Sherlock Holmes Chapter One - Official E3 Trailer | ...

This is one of my top games and it's so underrated... I'll admit, I bought it because both detective game + hot Sherlock, but then it turned out to be a meaty character study alongside an open world detective game

so this isn't going to be a full liveplurk since I've already beaten the game once, and I likely won't go too much into the cases... but this WILL have spoilers because I'm going to be talking about Sherlock's characterization a lot

so if you like detective games I highly recommend you grab this one (tho maybe on sale since it did come out in 2021, it's not recent enough to justify full price as much as I love it)

game cws are pretty much: violence, murder, portrayals of mental illness and esp diagnosed/poorly diagnosed mental illness (since it's the Victorian era), uhh one of the cases has some mistreatment of animals in it

there's one case that deals with pretty bad racism too but it is treated very seriously and clearly takes the side of the oppressed group

for some background on the devs, Frogwares is a AA studio from Ukraine that's been making canon-compliant Holmes detective games for a long time, but then they decided to do something different with this one and it's just... chef's kiss

onto the game itself!

for background, this is set on the fictional colonized island of Cordona, and this is a younger Sherlock before he met Watson or got famous... he grew up on Cordona and is returning to answer questions about a childhood that he doesn't remember well

here's the dev statement about the racism portrayed in the game btw

this loading screen... I love it

the island looks so pretty... most of the artbook was sketches and designs of Cordona lol

so, how does a Sherlock Holmes game work without Watson around, you might be asking? as it turns out, Sherlock is accompanied around the island by his best friend Jon

Jon has been his friend since childhood, he's a more rough and tumble guy with a working class accent........ and he's also Sherlock's imaginary friend. not joking, they reveal that almost immediately

he's an imaginary friend who has both grown older along with him and is fully realized because Sherlock does nothing by halves.

Jon also serves mechanically as Sherlock's conscience in a way. he's happy when Sherlock does things that help people and gets upset when you do things that hurt people or if you kill people in combat iirc. this game doesn't have 'good' or 'evil' choices when you solve a case so much as 'lawful' or 'chaotic good' choices basically.

so if you do things that harm people, or if say you don't let someone off the hook if they killed someone in self-defense.... Jon gets angry and he lets you know it

and you can keep track of it via his diary entries

this dork... reserved a room for two people because his imaginary friend is with him and needs his own bed.

the game does not diagnose Sherlock with anything in specific, it shows rather than tells, but... if this didn't make it obvious he has some issues and those will definitely be a thing later on too

(the sequel game, The Awakened, is a remake of one of their earlier games that's Sherlock vs a Cthulhu cult, and he's vulnerable to the mind fuckery, the implication being that it's because he's already not neurotypical)

ohh this looks interesting

i do like detective games...

it's really good! some of their older ones are difficult to play these days just due to age, but the previous one before this with older Sherlock (The Devil's Daughter) was also well-liked by fans iirc

THIS BITCH....
he's an important NPC later, I'm also pretty sure he's gay or bi just based on the way he acts towards Sherlock
Sherlock also called his sketch mediocre lmao

honestly how well-realized in the world Jon is, is kinda nuts. like... he complains about being hungry, he stands around smoking, he takes advantage of the fact that he's illusionary to lean casually on things or sit on things he shouldn't be sitting on

and Sherlock is WELL aware that Jon isn't real, they both are, but Jon still exists in the world like any other NPC, it's just that other people can't hear him... I have to assume Sherlock isn't actually talking out loud when we see him talking to Jon

otherwise the people around him would notice

but Sherlock's mind's eye is so powerful that we see them interacting completely normally

Jon also comments on your gameplay if he thinks you're bumbling around lmao

this is the concentration mechanic where clues are highlighted and you can see details about NPCs

this game has a disguise mechanic too, some NPCs will be friendlier if you're dressed like you're within their class (nobleman to nobleman, dock worker to dock worker, that kind of thing)

when you investigate people, you can pick wrong options... or just ones that will upset them lol, in this case he denies the liver malady when you choose that option

oof this game makes my computer run really hot.... I might take a break soon, this is the hottest part of the day already

and yes he's still a misogynist
this is before his canon drug use happens though so I didn't have to add a cw for that

