|
No, there is no escape against this fundamental crime of the universe against us. Well, we could try throwing ourselves into a black hole to stop it, but that's just death, another fundamental crime of the universe against us.
|
#
?
Sep 24, 2022 00:08
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 5, 2024 04:41 |
|
|
The archiver’s busted and does nothing, last I heard. But I’m OK with that.
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2022 01:05
|
|
|
resetting the clock on this (even though the archiver apparently does nothing). turns out it's harder than I thought to format the questioning sequences where I cannot rely on the FMV to help out, and the way I originally was going to do it isn't very readable once converted to the forums. we shall persevere
|
|
#
?
Jan 8, 2023 22:32
|
|
|
 Chapter 7: Questioning Ruby When we left off, uh, a year ago? Holy poo poo. We had decided that Ruby might be a good place to start with questioning the involved parties. And it's high time we make good on that decision. Welcome back to the IT1D Let's Play, and the start of Act II of our journey as prosecuting attorney Sterling Granger. Buckle in, because these questioning chapters are likely to be significantly longer than the first act with all the dialogue to sift through. This section of the game is not very conducive to video embeds since the videos are so short and a lot of interaction is required on our part, so I'll be transcribing most of this stuff from the game. We head out to visit Ruby at her primary residence, none other than the scene of the crime itself. We're brought upstairs to the gallery's apartment on the second floor, where paints and other art materials litter the floor. A large painting leans against the wall depicting humans holding hands, their skeletons visible beneath their skin, with ornamental hearts filling the background. Ruby turns a wooden chair away from her workbench to face us as we sit down to talk. Before I even begin speaking, Ruby has a question of her own: quote:
Well, Ruby, that's something we're going to have to talk about. Ruby takes her first opportunity to take Tobin's side, making me wonder how fruitful this "interrogation", if you could call it that, is going to be. A brief note about this chapter and future questioning chapters - IT1D has multiple dialogue trees that branch out and change depending on how you progress with each individual. In the interest of not making half of each chapter a list of every available dialogue option in each category after every sequence, I will mostly only be highlighting the options I've chosen. I will put these in square brackets above the next line of dialogue, when and where the option has been presented. From time to time, I may also include an option or two of dialogue that was presented to me or that I considered. Another thing to keep in mind is that sometimes when you select a dialogue option, Granger speaks first and then the other person responds. In other situations, the question takes the place of Granger speaking and the person will respond directly to the question/statement you've selected in the list. I've been indicating who is speaking since the start, but I thought I would point this out lest anyone think we're missing lines of dialogue from our man Granger. We're given three categories of questioning to start with: ART THEFT, GUN, and ZACK. We'll flip a three-sided coin and go with ART THEFT to start, let Ruby loosen up by talking about the loss to the gallery before diving into the interpersonal stuff. quote:[ART THEFT -> Ask her where Tobin was] Nothing in the gallery was taken but the paintings. I think back to the cashbox that was found near Zack's body and how Tobin said in his interrogation tape that he didn't remember seeing it there. I have no reason to doubt that Ruby would know exactly what was and wasn't taken from the gallery, so the fact that the cashbox was not taken or even opened is something to think about. Normally I would think that the fact that none of the art materials themselves were stolen, but it appears that they were all kept in the second-floor loft apartment and not down in the gallery. And selling paintings in such luxurious foreign markets? This must be some high octane artwork, right? quote:[ART THEFT -> Ask her about Tobin's artwork] Ruby motions behind her to the large painting we noticed on our arrival. Tobin, you absolute chucklefuck. You're supposed to make sure your favorites are the ones that go missing. What is this, rookie hour? Sorry, I know I'm not supposed to be giving advice to criminals. It doesn't shock me whatsoever, nor do I think it would shock anybody who has followed this story so far, that the literal night before Zack was murdered Tobin was shuttling his favorite paintings up to the loft where presumably he knew they weren't going to get damaged. What are we going to learn next, that Tobin was walking around with a gun and practicing his quickdraw? The next point of player intervention includes a question about how popular these paintings were, and I'd like to follow up on the proposition that these are some high value paintings ready for the international auction block. I would think that an artist would want to sell his most valuable pieces rather than keep them for himself, but maybe these things were flying off the shelves and Tobin was really attached to a couple of them? quote:[ART THEFT -> Were the paintings popular?] Well, I don't remember saying that last thing - I guess that's the limitations of an FMV game in full effect. Sometimes characters will reference something in a dialogue tree you didn't go down, or that you haven't gone down yet. But there's the answer to our question, and the pieces just keep falling into place. No, these weren't the hot ticket items we may have suspected, and people didn't like them at all. More motivation to commit insurance fraud right there. It makes moving a few paintings to the loft a little more palatable if Tobin knew they weren't selling and he wanted to make space for other artwork, but it still looks incredibly bad to be moving stuff right