yeah it's a pretty unusual depiction of prize fight fixing. Usually the idea is to have the favorite take a dive for big gains.
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Jul 25, 2016 18:41
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Air is lava! posted:You've got the wrong link Bobbin. So I did. Guess I forgot to update everything after I encountered some technical difficulties. The links are correct now.
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Jul 25, 2016 18:42
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Notes: - It seems like this really should have been a homicide case, but for some reason the developers didn't want to break the sequence of dealing with the Quarter Moon murders. - The way in which the housekeeper denies that the victim was acting in a less than virtuous fashion yet relents when contradicted is very strange. Seems like they shoehorned what should have been a straightforward testimony into the "adversarial" conversation system. - For similar reasons, Stoneman lying about how long he had known Julia and Evestrom about the value of the cigarette case seems to have no other justification than to allow the player to catch them in a lie. - At this point in time, colour photography was unusual and far more expensive than monochrome. Still, it would have made sense if there was at least one colour photograph in her apartment. - Why is the photo with a message to some admirer (presumably Stoneman) framed in her apartment? - Why cover the body up, given that the murder victims were left on display? - According to the inflation calculator, $10,000 is equivalent to $108,088.79 today, which seems ridiculously high for a cigarette case, even if it is made of gold. $600 would be worth $6,485.33, which is still quite a hefty chunk of cash to hand out. - Chasing some random thugs alongside a beat cop and then gunning them all down in a shootout is a completely mundane event for our heroes. - Train ticket reads 12th of September, so presumably this case takes place on the 11th. - They mention that Julia's parents are flying in. Why did Arnett act as though the train to Mexico the next day was the only way to leave Los Angeles? Even with no suitable flights available, he could presumably have taken a bus to another city and moved on from there. Kopijeger fucked around with this message at 20:44 on Jul 25, 2016 |
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Jul 25, 2016 20:38
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So it looks like Rusty didn't learn a thing. He's still after the easy answers
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Jul 25, 2016 21:38
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I noticed in the second interview with Arnett, at his own home, you at some point hear the actor smack a table even though the character doesn't seem to be doing it. I guess they recorded that and realized too late they didn't have another take. This case is a pretty good look into the sort of guy Cole is. He unabashedly takes charge, being just polite enough not to be grating, but still ordering everyone around. You can really imagine that while his war experiences haunt him, they sure as hell didn't humble him. I do appreciate seeing Stefan and Rusty again, though.
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Jul 25, 2016 22:48
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Roy's dialogue when you first drive to the scene sounds like it was pulled straight out of The Wire or something, kinda spooky how accurate it is
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Jul 26, 2016 00:40
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Kopijeger posted:Notes: That's a Faberge case, though. Those things go for insane prices, even back then, especially with the custom imprint (meaning it was most likely special ordered and handmade).
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Jul 26, 2016 00:43
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paragon1 posted:THAT SAID, yeah it's a pretty unusual depiction of prize fight fixing. Usually the idea is to have the favorite take a dive for big gains. davidspackage posted:This case is a pretty good look into the sort of guy Cole is. He unabashedly takes charge, being just polite enough not to be grating, but still ordering everyone around. You can really imagine that while his war experiences haunt him, they sure as hell didn't humble him. This mission certainly has it's moments though - focusing just on the gameplay parts of the mission, the tailing (on both foot and in the car) has always been a pain and something many games struggled with. The best instance I think I've seen is in Sleeping Dogs, where driving like a jackass and causing a scene will immediately draw attention to you and the devs were nice enough to put a radius on the minimap so you know how close to stay. The shootout with the thugs was also pretty comical with Cole demanding the gunmen throw down their guns and come out peacefully while he fires at them wildly. Reminds me of this scene from another great (though not quite) Noir movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSoBlRxg5-k edit: meant to say 'Sleeping Dogs' not 'Watch Dogs'. Psychotic Weasel fucked around with this message at 02:17 on Jul 26, 2016 |
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Jul 26, 2016 02:07
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Cole's tone comes off as completely different, more assertive compared to previous cases even if he's an rear end in a top hat. Maybe Roy "women should do as they're told" Earle is starting to rub off onto him.  I wonder if it's due to being DLC or a different writer and it wasn't set in stone until the end. I like how Bekowsky is only other standup man of detectives we've encountered so far. Kopijeger posted:- According to the inflation calculator, $10,000 is equivalent to $108,088.79 today, which seems ridiculously high for a cigarette case, even if it is made of gold. $600 would be worth $6,485.33, which is still quite a hefty chunk of cash to hand out. Anything made by Faberge sells for ridiculous prices. It isn't out of the ordinary for an item like a cigarette case to go up in value tenfold if it's a Faberge. Prices can be anywhere in the range of ten thousand pounds, thirty thousand pounds and even a hundred thousand pounds going by Antique Roadshow UK. And those are the jewellery pieces made for normal customers, as normal as pieces custom made for 20th century Russian nobles can be. Imperial pieces sell for millions. Delacroix fucked around with this message at 04:07 on Jul 26, 2016 |
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Jul 26, 2016 03:32
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Delacroix posted:Cole's tone comes off as completely different, more assertive compared to previous cases even if he's an rear end in a top hat. Maybe Roy "women should do as they're told" Earle is starting to rub off onto him. I'm pretty sure it's because the game is aping the movie, and in the movie a police lieutenant is leading the investigation.