Jon get off that guy's bed......

chemical analysis minigame that I'm not super great at

OH YEAH I'm already finished with the tutorial case, there's not a 'right' or 'wrong' answer it's 'morally lenient' or 'strictly lawful'

I know a lot of people had that complaint with this game, that either choice is technically correct and you can't fail a case... but again, this game is more focused on character study

(and ngl from what I recall of the canon Holmes books, he tends to lean towards morally lenient as opposed to wanting to just lock everyone up)

so the cases aren't about 'winning' by getting the right answer, they're about what that means for Sherlock's character

I LOVE chapter one

OMG I'm so happy someone else has played it!!

my fav... I haven't fully finished Awakening yet but I probably will after I finish replaying

(oh yeah I forgot that you DO have two suspects in the tutorial case and you can accuse the wrong person, but I think you only know it's the wrong guy if you play out the actual culprit's ending?)

the awakened was so goddamn good I used to play sherry from post-game

!! I did make a journal for him too after I played Chapter One but I had nowhere to put him at the time... for Awakened I only got up to uhhh at least a good chunk of the way through the first part of Louisiana in the town

I basically put it down because I had some issues going on with a friend that kind of soured me on finishing the game tbh... but it's been a few years and I'm eager to finally finish that one

hmm I wonder if I ought to replay for the bad results to get those achievements... I won't this time but maybe in the future, I'm a weenie when it comes to picking bad options on purpose

JON WANTS TO BE A REAL BOY....

after the tutorial case, Sherlock goes to the graveyard to visit his mother's grave... right from the start Jon is like 'are you sure you want to visit, are you sure you want to remember'

it didn't seem that sus the first time I played but. oh boy is it sus

aww he says he feels faint after remembering it

that reminds me... the in-universe reason he can't swim in this game is that he has a fear of deep water
(think it's just a funny way to explain no swimming mechanic? oh you THINK SO HUH)

Jon even casts a shadow on the gravestone in this cutscene. Sherlock stop your mind is too powerful

oh suddenly he DOESN'T want to know where the pocketwatch on her grave came from. Mr. 'the more rich people there are the more murders we get to solve' doesn't want to solve a mystery huh??

in fact Jon gets snippy over the clues Sherlock is finding lol

"Ugh, it's that ridiculous artist from the hotel." "Be nice, Sherry. Make friends."

Verner is a really fun character... as an intellectual he can match Sherlock's reasoning far better than most others can

he also left that watch there on purpose for Sherlock to find, and drops the hint that there was a police investigation surrounding his mother's death... even though Sherlock claims she died of consumption

aaa the lovely victorian artwork....

yep Jon is happy I gave the tutorial culprit enough time to run from the law

any excuse to dress up, huh
how do I end up with so many characters that're into costumes? idek

Jon plz

ooo unlocked my DLC outfits

Jon also refers to Sherlock's mom as "our mother" which.... yeah technically true

his childhood home :]

and Mycroft sent a letter that was like 'this is foolish, after you visit her grave hurry up and come back to London' lol sure dude

Jon doesn't even want to go in the house fff

yo Mycroft what

teaching his little brother how to use lockpicks at a precocious age, just to steal something for him......

his mind is TOO POWERFUL

tl;dr he's unable to go into certain areas in the manor until he remembers something key about the room/area, but like... it made the door look like it was covered in ashes

so Sherlock is seeing the things his mind is coming up with basically .....

she was never coughing but she had tuberculosis, huh......

then Jon starts feeling dizzy after you remember that I'm sure that means nothing

oof right, I forgot the next case is about a guy who was seemingly trampled to death by his pet elephant
(again... fucking victorians)

it is pretty annoying that this game forces you to pin what piece of evidence you're investigating... it's way too easy to forget and be trying to find something that won't register because it's not pinned

LOL I tried running into some water for kicks, and he passed out and got teleported to the cemetery?? uhh he's not dead

the dead guy's manor is just FULL of art and pilfered artifacts

his office is even worse, jesus christ

I'm going to try not to spoil this case too much, even though it's a really odd and interesting one... well I'll spoil the funny thing later

