Game 28: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade - Villainy 101

Indiana Jones Journal Entry 6: “Well, I got dad out of that Nazi infested castle! I’m almost disappointed that I managed to do it without punching a few soldiers in the face! There was that big muscle-bound guy, but then that was hardly challenging since he was completely smashed when I hit him. Dad didn’t exactly make it easy to get him out once I found him, still refusing to take the easy route and climb out the window. It was inevitable that we’d get caught going back through the castle, but at least the Colonel isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. He accepted my Grail Diary replica and then tied us to chairs mere metres from escape. Since then we’ve made our way to the flight terminal on motorcycle, stolen some zeppelin tickets from some poor bastard, and are currently leaving Germany behind. Somehow I don’t think our troubles are over though!”

I'd take the whole keg if I could!

So where were we...oh that’s right! It was time to test my theory about the weakness of the brute on the top floor of the castle! I took the recently beer-filled trophy upstairs and gave it to him. The big bastard took about twenty seconds to down the whole thing, and then crushed the trophy on his head once again! Surely that would be enough to knock him out? “Er, that was... (HIC!)... good! But I’ll still... (HIC!) ...have to teach you... (HIC!) ...not to come up here!” Seriously!? I was still going to have to fight this guy? Well, no...not really! One little jab was all it took to knock him out cold, so I’m going to take that as a non-combat solution. It seems pretty obvious that the trophy of beer is the most ideal solution to the puzzle. With him out of the way, the rescue of my father seemed very close now!

Never even knew what hit him!

However, the game had one big mystery up its sleeve, and it’s one I haven’t found a completely satisfactory answer to. Just south-west of the brute was Guard 11, who was walking up and down a lengthy corridor. I could easily avoid him by following a short distance, entering one of the empty rooms to my right, then re-entering the corridor further down from another empty room (the two rooms are connected from inside). I could then enter a room with a swanky looking lounge, and collect a key hanging from the candelabra. The problem was that there seemed absolutely no way of getting back out of the corridor without coming into contact with the guard. He accepted no items and no dialogue options resulted in him letting me pass. I must have spent over half an hour trying every way I could think of to avoid him, but failed.

Getting in wasn't all that difficult. Getting out was impossible!

Given my non-combat approach, I restored to just after defeating the brute, and travelled north-west instead. This took me to three locked doors, which I assumed would all be opened by the key in the room guarded to the south. I could also safely assume that these three rooms were the same ones I’d visited through the windows after scaling the castle wall. That meant the only one I was interested in was the middle room, which had two very obvious green wires running into it. I saved my game, and then tried pulling the wires. Unsurprisingly, this act set off the security alarm, and shortly afterwards a heavily armed guard began firing warning shots. Oddly, my father was now standing next to me in the corridor! Then the Colonel arrived on the scene.

Yes Satan. Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you were someone else!

“Ah, Dr. Jones! You have an item I want. I’m sure I can – persuade – you to part with it.” Obviously he was talking about the Grail Diary, so instead of trying any of the useless dialogue options available to me, I offered him the grail replica that I’d collected from my dad’s chest. “Ah, the Grail Diary! I’m glad you decided to cooperate” was all he had to say, and then both dad and I found ourselves tied to chairs and each other in the room containing the secret door on the ground floor. I soon figured out that I could pull or push the chairs to make us shuffle either back or forward along the floor. Knowing that the suit of armour to the right of screen would drop the axe and cut the ropes, allowing us to escape out the secret door, I saved my game and reloaded back to the top floor. I wanted to find out what would happen if I had the key!

Well, we could make the axe fall and cut our ropes, then escape through the secret door in the fireplace? Thoughts?

Long story short, I tried getting the silver key and then defeating Guard 11 so I could take it up to the three doors. This allowed me to unlock the doors, but it didn’t allow me to avoid setting off the alarm. I then tried heading downstairs and deactivating the security system, before coming back upstairs and getting the key. This allowed me to unlock the doors and enter the room with my father in it without setting off the alarm. However, since dad wouldn’t go out the window, the only option was to head back through the castle. I was never going to make it that way, and in fact, as soon as we walked a few feet we were ordered to halt and the same scene occurred with the Colonel demanding the Grail Diary. So, from what I can tell, it really doesn’t matter whether I deactivate the security system or get the key, every scenario results in the same confrontation.

I even tried not cooperating, but ended up in the same place without the real Grail Diary!

I therefore restored my game back to dad and I being tied to a chair, having not fought a single guard on my way through the castle (apart from the one punch knockout of the brute). As expected, we were able to pull the chairs over and over again until we were positioned beneath the axe of the suit of armour. It was probably pretty excessive to make the player pull the chair repeatedly for minutes (I probably clicked Pull and then clicked on the chairs about forty to fifty times) to get in the right position. Luckily I saved my game once I got there, as the first time I pulled the armour; the axe fell directly on top of me, ending my game rather rapidly. The second time I got it right though and we were finally free to open the secret door and leave the castle behind.

Predicting the exact line the axe will take wasn't straight forward

I was still wondering what on Earth I was supposed to have done with the grail painting in the vault though. I tried taking dad to it, but there seemed no way to re-enter any other parts of the castle. I’ve since come to the conclusion that the purpose of the painting is to answer a question that came up much earlier in the game. When Indy was reading the Franciscan manuscript in Walter Donovan’s apartment, he made the statement that it “says a painting was made of the Grail that answers a question my Father had: Does the Grail actually glow?” The painting in the vault must be that painting! Anyway, the only option available was to hop on the motorcycle and head off to Iskenderun. This of course meant that poor Elsa was simply left behind with the Nazis, so I can only assume that she will play a role further down the track. Off we went!

Anyone got a better theory?