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Jul 26, 2016 03:38
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:I'm pretty sure it's because the game is aping the movie, and in the movie a police lieutenant is leading the investigation. Still weird, seeing as how they have a Lieutenant. Man, they really gutted the Vice Desk for DLC.
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Jul 26, 2016 04:00
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:I'm pretty sure it's because the game is aping the movie, and in the movie a police lieutenant is leading the investigation. That would explain a lot of things, the game is a patchwork job of different inspirations and setpieces lifted out of movies.
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Jul 26, 2016 04:06
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Am I the only one weirded out that that guy had a rifle hanging just between his kitchen and living room? I know it's to copy the movie, but still, I don't think that you should hang your guns like they're model airplanes. And you're going to talk about Audie Murphy in Audie Murphy: the Motion Picture? :yay:
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Jul 26, 2016 07:29
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Another little thing in this case: Phelps actually shows his badge to the travel agent. If they made an animation for that, why didn't they use it more often? I suspect it was added as an afterthought because this case was DLC and probably finished later than the "main" game, and then they didn't bother to remake the cutscenes in the rest of the game.
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Jul 27, 2016 20:15
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The car the good doctor ruins is green. The one you tail is yellowish something or another. Kopijeger posted:- Chasing some random thugs alongside a beat cop and then gunning them all down in a shootout is a completely mundane event for our heroes.
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Jul 29, 2016 10:38
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Aug 1, 2016 18:29
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This would have more impact if you had ever met Cole's family before this case and seen literally any interaction with them. I forget he was married most of the time.
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Aug 1, 2016 20:43
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I knew he was married but I had no idea he had kids. Also, Elsa's German is surprisingly terrible.
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Aug 1, 2016 20:50
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Yeah, that 'twist' was handled terribly. It pretty much comes out more or less out of nowhere. I mean, sure, you get the idea he had something for the woman in that cutscene, but it's... never mentioned again until now.
Cosmic Afro fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Aug 1, 2016 |
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Aug 1, 2016 21:02
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This was the case that made me finally lose my patience with the game and decide that I really wasn't having any fun playing it. Looking back, the stuff with Elsa seems even more tacked on than I remember.
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Aug 1, 2016 21:04
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Really it feels like the twist is part of a prerequisite "gotta make sure we have all the noir tropes" checklist, and it really drags the overall story down.
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Aug 1, 2016 21:05
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Gargamel Gibson posted:I knew he was married but I had no idea he had kids. I believe Cole mentions his wife and daughters to Galloway in passing during one case. Not much establishment, all things considered, but it's there.
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Aug 1, 2016 21:06
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I have a feeling that the "Cole is having an affair with Elsa" storyline is something that was in the cut Burglary desk - we meet Elsa immediately after Cole's transfer out of Traffic. More of a longshot but I'd also speculate that we'd have been investigating the robbery of the Coleridge as well.
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Aug 1, 2016 21:17
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Verbose posted:This would have more impact if you had ever met Cole's family before this case and seen literally any interaction with them. I forget he was married most of the time. monster on a stick posted:I have a feeling that the "Cole is having an affair with Elsa" storyline is something that was in the cut Burglary desk - we meet Elsa immediately after Cole's transfer out of Traffic. More of a longshot but I'd also speculate that we'd have been investigating the robbery of the Coleridge as well. It is even more damning when you consider that they made all those war flashback cutscenes but couldn't be bothered with making scenes with Phelps and his family and/or Elsa. Gargamel Gibson posted:Also, Elsa's German is surprisingly terrible. Why "surprisingly"? The actress is Australian, what did you expect? I found it funny that she used a mixed language phrase like "Herr Officer" instead of "Detective" or "Herr Inspektor" (or whatever the period word would be).