LOL Jon's getting so pissed at me fumbling in the newspaper archives that his portrait has turned neutral too, oops

I guess I might as well look up a guide, there's not much sense in wasting time

damn I didn't get a screencap of his comment of the front of the photo, but Sherlock is being really down on romance here rofl

AND the witness asked why he was talking out loud ..... I guess sometimes he does just. actually talk to Jon. and people notice

"I prefer dry land. And so does my suit." that's right he DID get seasick on the trip to Cordona, poor guy

lkjglj found the clothing trader.....

seriously Jon??

this is a nice shot.... anyway;

there's a character that's 100% a trans man and though Sherlock clocks him he also decides right away to keep it to himself (and misgenders him a couple of times but Paul is like 'don't call me that' and it doesn't continue)

it's interesting because like... Sherlock seems to take it at face value as 'oh it's because otherwise this person couldn't compete in a male-dominated sport', though he doesn't bat at eye at Paul dating a woman either, he just says 'your relationship isn't typical'

there was an interesting memory where we learn that Mycroft was trying to prepare him even as a kid to serve the empire, but gave up at some point (this is when Sherry was 10 and Mycroft was around 20)

"I'll let you look at the archives for perhaps... dinner?" "That's a high price to pay for looking at your archives." lolll

I swear Sherlock is like one of those gay guys that lowkey hates women

oh HERE'S the part that nearly took me the fuck out when I first played
how do you lure an elephant on the loose back to his pen? well.... you make a lifesize inflatable elephant, apply some elephant pheromones to it, and use a foghorn that has bad pick-up line captions

it's so silly but of course it works perfectly rofl

Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One - Funniest Jon Parts (I...found a video with that scene in it! it's right at the beginning, just be warned that it also starts with uhh a shot of a mangled corpse

the rest of the video are clips of Jon's commentary or finding him in strange places

back at it again at Krispy Kreme

Just finished the elephant case... it's one of those where the guilty party really isn't obvious at all but the suspect I prefer to finger for this one seems to be the correct answer, I'm seeing reddit posts saying the devs confirmed it at some point

there's a looot of debate over it online, it seems like it's not a very popular case since it's not obvious who the killer is even after you gather all the clues

BUT from Imogen we get Violet Holmes' locket and a brief flash of a memory that opens another room in the house!

lkhjlkj
"I envy you, Sherry. You can talk to people and no one ignores you."
"But I envy you, Jon. You can ignore anyone you like."
and then Sherlock goes on to say that most men are dull and not worth talking to.... UNLIKE JON

back when the game came out I saw a meme that went something like "fellas, is it gay to create an invisible friend as a substitute for the mortifying ordeal of being known" and I wish I could find it again

but the reason I can't find it is because tumblr has FAR more fanart and gifs than the year the game came out, I'm amazed and thrilled that the fandom got so much bigger!

ah. Sherlock's next memory is that he and Jon had dug up a partial vase at a dig site and left it next to his mom's door, then they heard a woman's enraged scream and the vase got smashed 😕

some pretty harrowing examples of victorian era mental health treatment....

we also find a newspaper talking about how Sherlock's dad died of a sudden heart attack when he was 6 and Mycroft was 16

and Jon says it happened 'before they met' hmmmm

a whole cabinet of medications in her room... and a picture that was damaged by 'a blunt object'

uhhh yikes

that's also the morning she died

oops! Jon started flickering and acting frightened when Sherlock remembered that! I'm sure it's nothing

you can pick options to say he's upset or if he feels fine, that's the 'upset' option

then a guy in a costume knocks at the door to invite Sherlock to Vogel's gallery exhibition

"Of course. Explanations are my favorite part of any conversation." 😂

well, yeah.......

stopping here for the night because my computer is running waaaay too hot... hopefully tomorrow starting on the next case, Vogel is a great character so I'll have to grab a video of his convo with Sherlock

Baldur's Gate 3 has a voice actor dedicated to makin...LMAOO THIS IS SHERLOCK'S VOICE ACTOR

Baldur's Gate 3 has a voice actor dedicated to making sex sounds and he has a message for players: 'you little horny perverts ... you think of me'

OKAY finally getting back to this.... sorry fam the game runs my computer hot and that's not super pleasant in the summer

I know I could lower the graphics settings but... pretty screencaps.....

oh grips ur shoulders... the struggle of pc gaming in the summer

most of my games don't have that problem, this one might be poorly optimized tbh

it's been happening to me with silent hill 2 bc unreal engine is garbo

AH...

this game was made in Unreal 4 which I know had issues

also at the museum talking to Vogel now about his locked room mystery.... the convos with him have some crazy cinematic camera angles
but I'll link a video once I get to the interesting convo they have

"Are you sure you don't like art, Sherry?"

goddamnit Jon

gay art???

