The Clue! - Sabian

Written by MenhirMike

I left you with a cliffhanger last time, but unlike Dallas’ “Who shot J.R.?” I’m not going to let you wait four more episodes to resolve it - the caller was Herbert Briggs, who tasked Matt with picking up a parcel from a woman named Sabien at Lisson Grove 17.

If you remember the intro to the game, Sabien was the woman mourning at Matt’s grave, so this is the romance act of the story kicking into gear.  

Matt is immediately stricken by her sparkling green eyes, her beautiful face, that special smile she seemed to give him. He stutters for a bit while she invites him to some tea, and after a few hours Matt leaves with butterflies in his stomach. And Briggs’ package.

Matt asks Briggs to set up a date between him and Sabien, then goes to the train station to hand the package over to a man named Paul Straight. This all goes without an issue, and we’re headed to the Walrus & yellow shades pub for our date with Sabien. Only to walk right into a police raid.

This raid is not specifically targeting Matt but rounding up every one in order to find out more about the recent string of burglaries in London.

It’s here that I learned what the identification card I got from Gludo at the beginning of the game was good for - I can tell the policeman that I’m Gludo and thus get away from this place.

But what about my date with Sabien? I went back to the Walrus & yellow shades and there she was, waiting for Matt. They spent a wonderful evening together, and agreed to meet the next day, at her place. Matt gets to give her a kiss - on the cheek.

The next day, I went back to her place - but nothing happened, and I couldn’t talk to her. I guess that after dropping so much story on me, it’s time to do some more burgling. I do feel that this pacing could’ve been better by moving the package delivery and/or the raid to a previous burglary to avoid the lull in story progression. I do hope that the story continues properly now.

Unfortunately I didn’t save my game to see what would happen if I didn’t have the ID card - if I replay the MS-DOS version of the game, I’ll definitely explore alternate avenues here to see if it’s possible to fumble the romance.

There are two new locations:

• Kenwood House, Hampstead Lane: Another country house with a bunch of art.
• Natural Museum, Cromwell Road: Dinosaurs, insects, minerals - Matt is not impressed.

I’m sure Hank Schrader has opinions about minerals.

I’ll choose the museum - it’s got dinosaurs!

I know an owl named Blathers that would surely be interested in this stuff.

When investigating the floor plan, I saw a new element: A switchbox controlling search lights. The blueprint view shows which lights are controlled by which switchbox. When looking at the alarm system, I now ended up with two sets of lines, which made the view a bit messy because there didn’t seem to be a way to turn the lines off other than leaving and re-entering the building.

Looks a bit like an etch-a-sketch with color support.

Before planning the heist, I did my usual sweep for new accomplices and ran into Garry Stevenson at Lisson Grove 17 - the same Garry that I saw in the Tools shop before, but couldn’t talk to. He seems like a decent safecracker. There are several more accomplices in the pub. Some have a few pretty funny lines, like Mike Hart (nomen est omen). Others are somewhat deeper, like Albert Liet who used to fight in the French resistance during World War II and gained experience with explosives that way. The game doesn’t ever seem to evolve characters throughout and there are quite a few accomplices that are just cardboard cutouts to fill the roster, but it’s nice to see that the writers gave some of them characterization.

The sunglasses are a nice touch.

The tools shop sells shoes (25 pounds) which “subdue the noise of walking”. They also sell an electric hammer, which can open steel doors and strangely needs skills in safes. It’s 275 pounds, so I’ll skip it until I need it.

I’m going in with 3 people, after barely being able to carry away the loot from Ham House last time - good to bring another pack mule. Since Matt can handle the alarm and search lights, I just need someone that can fight and drive. After the incident with the first Jeweller attempt, I figured that I should try someone that has a good looking out skill as well. I’ve added Mike Kahn who can handle the guard. Since I still need a driver, I went back to what worked before and called up Justin White. Once again, my share of the loot actually increases with 3 people in the team - with just Mike Kahn, my share is 53% and with both Mike and Justin it’s 58%.

The more the better?

I ran into what looks like another logic bug in the game. I had to go back and forth over the plan many times, and when executing the plan the game said that the loot was already taken - but I know for sure that no one else had touched the show-case that this accomplice tried to burgle! Somewhere, the game doesn’t properly keep track of actions when rewinding and redoing things. 

Maybe some hobbit took it?

What makes the Natural Museum interesting are the spotlights. The main door has two spotlights on it, which extend all the way to the bottom of the screen so I can’t even walk below it (it looks like I could, but evidently not so). Even though no alarm gets triggered, the evidence mentions a camera snapping a photo and the degree of identification is 90+% for all team members - we immediately get busted by the police.

Despite how it looks, even walking at the very bottom of the screen doesn’t avoid the searchlights.

I guess the remaining 4% would literally require wearing a Matt Stuvysunt name tag?

Let’s look at how to properly approach this.

The team starts on the bottom left. We can’t cross over to the right because of the spotlights. Matt makes his way up to room 3 to disable the alarm, while Mike goes to the door in room 4. This room has a small spotlight that moves, so there is some careful timing in order to avoid being caught by it. The guard stays in Room 5 but will check the door - if Mike breaks the lock in the Room 4-to-5 door and the guard checks it, the alarm gets raised. So Mike needs to wait for the guard to pass by, then spend the time breaking the door, then taking out the guard.

Once the alarm is disabled, Justin can loot the top display case in Room 1, while Mike is breaking the doors in Room 6. That room contains no loot, but is needed to make our way through room 7 into room 8, where Matt can disable the power to the spotlights. Mike can loot the three unlit showcases in room 7. Once the spotlights are out, Matt grabs the loot from the final showcase in room 7, Mike loots the showcases in rooms 5 and 4, Justin takes care of room 1, and everyone leaves through the window in room 1 back to the car.

If you paid close attention, you might have realized the biggest problem with this museum heist: We don’t get to actually steal the big dinosaurs! We just loot one dinosaur bone from a display cabinet, and an insect collection for another. Boo!

And it’s not even something cool, like a skull! Did you know that Nicolas Cage used to have a dinosaur skull?

Apart from this disappointment, everything succeeds with minimal evidence. Except that the car was found - I wonder if the previous heist “marked” it? Oh well, at least I have plenty of money to buy a new one.

Back in the hotel, Sabien calls and invites Matt for dinner.

Afterwards, they went for a drink to the Walrus & the yellow shades, this time without a police raid. One of Matt’s favorite bands - Sharp as usual - were playing, and he won the surprise prize in a raffle, which included a string of pearls (a perfect gift for Sabien) and a fake mustache - since the game explicitly mentioned it, I assume it will become important later.

Sabien left and I went back to the Hotel room. Matt tries to go to sleep, thinking of Sabien, and almost manages to fall asleep - until he hears someone slipping an envelope underneath his door. It’s a letter from Sabien:

Dear Matt,
I wanted to come and see you tonight, but I’m afraid I can’t manage. I’m sorry.
Come to my place tomorrow evening, I’ll be waiting for you.
Yours,
Sabien 💋

Needless to say, Matt wakes up in a fantastic mood the next morning - until Briggs rings his door bell. Sabien’s father passed away last night, and she is on her way to her mother in York. 

I think that Matt needs to do what all middle-aged men need to do when their heart is heavy and their direction is unclear: Buy a fancy new car and commit some crimes - so that’s where we will pick up next time.

I sold the dinosaur bones to Mr Maloya and have over £25,000 to spend.

Session Time: 2 hours 15 minutes
Total Time: 14 hours 00 minutes