before a supposed theft. If Tobin orchestrated this, and for the sake of integrity I will still use the word "if", then he's going to have to come up with something a lot better than he was able to under Looper's pressure to explain this one at trial. So if the paintings weren't selling, let's push on the financials of the gallery a little bit more. How bad did these paintings flop? Bad enough to justify murder? I also want to be somewhat delicate in approaching these questions because I know Ruby has a little bit of a temper and I want to coax as much information out of her as I can before I go too far and really piss her off. quote:[ART THEFT -> What was her involvement?] More ammo for the legal guns. Those pictures of Tobin riding in helicopters and sailing on catamarans make a little more sense now. That was the lifestyle he envisioned for himself and the lifestyle he was lucky enough to live, at least up until his paintings stopped paying the bills. The inclusion of Zack in this does make me a little bit nervous though, because it could also continue to implicate him as a conspirator in the insurance scheme. Ruby's decision to not outright deny that Tobin could have been involved in the theft is also a good sign here because it means she's not shutting me out of any line of Tobin-related questions just yet. quote:[ART THEFT -> Where was Tobin?] Oops! Maybe we pushed our luck a little there. On one hand, she doesn't know where Tobin was the night of the theft which is useful for our purposes, but on the other hand she's reacted very poorly to that question which potentially undermines our future ability to get some additional information out of her. Granger added the "Are you sure?" of his own volition which I'm not thrilled by, but I guess that's the way it goes. Let's change gears and shift the focus back to Zack so we can give her a little space on the Tobin stuff. At this point, it appears we've exhausted all lines of questioning regarding the art theft, leaving two remaining categories: GUN and ZACK. Assuming it's real, Ruby doesn't know that we have a copy of the letter Zack was planning to give her from his computer, and we don't know if Ruby ever received that letter, so I'd rather not blow her out of the water by waltzing in like "hey we know about your affair" unless there's a good reason for it. I want to continue to let her run on with the self-defense thing a little bit more and see how much she's willing to give us about Tobin before we try to get her to spill the beans about cheating on him. quote:[GUN -> Did Tobin have a gun?] Ominous pause from Ruby at the end of that last question. The game did give us the option to ask if Tobin had a gun which would be tempting, but like I said before, I don't want to prod her too much about her boyfriend. We go with asking if Zack owned a gun, giving her a little leverage to expand on her initial assertation that Tobin must have killed him in self defense, but she says that owning a gun doesn't really fit his character. The fact that Zack is not known to keep a gun is important from Ruby, and she does seem genuinely shocked to hear that the gun was registered to his cousin. Then she opens the door, after almost slamming it in our faces a minute ago. She went into Tobin's cabinet...why would she do that and what makes her so confused about it? I think we know what she saw in that night, but we really need to hear it from her directly. We could be firm, assert our position of authority and demand that she tell us what she saw, or we could be a little bit gentler and ask if there's anything else at all she can remember about that night. quote:[GUN -> Insist on more information] Jesus, I was joking before about Tobin walking around with a gun practicing his quickdraw. But just as suspected, Tobin had a gun in his cabinet. Or what Ruby believes was a gun. At first she says she THOUGHT she saw a gun, then she says that she could probably identify it if she saw it. She must have taken a closer look than she was willing to let on at first. Is it the same gun found at the crime scene? Were there two guns at the Barnes gallery? We don't really know at this point, and it's hard to surmise how Tobin could have acquired Zack's cousin's gun at the gallery. Ruby didn't seem to know that there was a gun on premises, and Tobin stated he hadn't seen the gun until Zack "came at him" with it the morning of the murder. If we can prove that Tobin had the gun the night before Zack's death, and Ruby confirms it was the same one found at the crime scene, that gives us the ability to demonstrate premeditated murder. Food for thought. The further we get, the more Ruby is an enigma. She gets mad at us for prying into Tobin's whereabouts the night of the theft, but she willingly tells us that she saw a gun in his cabinet. Wavering between wanting to defend her boyfriend and wanting to tell us the truth is fine for now, but I have some apprehensions about how this might play out in a courtroom in front of a room full of people. We've now run out of questions about the gun, so we'll pull from the last line of questioning available to us. quote:[ZACK -> Did Tobin hate Zack?] Ruby smiles after delivering the punchline and I'm glad I waited to start on these questions until now - she cuts the tension in the room with a huge pair of metaphorical scissors with Zack's corny joke and even manages to get a laugh out of it. It's not all doom and gloom on the second floor of the gallery today and she sounds very fond of Zack when talking about his overall popularity at the gallery. I shouldn't be surprised, considering she liked him enough to spend time with him and sleep with him, but it's good to confirm he wasn't some kind of evil goblin running the gallery into the ground. Maybe that's another reason Tobin wanted him dead. Jealous of how others treated him maybe? Tobin really fits that tortured artist bill and an egomaniac willing to go that far. Or maybe I just don't like him because he shoots himself in the leg and lies about it. Let's try some lighter questions about Ruby and Zack's relationship, in the professional