I'm pretty sure Vogel is bi or gay so it would track

there's a shark carcass strung up in the basement as some sort of art exhibit and Sherlock straight up calls it "A simplistic attempt at provocation" lmao

this is also in the basement........

after looking at a raven prop - "Sherry, how about some company in that dreary chamber of yours?" "Leave my loneliness unbroken, Jon."

the room with the vandalism that he's investigating is even called the 'O. Wilde Room'

Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One - All Verner Vogel Cuts...from this timestamp to about 7:56, there's some discussion of the case but it's not long

I just love how they go into why Sherlock doesn't like art

so the missing painting depicts sex and this is how Sherlock describes it lmaooo

Vogel called it 'copulation' he certainly wasn't acting like it was romantic

but y'know, victorian sensibilities

the newspaper lady that keeps flirting with him, even after he flatly turns her down lmao

Jon just getting weirder and weirder

errgh one of these chemical analysis minigames is really hard, I'm just gonna cheat

.... oh my god both of these walkthroughs must be playing on an easier difficulty because they have more options than I do for the minigame

wtf, I'm playing the game on normal difficulty I thought!! why is every screencap of this puzzle different!

I figured it out myself, no thanks to these useless guides

god okay... it's spoilers for this case and it's a really serious thing (not discussed in detail) but also the way Sherlock handles it is... wild

you find a key piece of evidence in the case that's a photo of a woman being raped at a party. and Sherlock.... shows Jon the picture, Jon sketches the faces of the people in the photograph so that Sherlock wouldn't have to keep looking at the terrible photo.

that's great and all but Jon isn't real

I am like... deeply fascinated with what must be going on in-universe that we aren't seeing. Sherlock must've drawn the sketches himself and attributed it to Jon, right?

either way it's another fascinating example of how he's using Jon to shield his own mental state

this is why I love this game so much, it starts you out with 'Jon isn't a real person' and as you go deeper and deeper into it you realize just how nuts it is that Jon is contributing so much, and since we see it all from Sherlock's perspective... well we're already seeing Jon, who is not real

Sherlock is an unreliable narrator visually in the game

it's fucking wild and Frogwares devs are geniuses

(also Jon's challenge for this case is just 'be nice to the old landlady at an apartment' lolll)

this is the case that deals with victorian-era racism alongside the rape.... namely they're refugees that were smuggled in and the city is trying to figure out how to handle it, since this game was released in 2021 refugees were in the news more often IRL

most of the characters you meet are sympathetic to the refugees, though the public is in an uproar (because a murder happened there) and Jon outright says the state of the refugee camp is really shitty

(and the refugees are also sympathetic in the story of the case itself too)

oh I figured out what was wrong with the chemical analysis earlier. all the guides were using the wrong solution, the one they posted was for something later :|

ohh interesting, apparently Sherlock doesn't drink... I have no idea if that's canon or if he just doesn't have a taste for it at his age

also Sherlock was absolute shit at talking to the rape victim and he was upset at himself for it too .... in canon he's far nicer to victims and hurt people generally, but it makes sense that he had to learn it

I didn't quite finish the case tonight, so more tomorrow hopefully!

firing this one up a little early tonight... mostly because I'm getting salty at Vintage Story

hhhonestly not sure why I'm getting this voice line, from Jon's diary I have him at max positive? I just did a combat thing but I didn't kill anyone I don't think

the warehouse is so dark even after turning the gamma up a tad it's not any easier to see... so I'll chalk this up as a bug

hmm Jon sassed me about harming someone, maybe I did accidentally shoot one of the guys I was fighting :|