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Aug 1, 2016 21:27
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I think the idea is that Cohen's guys stole the BARs so they could implicate the other Marines when they're slaughtering the rest of them.
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Aug 1, 2016 21:37
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Once again, notes: - The hostess of the night club is for some reason not named at all. She references the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre. - Why did the assassins barge into the main room of the night club and gun down the musicians, given that McGoldrick was in the side room? - Why is the hostess wearing a fancy dress if she wasn't working that day? Why is she present at all? - Elsa calls Roy Earle (poorly pronounced) "Untersturmführer", a SS rank equivalent to Second Lieutenant. - Cornell Tyree was only 21 when he was killed, but Elsa claims to have worked with him a few years back. Would they allow teenagers to play in nightclubs? - Newspaper is dated 16th of September. - Real people referenced include Jack Dragna, Brenda Allen and Jimmy Utley. - How did the assassins know that those people would be at those exact landmark locations? - Considering that Phelps is a famous hero cop that has been in the news often during the last nine months, wouldn't a sudden smear campaign him against seem very suspicious? That is to say, when it is common knowledge that the LAPD is very corrupt and this scandal involving higher-ups has already been publicised, wouldn't it look like an obvious distraction tactic to suddenly attack this war hero cum hero cop for a common indiscretion? Is the way this plays out at all realistic? - Worrell is based on real-life LAPD Chief Clemence Horrall. - Why is Homicide Captain Donnelly ordering Vice detectice Roy Earle about? And why does Chief Worrell have an office at the Hollywood Police Station instead of Central? Kopijeger fucked around with this message at 06:36 on Aug 2, 2016 |
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Aug 1, 2016 22:05
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I would have much preferred it if Cole hadn't cheated on his wife and they were just pictures taken at juuuuust the right moment to look compromising. As a result this "Cole is cheating on his wife" side story just loving comes out of nowhere and has little to no impact because we saw Cole's wife all of once in the intro cutscene, and haven't even seen his kids at all. If it's going to be a scandal, either keep Cole single and have her be a Nazi sympathizer or a communist or something, or make the cheating angle a fake because it's way out of character for Cole to do something like this.
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Aug 1, 2016 22:22
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A few centuries - and another species - prior to becoming an investigator for C-Sec on the Citadel Garrus Vakarian got his feet wet as a DT for the LAPD. This case had a lot of ups and downs, and apart from the whole Elsa affair being wedged in as a plot device at the end it is one I rather like. It's clearly a mess because of the revisions and cuts made to the game removed a lot of relevant information but I think they really could've found a better angle to have Cole fall from grace, just seems like a rather stupid and inexplicable thing to do - the Police Chief says exactly what we're all thinking: "What the hell were you thinking!?" . It caught me completely off guard when I first played but I guess there was some 'foreshadowing' (I guess you could call it) earlier in the game since we know Cole did enjoy visiting the Blue Room on his time off. Gotta give Cole some bonus points for waltzing into Cohen's place alone and demanding to speak with him like that. Not many people would've gotten away with that sort of thing. This also does start my favourite desk in the game. The story is kinda weird and seems like it belongs in Who Framed Roger Rabbit rather than a game that takes itself seriously but it does revolve around what I find is one of the most interesting periods of world and American history as we watch the post-War boom take off and the changes to country that are unfolding.
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Aug 1, 2016 22:32
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I really love Kelso, he's great.
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Aug 1, 2016 22:36
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One neat idea that came up many pages ago was to have Cole be homosexual instead of this whole Elsa thing. I think it would've been stronger: more relatable to a modern audience, and still be kinda noir.
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Aug 1, 2016 22:36
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kalonZombie posted:I would have much preferred it if Cole hadn't cheated on his wife and they were just pictures taken at juuuuust the right moment to look compromising. As a result this "Cole is cheating on his wife" side story just loving comes out of nowhere and has little to no impact because we saw Cole's wife all of once in the intro cutscene, and haven't even seen his kids at all. If it's going to be a scandal, either keep Cole single and have her be a Nazi sympathizer or a communist or something, or make the cheating angle a fake because it's way out of character for Cole to do something like this. This is exactly how I feel about it; even if Kopijeger's point about the smear campaign is a good one and the game-makers ploughed ahead with this anyway because gotta catch all the noir cliches, it makes way more sense for Cole to be smeared for something he didn't do than to force an affair he showed absolutely no indication he'd be part of before. I mean, this is Mr. Law and Order the High strung; the one time we saw him do something not entirely by the book, it was to let a wronged man escape with the cash everyone tried to screw him out of. He barely gave any indication that he in fact liked women, and certainly didn't have any real chemistry with Elsa the one time they spoke, and yet it's immediately jump in the hay with her later and drat everything about my character now. It very nearly soured me on the game as a whole, but I was too engrossed in the mystery to stop by that point.
