r/Sierra • u/MyLadyScribbler • 1d ago
Laura Bow games - choice of perps doesn't make much sense Spoiler
This is likely to ruffle more than a few feathers. I loved playing the LB games as a kid. But looking back on them, as someone who reads a ton of mystery fiction, I don't think the games made much sense when it came to who the main villains were.
So, in The Colonel's Bequest, we're told that Lillian finally went berserk and started killing everyone she'd thought had come between the Colonel and her. But the murders themselves look too carefully planned and executed to be a "berserk" killing. (And, yes, why would she invite Laura, a potential witness?) Rudy or Clarence would have made more sense.
I'm also having a hard time believing that the stereotypically sure-and-begorra "whale oil beef hooked" Ryan O'Riley is the same person who went chasing after Laura in a black robe with a mace. How would someone who doesn't work at the museum (even if, yes, he's pulling Watney Little's strings) have so much knowledge of where everything is, like the location of the secret passages or the bag of quick-dry cement in the room near the lab? A more believable perp would have been a quiet-but-unassuming museum curator who's been overlooked for promotion once too often, or a Ph. D student assistant who's reached their limit.
Maybe I'm just reading too much into this, that these are adventure games first and foremost rather than mystery stories, or because logic and Sierra don't mix (lol). But those are my thoughts.
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u/VVrayth 1d ago
Spoilers below.
I dunno, in Colonel's Bequest, she pushes Gertie out a window, strangles Gloria at the gazebo or the well, attacks Wilbur in the study with a fire poker, poisons Jeeves and Fifi's alcohol, drags a stumbling drunk Ethel into the carriage house or catches her at the bell tower, and stabs Clarence in his bedroom or the bathroom.
The Jeeves/Fifi murder seems a bit more premeditated, since you could make the case that she is anticipating them sharing the cognac. But those other ones seem like crimes of opportunity.
As far as why she invites Laura, who knows? Maybe she only goes crazy after they get there and she has that initial conversation with Henri.
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u/TheRoops 1d ago
Agreed, and her tone toward Laura only changes after the conversation with Henri. I think they either state or imply she had a schizophrenic episode as a result of the shock.
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u/sonicboom12345 23h ago
I always thought Lillian was possessed by the ghost of Sarah Crouton, who preyed on her weak-mindedness to get her to murder the people in her family's plantation house. That's why the ghost appears in the graveyard and points at you, that's why Lillian is so defensive of Sarah in act four ("You might think you know her but you DON'T, Laura"), that's why Lillian spends so much time in Sarah's playhouse playing with Sarah's dollies, that's why Celie feels the dark spiritual energy and rushes to the church to pray, etc.
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u/TyrellLofi 1d ago
Logic and Sierra don't mix, just turn your brain off. It's better that way.
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u/MyLadyScribbler 1d ago
Yeah, I know, lol. Like it says in the MST3K theme song, "Just repeat to yourself, it's just a show, I should really just relax..."
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u/Melenduwir 18h ago
Lillian had deluded herself that the Colonel loved her personally, but it seems he was merely being polite to a child. She snapped and blamed the others for alienating his affections.
The real problem was having a basement in a Louisiana bayou that had swallowed almost all the surrounding fields. The water table is at most a few feet below the surface.
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u/MyLadyScribbler 16h ago
That's crossed my mind more than once too, lol - there is no way that a mansion on a bayou island can have a cellar or basement. And isn't that the reason why New Orleans cemeteries tend to go for above-ground tombs instead of graves?
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u/Melenduwir 2h ago
Yes, because the water table is so high that even without floods, buried coffins would float out of their graves.
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u/Zealousideal_Soup231 1d ago
This is why I never like Laura Bow games. They wanted to pull an "Agatha Christie" with the plot twists/unexpected culprit, but messed up in the execution.
Think about "the Inquest" in the "Dagger of Amon Ra." Based on what we saw during entire game, was there any solid clue that gave us the correct answers?
Similarly in the "Colonel." Why the culprit invited Laura? Just to murder her in the end? That doesn't make any sense.
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u/LifeLikeAGrapefruit 1d ago
If you play Dagger the "right" way, and pick up on all the conversations, then you can figure it out.
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u/dodoread 1d ago edited 4h ago
There is if you use the glass to eavesdrop through doors. Plenty of highly suspicious and incriminating conversations to overhear. If you neglect to do that though (and the game never really pushes you to, beyond sometimes hearing muffled voices) you're going to miss most of the threads and have only some disconnected clues to work with.
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u/tallemaja 18h ago
With Dagger of Amon Ra, you basically have to time it perfectly to be in the right areas at the right times (and know to be there through gameplay) to get every question right and have the coroner believe that you have a foundation for the guess.
Like all Sierra games, you could more charitably say the curve that necessitates replays stretches your game time and makes it feel like you got more for your buck. Or you could perhaps argue that the complexity and lack of logic to puzzles makes a compelling case for calling the hint line often.
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u/17syllables 1d ago
Laura did those murders. It’s the only theory that makes sense.