I reloaded an old save to avoid the warehouse thing for the time being, instead I used the option to have him punch and lecture the suspect LOL

YEP I replayed the warehouse, the entry in Jon's diary said he was proud I didn't kill anyone, but his voicelines in the warehouse are negative.... weird

omg... you can threaten a pencil-pusher at this warehouse and Jon is just like 'that sounded like my words came out of your mouth!' and 'you... acted so much like me.'

yeah Jon it's almost like you're a figment of Sherlock's imagination

for the sake of an achievement I'm going to pick a different ending than I did during my first playthrough ... this case's four conclusions really are all just different moral choices

two options to blackmail to make other ppl's lives better vs two options to ruin the careers of two different shady criminals

Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One - All Verner Vogel Cuts...sharing at a new timestamp, it's a brief part of a convo but that's Vogel? touching his face???

gaaaay

so with that case finished, Vogel delivers something to our house that belonged to Sherlock's mother, and it's..... wat is this

oops then Mycroft shows up and they have a fight!

Sherlock is pissed off about him lying about their mother, while Mycroft's take is that a little white lie justifies getting to let Sherlock have a normal childhood growing up

but Sherlock counters with 'finding this out shatters everything I knew about our family AND myself'

(one of my few disappointments with this game is that they didn't at least make Mycroft chubby. I know he's a fair bit younger than in the canon books here but c'mon)

(in the books he's 'tall and portly' and 'heavily built and massive' not an average-sized guy lol)

back to the mermaid skeleton! it's a fake, obviously - his mother had a whole collection of fakes she kept in a gallery room, her expertise was in archaeological authentication so determining fake from real was her job

I honestly do think Violet Holmes must've been a really badass woman before her husband died...

both the diving gear and the Cthluhu statue are there b/c these devs also made The Sinking City

this game has a mechanic for buying back missing things from the manor, I might take a screencap once I have more of the curio items recovered

interesting.....

Tulpas huh

lemme just copy-paste from Wikipedia...

"A tulpa is a materialized being or thought-form, typically in human shape, that is created through spiritual practice and intense concentration. The term is borrowed from the Tibetan language. Modern practitioners, who call themselves "tulpamancers", use the term to refer to a type of willed imaginary friend

whom practitioners consider sentient and relatively independent. Modern practitioners predominantly consider tulpas a psychological rather than a paranormal phenomenon. "

so this box seems to be the belongings of Dr Otto, and he mentioned in his writings that he noticed Sherlock had an imaginary friend... he wanted to study the family more, but Mycroft was too protective....

and then the next case starts with... Vogel inviting Sherlock to a party and sending along a costume with a mask

I actually think this might be the last main case of the game.... ofc I'm not doing any of the side cases or DLC cases for the purposes of this plurk, I'll probably go back and do those after seeing the ending

getting back to this plurk finally, I wanted to at least start the final case this weekend

so this case involves going to a masquerade party, and the outfit you're sent to wear is uhhhhhh

YEP this is the degenerate sort of victorian party, feat Jon acting silly as per usual

ohhh man Vogel has another fascinating conversation with Sherlock at the party too

he even suggests the seven percent solution to Sherlock, naughty

Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One - All Verner Vogel Cuts...here's the cutscene at that timestamp, Vogel is basically pointing out his hypocrisy in how Sherlock claims finding the truth is a moral imperative... but Sherry isn't putting his mind to the best way it can be used in that case

funny how he claims he invited Sherlock there for relaxation.... but then says only he can speak to Fabio.... who is dead

and we find him half-nude lying on an altar in this rich person's house with a dagger sticking out of his chest

Sherlock is pissed off that Vogel didn't tell him about the murder immediately, and Vogel's just like 'sorry dude I was high' LMAO

this is def a fun setting for a case but I'll try to avoid mentioning too much more about the case itself... I do love seeing Sherlock in a setting he's not at all suited to rofl

rude!!

while investigating for clues Sherry legit looked at a stand for makeup brushes and went 'this would be a useful tool for a disguise arsenal'

I would like to propose that Sherlock is really just the most serious drag performer you'll ever meet