sense. quote:[ZACK -> Did he help her career?] Ruby's answers are so perfect that I want to grab her and spin her around like Gene Wilder does to Charlie at the end of Willy Wonka and scream "You've done it! You've won! That's not Detective Looper, that's Mrs. Wilkinson, she works for me! I had to test you and you passed!" Not only does she complain about being stuck in Tobin's shadow all the time, she tells us that Tobin sleeps around and outright admits to having the affair with Zack. No big deal indeed. She does it so nonchalantly that you'd think she was talking about the weather, but there it is, it's all there, black and white, clear as crystal, she stole fizzy lifting drink- okay, I'm getting carried away. I'm done with the Willy Wonka stuff now. Well okay, Ruby, since you brought it up, I don't have to worry about how I'm going to approach these questions anymore. Thanks! I want to let her get all of this stuff off her chest and see where her head is at if that's what she wants to do. quote:[ZACK -> Does she have any regrets?] It didn't really seem all that hard to talk about 30 seconds ago, but I can appreciate the sentiment. Ruby blames herself for everything that's happened - the theft, Zack's death, Tobin's imprisonment, and it's easy to see why. This explains a lot of her initial temper too, because she's afraid of how this whole thing is going to reflect on her as someone involved with both the victim and the suspect. I'm sure she wishes this would just all go away, and I would want that too if I were in her shoes. The acting here is really good honestly, and I find myself really feeling for her character as she begins to get emotional at the end of this sequence. This is where FMV really shines, and an example of why I think this game is so good. We might as well ask her how much Tobin knows about this stuff, if not because it feels like the right time but because we're running out of questions to ask and Ruby may get too sentimental to want to talk to us much longer. Ball's in your court, Ruby, take it and run with it. quote:[ZACK -> Did Tobin find out?] Whoa, okay! Ruby got the note directly from Zack which confirms that it's real and started to read it, but Tobin caught her in the act of reading it and ripped it away from her. She doesn't say that she saw Tobin read the note but I find it hard to believe that he wouldn't under these circumstances. I'm especially glad I didn't try to put the feelers out on the note earlier because she doesn't even know what it says, other than the first few lines. Tobin's seething jealousy leaks through in her response and it's more evident than ever that he was envious of Zack's role at the gallery. Ruby has given us so much more than I ever could have imagined when I started this questioning. It's likely that Tobin had some inkling of Ruby's relationship with Zack being more than just a professional working friendship which would have been solidified by stumbling onto Ruby reading the note about their affair. If only we can build up Ruby's confidence to be able to eloquently describe this on the stand, it'll be all over for him. Ruby begins to tear up as she explains how Zack was the only one who ever saw potential in her as an artist and how he was going to help her put together an exhibition of her own. There is tangible pain in her voice when she says "He said my paintings were good", pain that makes me feel sad hearing it. Zack sounds like a really great guy. I'm honestly a little bummed out that the only time we'll get to see him is as a fake dead body, but that's how it works in real life I guess. Lawyers usually don't get called until after someone is killed, not before. We've officially run out of questions for Ruby. As we get up to say goodbye for now, she asks one last question. quote:
Ruby shrugs her shoulders to meekly acknowledge our remark, stares directly at the ground, and says nothing. She's said more than enough today. We see ourselves down the stairs and out of the gallery. barnold fucked around with this message at 04:52 on Aug 1, 2023 |
|
#
?
Aug 1, 2023 04:32
|
|
Why are you going after Jimmy?
|
Thanks for picking this back up!
|
|
#
?
Aug 1, 2023 23:50
|
|
|
cardinale posted:Thanks for picking this back up! thanks likewise for tuning back in. with renewed vigor, we are going to put this bastard Tobin behind bars!!
|
|
#
?
Aug 2, 2023 01:17
|
|
|
Also glad to see this continuing!
|
|
|
#
?
Aug 2, 2023 02:20
|
|
|
There's got to be a twist here. Everything's pointing so hard at Tobin that it can't possibly be him.
|
|
#
?
Aug 2, 2023 02:23
|
|
|
Oooh, always did have a fondness for FMV's
|
|
#
?
Aug 2, 2023 02:24
|
|
|
Dabir posted:There's got to be a twist here. Everything's pointing so hard at Tobin that it can't possibly be him. I think some twists are on the horizon for sure. I get the distinct impression that the initial fact-finding portion of this game is intended to be so straightforward as to lull us into a false sense of security with regards to how all of this stuff will come together at trial. Cynthia Charleston on the defense is going to try to discredit each of our witnesses, and I'm certain she has some tricks up her sleeve to do so. We've done reasonably well to not upset Ruby too much so far, but we've got to ensure that her, Yvonne, and Simon can convince a jury as equally as we have been convinced that Tobin did this. Also, to metagame this a little bit, IT1D shipped on two CD-ROMs. Everything we do in the first half of this game, the tapes, the documents, all of the questioning sequences, are all part of the first CD. The second CD is entirely the trial. So it's worth pointing out that the courtroom stuff is going to be much more of our time barnold fucked around with this message at 03:05 on Aug 2, 2023 |
|
#
?
Aug 2, 2023 03:00
|
|
|
The second CD is the trial? In-teresting.
|
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2023 02:07
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 5, 2024 04:41 |
|
|
I'm really glad to see this continuing. I was hoping to see more of it.
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2023 08:19
|
|