Arriving at the travel terminal, I could now switch between Henry and Indy whenever I wanted to. Henry had a few coins in his pocket, but nothing else, and taking control of him didn’t suddenly give me any different actions or anything like that. There was a man standing in front of us in the terminal that we could talk to, so I started up a conversation. The three dialogue options I had available (which are in the image below) didn’t seem like they would be of much use, and that turned out to be correct as far as I could see. To the first question he simply answered “no”, to the second one “that’s none of your business”, and then for the third and final question he rattled off the names of fifteen grandchildren for no apparent reason. I really couldn’t see how any of it was useful, so I moved on.

That third one is a fairly random thing to ask of a stranger!

The only other person I could interact with in the terminal was a man selling tickets behind a counter, and clicking on him caused Indy to request “two tickets on the first flight out of Germany.” The tickets were going to cost us 175 marks, which was 50 more than I had! I quickly became concerned that I was going to have to restore back to the castle to find 50 more marks before returning, but that would almost certainly involve getting into a fight with one of the guards I’d evaded. I couldn’t say anything else to the ticket man, nor was there anything else in the terminal I could interact with. I went back to the man with the fifteen grandchildren and tried talking to him again, but none of the dialogue options were available to me anymore. He must be there for a purpose though, so I restored back to arriving at the terminal and started over.

175 Marks!!! Are you kidding me?!

This time when I asked the man about his grandchildren, I noticed that I was able to use the action interface while he was listing them one by one. I then noticed that he had something sticking out of one of his pockets. Tickets!!! While he was busy talking away, I got Henry to take the tickets from his pocket. Eureka! I felt a little bit bad about stealing the poor guy’s tickets, especially as they were probably to get him on a flight to see his beloved family, but I was searching for the Holy Grail here! Surely that takes precedence! So, where do I use these tickets??? The only thing I could do was walk back out of the terminal the way I came in, at which point I had a distant view of the terminal. There was a plane nearby, but I couldn’t see a zeppelin anywhere.

Stealing from a loving grandpa. The Jones' would stop at nothing to get eternal life!

I hopped into the plane and found myself sitting at the controls. Was I supposed to try to fly this thing? I remembered reading something about flying a plane in the manual, but nothing about controls or how to take off. My father started telling me that “those mechanics are eyeing us strangely”, so I decided to leave the plane for now and see if there was indeed a zeppelin to hop onto. After all, I stole these tickets, so not even using them would seem awfully impolite. I walked to the right of screen and slowly but surely, a zeppelin was revealed, preparing to take off. I hopped aboard as quickly as I could, which turned out to be mere moments before it released its attachments to the ground and began its ascent.

I wonder if I'll get another opportunity to fly a biplane

Once aboard, we were confronted by a man asking us for our tickets. I gave them to him, and seconds later experienced another cut scene of the Colonel back in the castle. He was predictably quite cranky about our escape, stalking back and forth across his office floor. One of the lower guards entered and informed him that “we have reports that the Jones boys have boarded a zeppelin leaving Germany!” The Colonel demanded he “radio to have it turned around at once”, a command the guard eagerly left to obey. It appeared I was going to have to do something to make sure the zeppelin wasn’t turned around, although I didn’t have any idea what that might be at this point. Time to explore...and quickly!

Why thank you! Say...would you mind going away so I can break into some things?

I quickly noticed a hatch in the ceiling and a hole in the wall that I could interact with, but apart from discovering a bolt in the hole, I couldn’t find any way to use either of them. The door nearby was locked, so I left this part of the zeppelin and entered the main floor. There were quite a few tables, with many characters sitting at them, but my “what is” action revealed absolutely nothing I could interact with! Soon enough I was informed that the zeppelin was turning around, which I assumed was not a good thing. I restored back to arriving onboard and tried again. There must be something that will help me open the hatch or do something with the bolt somewhere! Some pixel hunting revealed that I could interact with the bowl sitting next to the piano man, and I knew exactly what to do with it. I took control of Henry, because he had the coins.

My pleasure. Now make something happen that will lead to our eventual salvation.

Using the coins on the bowl resulted in the piano man asking me “what would you like to hear?” I had a few different options of what to suggest, yet it didn’t seem to matter which of them I chose. “No, but I’m sure you’ll like this little ditty.” He began to play a jazzy little number, and shortly afterwards the locked door near the hatch opened and a Nazi soldier walked out. Apparently a lover of music, the soldier wandered over to the piano and lent on it, tapping his feet. I switched to Indy and entered his office, finding a short-wave radio sitting on a desk next to a locker. I didn’t seem to be able to do anything with the radio, so I opened the locker. Inside was a wrench, which I picked up and used on the radio, making a real mess of it. It took me a couple of attempts to do all this before the soldier returned and caught me, but I eventually succeeded and got out unscathed.

Take your time buddy. Take your time.

While the soldier tried to fix the radio, I attached the wrench to the bolt in the hole and used it, causing the hatch to open and a ladder to drop down. Climbing the ladder took me up to a platform, which felt distinctly like it might be part of a maze of sorts. I could see guards wandering around and there were ladders ascending and descending all over the place. I’d made some seriously good progress, so this seemed a pretty good time to stop and get a post out. I have to admit I’m not thrilled at the idea of a maze of ladders and platforms while dodging guards, so hopefully it doesn’t rely on total guesswork. Otherwise I’m still very much enjoying Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I haven’t required any help yet, which suggests it’s not overly difficult, but then I’ve had to use my brain a heck of a lot while playing, which suggests some good puzzle design more than anything else. I wonder how long there is to go...

Happy happy, joy joy

Session Time: 2 hours 00 minutes

Total Time: 8 hours 30 minutes

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: I've written a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I've not made any requests for assistance. Thanks!