Jon plz

Sherlock also seeing how poor someone is and legit telling him 'well your job doesn't sound so bad' before having to be told over again how bad it is lol

this is the case where Sherlock gets hit on by old men lmaooo

the funny part is that Sherlock was like... totally fine with Vogel's explanation that the party is a safe consensual way for the guests to indulge, he was just like 'oh that makes sense'
so he's being more open-minded than a lot of people involved in this case

I will say that the guy hitting on Sherry is a bit of a creep, he's an absolute chickenhawk who's obviously trying to look younger than he actually is because it scares away younger partnerse

but I also don't think they go too over the top with it other than 'slightly creepy' vibe and Sherlock very easily brushes off the guy's compliments like he's not even thinking about it

this really is a case about gay drama though lkhjl;

lhkhklhj Sherlock made a joke about safewords when confronting the murderer "there is no stop word for this" PLEASE

in exchange for solving the case we obtain the crime scene writeup about Violet Holmes' death, and Sherlock has a creepy memory flashback about the manor's garden

ohhh another amazing convo with Vogel at the end

"You're an accident waiting to happen, dear."

Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One - All Verner Vogel Cuts...linked to that particular cutscene

every time he has a talk with Vogel it's just so good

BUT before I do the ending I want to see if I can grab an NPC encounter that's also very interesting

YEAH this one is in a quick sidequest you do finding a kid that's been acting as a street magician

I'm just going to grab these screenshots from a video... tl;dr Sherry finds a kid that has the same powers of deduction that he has and the kid reads him for filth

just CHRIST that last part

"You're too smart and too empty inside. You know how dangerous that is and you know exactly what you're capable of."

this version of Sherlock makes me want to chew on him

SO the last part of the game wraps up the story, but it's getting late so I'm stopping here for the night... I am really eager to see the trainwreck again though so I might finish this tomorrow

also just... what the kid said about how Sherlock feels like there's never going to be anywhere he belongs is so... it's probably meant to be autism-coded but it could so easily be queer-coded too, either way it's really hammering in how Sherry's nature makes him a complete outsider to society

and this was back in an era where it must've been tons harder to find people who were at least a little like you are!!

it's sad... it's all sad... again, I want to chew on him

I'm caught up with tags... it's time to get emotionally compromised

Jon stops Sherlock at the door out to the garden and tells him that he doesn't have to remember what he repressed... it's also an in-game warning that this is the point of no return
but if you continue Sherry says it's inevitable that he would end up there

and what's his reaction to Jon saying 'I love you'? he just says "Quite."

it's a lovely garden, isn't it? there's a little sandpit full of toys, a swinging bench, a pond at the back.....

very peaceful and... hey wtf is that blurry figure

OH THIS IS NORMAL I'M SURE

basically Sherlock has a flashback to the events on the day his mom died, and he remembers putting extra medication in her tea to calm her down from a fit she was having....

(the sky also steadily gets darker as Sherlock is following this specter of his mom around the garden)

HMM this is the point where I need to throw in the following content warnings for the ending: medical experimentation/malpractice and child abuse

becauuuuse

it's also worth noting that Sherlock is in physical pain recalling these memories

our next memory is of Sherlock pushing his mother around the back yard in the garden...

and she starts out acting totally normal, she's talking to him about the flowers pretty eloquently too

but then she asks to see the tree her husband planted, and asks Sherlock to call him out to the garden... a man that's been long since dead

the result is that she flips out and drags Sherlock over to the pond and attempts to drown him

(y'see one of her delusions was that Sherlock wasn't her real son but an impostor of some kind)

and when Sherry regains consciousness we see this scene - the doctor over his mother's bloody body and Mycroft pointing a gun at the guy

after this cutscene we're IMMEDIATELY launched back into Sherlock's mind palace to connect the clues about his mother's death

there are two overall deductions you can make about her death that each have two different options in them, basically there are four variations on the ending

and those are:
- Jon and I are responsible for her fit because we put medicine in her tea. the branches are: Jon suggested it and as such he can't trust his own mind, or assuming Sherlock was solely to blame.

... wait a fucking second, I don't have enough clues on the board for the second conclusion LOL did I skip something???

