The Clue! - Das Kapital

Written by MenhirMike

Before I start, I wanted to thank a commenter on an earlier gameplay post who clarified that “jemmy” was indeed a proper term for a crowbar used by burglars in British English. So I’ll take back my criticism on that. I still think there are some translation issues, but apart from “prey”, nothing really stood out as terrible. And definitely nothing that broke the game or made it hard to play. With that out of the way, back to our regularly scheduled content.

We robbed the Aunt Emma Store and went back to our hotel room, about to celebrate with some great Bill Haley music on the radio. Instead, there’s a special news broadcast going on: Burglars have tried to steal the crown jewels from the Tower of London! And they almost succeeded, if not for their conspicuous car: A silver car with a blue fish painted on it. The police arrested one of the burglars when they entered the Fat Man’s Pub and are hopeful to arrest the other burglars soon.

Needless to say, Matt is shocked when he remembers Briggs saying that the codename will be Blue Fish. Is Briggs going to rat us out? Matt decides to do the only thing that makes sense here: Continue as usual. Nothing else to do, and if Gludo wants to arrest us, we can cross that bridge when we get there. 

Coincidentally, I once knew an ornamental droid that had similar misfortune with the password “FISH”.

Business as usual means fencing our stolen goods first, and once again Maloya is the place to go. Cash worth 128 pounds, sold for 117 pounds. Delicatessen worth 330 pounds, sold for 289, articles of daily use worth 60 pounds, sold for 47, and a lobster sold for 30 pounds, that makes 483 pounds worth of loot. I forgot to write down what Matt’s share was, but if it was 62 percent then it should’ve been 299 pounds.

I decided to buy a radio and a glass cutter from the tools store in case future burglaries ramp up in difficulty, and looked in both pubs for new people to meet. At the Fat Man’s Pub, I ran into Luthmilla Nervesaw (who insists it’s not Nerveswa), who is not very happy to be in England. She laments that this of all places is the resting place of Karl Marx, praises Bierut as a great comrade, and mentions that it’s the dream of every Polish citizen to see Marx’ remains buried in a communist country. 
 

Bonus points for historical accuracy: The US consisted of 48 states in 1953. Alaska and Hawaii were granted statehood in 1959.

Someone recommended me to her (who?) and she offered 2000 pounds if I can bring her Karl Marx' bones. Well, I guess we’re going tomb raiding! One taxi ride to the Highgate Cemetery and the Tomb of Karl Marx later, we’ll observe for 24 hours to get all the intel.

I am not really sure what the function of the “investigate” action is other than have the player sit there for a few minutes as the text scrolls by. It is often entertaining flavor text (“Soviet delegation arrives”, “Cat pees in front of tomb”, “Guided tours start”), but there seems to be no gameplay mechanic here. For example, the gate closes and a watchman walks his first round while police patrols stop by every 49 minutes - but no one is bothering Matt. There seems to be no danger or caveat, it’s just “Press the investigate button and do something else for about 3 minutes”. And as I found in the previous heist, the times don’t even matter - I can start the burglary at any time of the day and the outcome will be similar.

I'm watching the watchman.

I don’t know if there is a hidden mechanic here (for example, any chance that a passerby might recognize me afterwards?) or cut content or if this was just meant as padding or to add atmosphere. In the game that inspired this - They Stole a Million - one had to purchase blueprints for money, whereas here I can get all the information with a single click and some patience. Maybe this will change later in the game, but for now I go back to the hotel room to plan the heist, only to be confronted with a new gameplay mechanic: A guard!

The only way to deal with a guard is violence, so I need an accomplice with the fight ability. But because the car only seats two people - one of which is Matt - I also need them to have the cars ability.

I had to spend some time waiting in the pub before I finally found someone: Thomas Groul. Matt considers him as someone who hasn’t ever done work in his life, but still appears quite rich. And what’s best, he only wants 30 percent!

He can fight, he can drive, he is cheap, and he’s about to become a working class hero!

The cemetery only contains a single piece of loot: Karl Marx’ bones. In order to get there, the plan looks like this:

1.  Matt breaks open the cemetery gates with the jemmy, walks up to the bushes, and waits.
2. Thomas waits for 45 seconds, walks in behind Matt, walks up to hide behind a tree, and waits for the guard to patrol.
3. At around the 3 minute mark, Thomas approaches the guard from behind and fights him with his bare hands.
4. At around the 4 minute mark, Matt walks past the knocked out guard to the Tomb, breaks it open, and takes the bones.
5. Both Matt and Thomas return to the car at 7:57 minutes. 

