Missed Classic: The Hound of Shadow - Won (Plus Alternate Characters and Final Rating)

Written by Vetinari

After the poppycocks of the game wiping out the file for my character just because he had been devoured by an abomination from outside of space and time, I proceeded to create another character and play all through the game again until the end.

Not really. I just edited Sven's character file with Notepad by copying the values from one of the pre-generated characters.

So, back to Blythburgh church. This time I choose to meditate, emptying myself of all conscious thoughts. And then...

 

This is a pretty depressing ending.

The Hound attacks, destroying the homunculus, but also resulting in other casualties from the battle. Father Paul is dead, and John is a shell of his former self. But who cares, I survived the Hound of Shadow! Woo-hoo!

Yeah, I already said I'm pretty sure that there will be no possibility to import characters into the next game.

Session Time: 0 hours 15 minutes

Total Time: 10 hours 00 minutes

Alternate Characters

Before going on to the Final Scoring, I'll check what differences (if any) are there when playing the game with a totally different character.

For my first alternate I choose a female Novelist specializing in Academic and Creative skills.

We get up one level in the fictional rabbit hole.

For starters, our good old friend John Playford is now Harriet Playford instead, and the reasons for going to the séance are completely different. Our novelist wants to experience the world of the occult in search of inspiration for a new book that will make her fortune. Harriet in her appearance is (obviously) completely different from John, but otherwise acts exactly the same.

Even without Perception, I still notice that Karmi and Yasmin are frauds. While traveling through London there are a couple of asides where Ariadne muses on her own books or those of other authors, or some interlude with no effect on the plot, but which is still amusing.

Like this one.

The plot progresses in the same way as before. Even if I do not perform an emergency tracheotomy on Pelham after his attempted suicide, I “manage to keep him alive using my knowledge of First Aid” which is... something I guess? I did not put any point in Logical skills but maybe the game doesn't want my lack of knowledge to bring a tragic death to the poor Harry.

While progressing through the game with Ariadne, I short-circuited the solution to the homunculus. In practice, if I read the whole Gascoigne Journal before reading Unaussprechlichen Kulten, we find about the Plateau of Leng and the origin of the Hound immediately, then Harriet asks me about what we can do to stop Magda Bathory, and we decide to create an homunculus. This is all before I meet Father Paul.

In fact, while in this branch of the storyline, I never meet Father Paul at all (if I try to go to Blythburgh, he isn't there). Instead Rowland Marcus suggests that there is a reference in the Gascoigne Journal about an homunculus, and we go and retrieve from the Reading Room the diary of Paracelsus in which we find the recipe for creating it (it's the same recipe as before).

Don't worry, I tried it also without knowing German and Latin, and in that case Harriet and Marcus step up to the bat and translate it.

We create the homunculus with ingredients from our own apartment, and the problems that I had in finding these items are if possible even more prominent here. The description of the various rooms in the house do not convey the presence of any useful object, even by searching or examining everything mentioned in the description. The only action that you can do is “get” the ingredients, probably with the reasoning that it is plausible that you could find some matches in the kitchen (for sulphur) or some clay in the vase of a potted plant.

After creating the homunculus you write to Miranda in order to coax her to help in the confrontation against the hound, and then the finale proceeds exactly as before.

My second alternate will be a male Psychic Investigator specializing in Physical and Spiritual skills.

Too on the nose? But probably only Italians will get the references.

The motivation for Professor Martin to be at the séance is interesting: in order to gain the respect of the scientific community, he must first expose the impostures of the charlatans claiming to have psychic powers. So he goes to Karmi's place not to prove the existence of the paranormal, but to disprove it.

Being apt in all things occult, Dylan finds a number of obviously fake things about the whole charade, and they are pretty interesting (and funny) to report:

No genuine student of the Occult or Paranormal could be deceived for long by such cheap trickery, and you are in no doubt that this whole affair is a criminal hoax. (…) as someone who knows enough to distinguish the turban of a Persian mullah from that of a Sikh warrior, you can tell that this man is neither of these, and has simply guessed at how to wind it. (…) As someone who has studied Anthropology, you have to wonder how a Hindu woman comes to be wearing an Arab yashmak, or a Muslim woman sports bare legs under a sari. The costume smacks more of the Odeon than the Orient, and you begin to wonder if its wearer is any more genuine.

After the hubbub that ends the séance, the Professor thinks that it would be a good idea to visit Karmi again during the day. This seems to be the first departure from the plot that we followed with the other characters, but unfortunately it looks like you do not remember the address of his house, so you are stuck with following the same motions as before.

When you get to Rowland Marcus' shop, you can see at a glance that it caters for serious students of the Occult. You can browse through his wares and even buy various objects and books.

This made me chuckle.

Strangely enough when you get to check the pattern in the attic, you don't recognize it as a gate, but you recognize the hand-print.

Interesting, but ultimately useless.

The plot proceeds without deviating up to the end. The only thing that I wanted to check is how I would manage to persuade Father Paul without having allocated points to the Persuasion skill.

Persuading without Persuasion.