OH no I see what I did now

so the second option is:
- The doctor Otto Richter is responsible for her death, the branches are: Otto deliberately killed her to save Sherlock's life, or that after drowning her to save Sherlock he attempted a tracheotomy to save her as well

SO I'm going to link to a video that plays all of these endings, either way the result is gut-wrenching :')

whew sorry that was like three cutscenes in a row

Sherlock Holmes Chapter One - All Endings | Good Vs ...so this starts with the scene of Violet trying to drown him, but that can be skipped to get to the endings

3:21 "Otto Richter is Responsible, An accident" ending
14:51 "Otto Richter is Responsible, Deliberate murder" ending
23:16 "Jon and I are Responsible, Jon is the killer" ending
32:05 "Jon and I are Responsible, I killed my mother" ending

following each one is a cutscene with Vogel (which I believe is always the same) and a brief sketchy ending scene (which is different depending on what you picked)

no matter what happens... Jon goes away. either peacefully because he admits that he only existed to shield Sherlock's mind from his mother's abuse, or... Sherlock 'kills' him because he regards Jon as a manifestation of his worst impulses that's lead him astray :')

hhhHHHH

Jon like 'we're brothers' and then he says shit like THIS

the dialogue differences in these endings really kill me....

and like the situation is really fucked up because Violet's quack doctor was giving her medications that only make her condition worse. she's arguably not at any fault, Otto was literally driving her further into madness

and it created such a dangerous situation that a child like Sherlock could not protect himself in any way except to make up an imaginary friend that would shield him from the abuse

and then Jon stuck around for something like 15 goddamn years because his function was to keep those memories repressed for him

and then the convo with Vogel where you find out he was Otto's younger brother hlkjl there's some gay shit in there too

AND LIKE... Vogel is antagonistic but I do hesitate to call him a villain despite everything, he was basically just needling Sherlock into discovering the truth... even if it was because he thought it was amusing

BUT THEN MY FAVORITE

WELCOME BACK, L FROM DEATH NOTE

it's possible this was one of Violet's paintings but Sherry looks too old in this, I think this is Vogel's fanart of Sherlock lmfaoooo

I both love the implication that Vogel wanted to portray Sherlock as mad as he was on the inside ... and also that it's a reference to L because it absolutely could be, the devs reference a few pop culture things

but then each ending gets that epilogue cutscene that describes what Sherlock's life is like when he goes back to London....

and then that ends with him meeting Watson and agreeing to be roommates! but what's this?

JON WITH A MUSTACHE???

Watson is clearly like, a real person, he has a different voice actor and acts totally differently... but Sherlock is pretty upset and kind of teary at first, then when he hears Watson's first name he's like 'Jon?!'

and that's the end of the game

I know that was a lot of tl;dr and a lot of cutscenes at the end... but this game is legit such a good character study, I really can't get over how well it works

it's just... how the overarching story plays out while Sherlock is solving mysteries and doing side quests, the way things connect together and foreshadow, how much it shows instead of tells and always implies to let you draw your own conclusion

even the fact that Otto apparently thought Jon could be a tulpa is just a theory since the game doesn't confirm anything that concrete

what's also interesting is that like... there's only a single ending where Sherlock seems less haunted by Jon's memory and it's the 'Otto killed her but it was accident/self-defense' ending

that's also the one ending where Mycroft narrates it instead of Sherlock (since Sherlock also alienated him hard in that one) so it could be because Mycroft doesn't have that insight into his mental state... but it's still different from the others

ngl though Otto deserves most of if not all of the blame for what happened so I feel like the 'it's Otto's fault' endings are far more... correct than the ones where Sherlock blames himself or Jon

ANYWAY it's a whole game about neurodivergence, mental illness, and childhood trauma! disguised as a detective game!

and I love this version of Sherlock to bits

the sequel game is called The Awakened and it's a remake of an older Frogwares Sherlock title, it's about him and Watson investigating a Cthulhu cult.... I may also play that one soonish

I only got through perhaps half of it when I first bought it and need to finish it... but that game also deals with Sherlock's mental illness and sanity during the plot, because obviously Cthulhu is bad vibes and not good for him

it's still a detective game but it has a far stronger horror vibe ofc

but when I get to it I'll make a new plurk! this one is old and long by now... ty to anyone who stuck around to read all of this