A Murder of Ravens

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore.

"The Raven" (Edgar Allan Poe)

In Japan, the term funiki gee (lit: "atmospheric game") is used to describe games that may not be impressive from a gameplay point of view per se, but which present the player with a unique, enjoyable atmosphere that manages to pull in the player. Usually, it's a mixture of the art, the music and the underlying world that helps create this ambiance, providing a whole package that is at least enjoyable due to how the game feels despite minor or more major flaws regarding how the game actually plays.

Funiki gee is the word I had in my mind as I played the mystery point & click adventure game The Raven Remastered (2019, PC, Switch, PS4, Xbox One), a remastered version of 2013's The Raven: Legacy of a Master Thief. I played the original release back in 2013 (when it was released in three distinct episodes instead of one package), but had forgotten most of the details of the story, I realized as I revisited the remastered version. I did remember that this was truly a funiki game: it had an excellent atmosphere and feel, even if as a game, and even as a mystery story, it had it share of flaws. What most people will think of when they first start playing this game is one name: Agatha Christie. Christie was undeniably an enormous influence on this game, and everything feels like it could've been featured in a Christie novel. Even the opening setting is familiar: the Orient Express. This game is set in 1964, five years after Inspector Legrand shot and caught the legendary thief The Raven. But now five years later, a new thief rears its beak: the "Heir of the Raven", as people are wont to call the newcomer, has succeeded in stealing one of the two "Eyes of the Sphinx" jewels from a museum in London, though with much more violence than the old Raven ever used. The remaining Eye is now being transported to Cairo for an exhibition. The great Inspector Legrand is to accompany the Eye to its destination to protect it from further attempts of theft and he even suspects that he's not dealing with the "Heir", but the real Raven, and that the man he caught five years ago was not the real Raven. The Eye is to travel by the Orient Express to Venice, where it will be shipped further to Cairo. In Switzerland, the elderly police constable Anton Zellner is put on the Express to assist Legrand, despite the inspector's reservations about what help the old man could possibly offer. Zellner, seeing this as his last opportunity to show off what he's capable off, however proves himself to be a very capable police detective when the Raven sets off a bomb on the train, which convinces Zellner to stick around to protect the jewel until it's safely exhibited in Cairo.

A story set on the Orient Express, aboard a steamer making a voyage across the Mediterranean Sea and inside a museum for Egyptian art, with an international, always somewhat suspicious cast including a Jewish baroness, a jetsetting American heir, a travelling German medical doctor and famous British writer and her companion: yep, this feels a lot like a Christie story. In fact, one of the characters in the game, Lady Clarissa Westmacott, is a famous writer of mystery stories starring a certain Partout and has a personal interest in Archaeology: the name and background of this character sound rather familiar to people who know Agatha Christie. The primary protagonist Anton Zellner too reminds of old Poirot, with his constable roots and a moustache. The Raven Remastered oozes atmosphere, and is sure to entertain people who like British Golden Age detective fiction. 

Like I said, when one uses the term 'atmospheric game', it's usually meant as a word to praise the game despite minor or major flaws and while I did have fun with my second playthrough, The Raven Remastered also reminded me that as a mystery game, it has little in common with Christie's writing. It's not horrible, mind you, but it's definitely not a cleverly, but fairly-clewed mystery tale, and there is a distinct gap between the mystery story and the tasks you have to perform as a player. It's this disjoint that makes The Raven Remastered a game that is not nearly as clever as the atmosphere is good. Gameplay consists mostly of inventory puzzles, and going through key dialogues by talking with all the characters. For example, very early on in the game a traveler in the Orient Express is locked outside his compartment and asks Zellner for some help. You then control Zellner, speaking with people on the train and looking for tools to use and eventually you find a way to pry open the door. Classic point & click adventure formula. However, all these inventory puzzles and the like are not integrally related to the story itself. The core mystery of who the Raven is and what they are going to do are not addressed directly in these puzzles, they just stand in the way of actually investigating what is going on. And that's often the case with mystery point & click adventure games: the puzzles themselves do not ask of you to think of the main mystery, in fact they distract from what should be the main mystery. You're constantly doing small menial tasks (collecting inventory items so you fix a door or something like that) just to be able to finally proceed with the mystery story. 

And that's very dissatisfying: what you want is that each puzzle you solve, does bring you closer to the truth, like in the Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney games, where you solve mini-puzzles (finding a contradiction in a testimony) one after another, and each solved contradiction will lead you closer to unraveling the whole mystery. The disjoint between what you want to do in The Raven Remastered (investigate who the Raven is) and what you are mostly doing (collecting items here and there to solve an artificial block in the way in solving the mystery) is somewhat frustrating. It's only part in the middle section where you truly feel like you're working on an investigation, as you actually collect pieces of evidence in a murder case that occurs on a boat and have to analyze them. Which incidentally is a locked room murder, but not a particularly original, or inspiring one. But this is just a small part, and most of the time you feel like you're busy solving puzzles that aren't related to the main story directly.

As for the mystery plot itself... it's not Christie by any means. The story was originally released back in 2013 in three installments, with one or two months between each release. When I first played it, I figured some of the problems I had with the story simply derived from the fact there were a few months between each episode and I had probably forgotten the details in the gap between the releases, but now I have played it in one go, I see The Raven Remastered is simply somewhat flawed in terms of the overall story. Some minor plotlines seem to be forgotten or ignored as you move from one episode to another, some characters that serve as red herrings barely have something to say and then suddenly disappear. I think the worst part is when at a certain point, you are suddenly threatened by the Raven and you have to guess who the person with the gun behind you is: when I first played this game, I really don't know, but even this second playthrough, knowing fully well who The Raven was, I'd still say the game showed next to no hints that set-up this reveal. You just have to guess who the Raven is, not based on any hints or clues shown in the narrative up to that point (and no, "he or she acted suspicious" is not a clue). It's here where that disjoint in solving minor inventory puzzles, and solving the mystery really feels largest: all the time you're busy finding ways to open doors or distracting someone or things like that, but when the game actually needs you to think and solve a plot-related mystery, it decides to forget about proper set-up. Opening doors and finding tools and other objects brought you not one step closer in the deductive process of solving the underlying mystery.

What is interesting to the game is that The Raven Remastered changes its protagonist half-way through: after going through the adventure with old Zellner, the narrative jumps back to tell the story from the beginning again, but from the point of view of another character. Some parts that seemed vague or unsolved in Zellner's part of the story are explained here, and that's pretty funny and interesting. In theory, showing the same events from two distinct POV can lead to an interesting mystery story, but there are still parts that feel somewhat undeveloped in general, even if this mult-layered style of storytelling is fun. But again, it'd have been more fun if you could already actually deduce what had happened in Zellner's part based on actual hinting and clewing, and that the game would then show you you were right as you played through the second half from the other point of view. This sadly is not really done well here.

So my second playthrough of The Raven Remastered doesn't differ much from how I experienced the original The Raven: Legacy of a Master Thief back in 2013. In terms of atmosphere, it's quite enjoyable: the setting, the characters and the music all invoke a distinct ambiance that reminds of Christie's work. It actually feels more Christie than a lot of other games that are actually officially licensed Agatha Christie game adaptations. But most of the tasks you as the player have to perform, are not directly related to the main mystery plot, and in fact, the game gives you very little space to truly think over the (fairly disappointing) clues yourself. If you really want to feel like a detective yourself, this might not be the game for you, but as a game to enjoy a mystery tale, and allows you to focus on smaller tasks at hand as you go through the story, The Raven Remastered is an okay game.