Note the overlapping Escape route text, another problem with the English localization.

The guard is in the top right, Matt is waiting for Thomas to take him out.

An entire human life, reduced to 3.2 kilograms.

This planning session was a bit fiddly because there’s not much information about the guard’s perception. In a game like 1998’s Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines, the guards had vision cones that made it clear whether it was safe to approach or not. In The Clue, I had to just try and hope for the best. The guard also walks at the same speed as Thomas and there’s no option to walk faster, so if the guard walks away there’s no way to catch up until the guard stops. So I waited until the guard stopped, approached from behind, and attacked, but I’d have to experiment some more to see if I could’ve hidden somewhere closer or not. It will be interesting to see if there are more interesting guard mechanics later. 

I like the different graphics between planning and burgling. It makes for a nice surprise to see the environment for real.

I hope for the best and execute the plan - successfully! Well, mostly. Actually, not really. The good news: We escaped with the bones!

The bad news: The guard could describe Thomas Groul, which is a pretty hefty 20% degree of identification. I don’t know if I could have hidden better, if it’s just bad luck, or related to his stats (more on that at the end), but I’m going to be careful using him in the future.

I wonder if I could have hidden better?

The ugly news: The police found our car.

And we didn’t even have a blue fish!

The better news: Neither Thomas nor Matt got arrested, so the heist was a success and Matt decides to read the newspaper in the hope of someone reporting about his exploits. And since no good deed goes unpunished, we’re on for another shock: Blue Fish has been arrested! Professor Luger, a safe-cracker wanted across Europe and rumored to be in contact with the IRA and Rick Sinclair, London’s legendary burglar. (I could not find any real world references to a Rick Sinclair, so I assume this is an invention of the game, so I document the name in case it comes up later.)

Luger was recognized in the Pink Villa by a French sailor and arrested. Matt is now really worried that Briggs might be next, or even worse, himself. And just at that moment, we’re approached by a mysterious man… by which I mean Gludo in an awful getup.

Let me guess: My car’s extended warranty has expired?

Gludo is swiftly taken away for vagrancy, but the game makes it clear that things are ramping up. But we can end this session with the best news yet: Back in our Hotel room, Luthmilla made good on her word and gave us 2000 pounds for the bones.

A rare case of a foreign historical artifact being stolen away from Great Britain.

We end this session with 1797 pounds, no clear goal for the next heist, and no car. Next time, we’ll address the car issue first.

Before we end, I wanted to talk about the stats of an accomplice. As shown in the previous post, every person has these, which the manual describes:

• Health: Helps with the strenuous work of the burglary and the escape afterwards.
• Mood: Helps avoiding mistakes.
• Intelligence: Helps with certain tasks like safe cracking, or to hide from the police afterwards.
• Strength: Helps with fighting or carrying the loot.
• Stamina: Bad stamina might require a short rest during the burglary, and exhausted people might make mistakes.
• Loyalty: If caught, they might give away Matt’s name if low.
• Skill: Sometimes gives an advantage in a fight, and helps learning skills quicker.
• Sympathy: If caught, might give away Matt’s name if low. With dealers, higher sympathy results in better offers.
• Popularity: The more popular, the harder it is for them to hide afterwards.
• Greed: Greedy people want more share of the loot. Greedy dealers make worse offers.
• Nerves: Nervous burglars leave more traces, make other mistakes, or might rat out Matt to the police if caught.

Looking at Thomas Groul’s stats, he has 90% mood, 66% strength, 50% stamina, but only 25% nerves. Which adds up to 100% reason for the guard to remember the face. I wonder if there’s an accomplice with better nerves, and whether or not this contributed to the car being found as well.

Another observation is that stats change over the course of the game. I found that talking to people and offering them jobs improves their loyalty to Matt - which explains why Justin White wanted a smaller share of the loot for the second heist. It also seems that doing certain tasks like driving the getaway vehicle improves that skill -  her initial 43 percent skill in cars went up to 52 percent after those two heists.

So there is a reason to re-use accomplices, but also a risk as evidence builds up. I will see how big of a role this really plays, because it feels like the training wheels are coming off now and the difficulty is ramping up.

I have three burglaries and no cars. Why can’t I have no burglaries and three cars?

Session Time: 1 hour 00 minutes

Total Time: 3 hours 30 minutes