In practice you have to dig a little deeper in his motivations by asking questions until he relents and you can then successfully persuade him to help you.

So, having tried a couple of alternatives to my main Sleuth character, let's get down to the Final Rating!

Puzzles and Solvability

There are not very many puzzles to speak of.

It would have been nice to combine these things by ourselves, thank you.

Most of the progression involve going to places and speaking with people (or reading books) to get new information, or, even worse, waiting for the new information to come to you.

There are hardly any “classic” adventure puzzles per se, and the difficulty of those that are there mostly consist in fighting with the parser to do what you want to do, instead of trying to find a solution. On the positive side, they are all pretty logical.

The worst offender is the creation of the homunculus, which becomes just finding the right ingredients in places where you are not even given the right prompt by the description.

I think that if more alternative solutions based on the character skills would have been inserted in the game, it probably could have scored a little better, but as it is, it is disappointing. My score: 2.

Inventory and Interface

The parser for this game is, for lack of a better description, pretty limited.

Ingress the house, dammit!

I cannot in good conscience give this game an interface score as good as any of the Infocom games, not even Nord and Bert which had the worst rating so far. In spite of this, I don't want to penalize it too much either, mostly because of my favourite command, “what do I know”, which made a good job in summarizing the plot and providing ideas on what to do next.

However, checking the list of the 50 or so commands listed in the manual, I used only half, and that includes save/load/quit and the cardinal directions for movement. Particularly egregious is “enter”: I never managed to make it work even if it is the first choice listed for that action (the correct prompt is “go in”).

Also, there is a certain amount of bugs, which, even if not game-breaking, certainly detracted from the experience. My score: 2.

Story and Setting

This is a category that leaves me conflicted.

The plot is more or less what I expected: someone unleashes a Hound of Tindalos at me, and I have to find a way to defeat it. So far, so good. There are some problems with the pacing though.

At the beginning of the game the plot does not pick up until after the third or fourth in-game day, and in any case most of the interesting parts of the story have already happened before the game even started, and you are just briefed on them by your friend John/Harriet. Magda Bathory, the primary antagonist, is never seen, only referenced.

There are a couple of interesting ideas, too, like the fact that we are hunted by the Hound but we are not the real target of its handler's vengeance, but in general I cannot really give the story a good rating. My score: 4.

Sound and Graphics

Graphics for this game can be pretty confusing at times.

What am I even looking at here? (spoiler: it's Blythburg cemetery)

The most positive thing that you can say about the game's graphics is that they are there. Some of them are nice to look at for a couple of seconds, but they do not provide anything to the ambience of the environment at all. The real strength of the game lies in its descriptions, and the visual medium, instead of adding to it, actually detracts a little bit from the immersion.

There is no sound at all, which maybe is a good thing. My score: 3.

Environment and Atmosphere

The locations in this game are well described, but come across as a little bit insubstantial.

The spooky streets of 1920s London

As far as the environs of the game go, we mostly spend our time in the area of London between the Soho and Marylebone districts, which is pretty expansive but also mostly empty. The British Museum is the most interesting location, even if it is pretty limited in scope (you are there just to retrieve some books, after all). Blythburgh gives the idea of a quaint village but has not been particularly expanded upon.

There are some additional locations (like the restaurant where you eat dinner with your friend) which are not part of the explorable space per se, but still have a good vibe in terms of descriptions and of giving you the feeling of being part of Roaring Twenties London.

The atmosphere also suffers a bit from the fact that even though you are hunted by otherwordly forces, the pacing is just too relaxed and does not convey any sense of urgency or dread. My score: 4.

Dialog and Acting

The characters who make up the secondary cast are all distinctive and well-characterized.

Except for Mrs Bastable. I said, we are not in the 1880s, madam!

Aside from John Playford, who is practically the protagonist of his own parallel story, each other character has their own personality and quirks, which goes a long way in making them feel alive.

Rowland Marcus is aloof and formal, Vivienne Powers seems concerned and overwhelmed by the situation, Father Paul Mason appears reluctant and haunted by his past, and yes, even Mrs Bastable comes across as uptight and conservative, a bit clichéd if you will, but in any case still well-rounded and not two-dimensional.

My personal favourite is Miranda, who has just a single scene (if we don't count the alternative finale) but still with four or five sentences manages to be painted as a strong-willed and caring woman.

For this category I really have nothing bad to say. My score: 7.

If we add up the scores we get (2+2+4+3+4+7)/0.6 = 37 points!

I think this is in-line with what I think about this game. The Hound of Shadow carries through with its nice writing and descriptions, but technically is a bit of a mess.

Looking at the score, this is the same as Starcross and Enchanter, which feels about right, considering that those games did not have any graphics. If we deduct the points awarded for S&G the game still manages to score 32 points which is... the same as Zork II? Man, you were really harsh with those first Infocom games, Joe.

The wisdom of the crowd was bamboozled by the detailed character creation and thought that I would enjoy this more than I have, with an average rating guess around 42. But Leo Vellés wasn't fooled and guessed closer with 38. Congrats to him!