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Aug 2, 2016 01:57
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It'd would've been great if Cole was having a gay affair with a black, communist, jazz singer/musician and instead he was framed for having an affair with Elsa, a much less serious crime for a hero cop like him to have committed. On the other hand if Cole really was gay, having the affair exposed would've looked even more like a ham-handed hatchet job and a lot of people probably would have rolled their eyes.
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Aug 2, 2016 03:28
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White Coke posted:It'd would've been great if Cole was having a gay affair with a black, communist, jazz singer/musician and instead he was framed for having an affair with Elsa, a much less serious crime for a hero cop like him to have committed. On the other hand if Cole really was gay, having the affair exposed would've looked even more like a ham-handed hatchet job and a lot of people probably would have rolled their eyes. I'd have gone with Roy Earle, honestly. I really think they have the best chemistry of any two characters in the game, plus you know Roy would've found a way to betray Cole without exposing himself.
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Aug 2, 2016 03:35
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Rewatching the affair getting called out it's just as jarring and poorly written as I remember it being. Absolutely the nadir of the game's writing
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Aug 2, 2016 03:58
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:I'd have gone with Roy Earle, honestly. I really think they have the best chemistry of any two characters in the game, plus you know Roy would've found a way to betray Cole without exposing himself. That would've been great too, although if the developers had had the resources and interest necessary, they could have come up with good chemistry between Cole and Elsa. Or Cole and whomever.
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Aug 2, 2016 08:45
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Verbose posted:This would have more impact if you had ever met Cole's family before this case and seen literally any interaction with them. I forget he was married most of the time. ... Meanwhile, what exactly was the game plan for the gangster shooting at the bus? How did he expect his brilliant notion of "hang around for a few minutes as the entire police force converges on this location" to work out? (It works out far better with the hit squad cornered in the building - we're already conditioned to assume criminals never surrender, and having cut to the conclusion, we don't need to dwell on the ample opportunities they may have had to get away) Xander77 fucked around with this message at 09:17 on Aug 2, 2016 |
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Aug 2, 2016 09:13
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Xander77 posted:Also; even by the standards of the time, that barely even qualifies as a scandal. A cop is having an affair? Just about fit for the last pages of the newspaper, not a headline. And the loving reactions from fellow our cops are just plain absurd. (Wild speculation - earlier drafts of the script also had Cole framed for involvement with the morphine or something) Not to mention that in the cutscene he is officially suspended and then suddenly is put on the arson desk instead of remaining suspended until the "board hearing" or whatever they called it. Which in turn puts him in position to undermine the people who threw him under the bus. And how do they know that he won't strike back at them by revealing what he knows about the Quarter Moon murders to the press? A more reasonable take on the endgame plot could be something like this: Phelps is not married and is seeing Elsa. While working on the Vice Desk, he discovers that the morphine is connected to the greater conspiracy. Earle shoots him in the back to cover it and blames his murder on gangsters. However, Phelps had prepared for such an eventuality and had instructed Elsa to go to Jack Kelso with the evidence he had already found in case they did something to him. The Arson desk would then play mostly the same, only with Biggs being the playable character instead of Phelps and eventually crossing paths with Kelso. quote:Meanwhile, what exactly was the game plan for the gangster shooting at the bus? How did he expect his brilliant notion of "hang around for a few minutes as the entire police force converges on this location" to work out? (It works out far better with the hit squad cornered in the building - we're already conditioned to assume criminals never surrender, and having cut to the conclusion, we don't need to dwell on the ample opportunities they may have had to get away) Considering that the intended target was the driver, he would actually have stood a better chance if he had waited in a car next to the bus stop and shot at the front windshield when the bus approached. Kopijeger fucked around with this message at 13:11 on Aug 2, 2016 |
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Aug 2, 2016 10:12
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Also: As Bobbin pointed out, his position was ludicrously exposed. The only reason Bobbin actually had to go up to the roof is because of his invincible plot armor.
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Aug 2, 2016 15:06
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