Zeusthecat

Is there some kind of mod for Skyrim that would replace the quest marker with directions of some kind? The quest markers never really bothered me but I would be really curious to see how different the experience might be if you actually had to put some effort into finding a location.

Haha, no worries thorn. I think the hint was vague enough and I feel like I solved enough of it without outside influence that I still feel pretty satisfied with the puzzle. And for the record, I think the series of connected puzzles surrounding the Lola incident were pretty fantastic. Everything leading up to the kitty hat puzzle and the kitty hat puzzle itself are probably some of my favorite puzzles so far in this game even though I was stuck on that one for a bit. Regarding ResidualVM bugs, that is one thing that I have actually experienced a lot of with this game. At this point I have probably had 3 or 4 separate evenings where I've had a 10-20 minute period of having to continually restart ResidualVM and reload different saves (thank goodness I'm keeping 3 staggered saves at all times) to get it back in a working state. It is the same issue every time too, where everything seems to be working but when I go to talk to someone, Manny never says his dialog and will just stand there, frozen in place until I restart ResidualVM and reload the save. And even then I've seen it repeat several times and had to either load a different save, or just go through some different rooms and change up the order of what I'm doing before activating that dialog again. The most recent case was with Carla. No matter how many times I restarted, Manny would get stuck as soon as he leaned onto the desk to talk to her. The only way I was able to get around it was to load the save and go to a few other areas first, talking to a few other people in the process, before going back to Carla.

Sweet, I just nailed the cat race puzzle (and I even managed to resist the spoiler temptation, although I might not have spent more time pondering this puzzle if it weren't for the vague mentions to look more closely at the picture so maybe that does slightly count as me using a hint)! I just remembered there were some words on that plaque downstairs on the cat statue exhibit and after re-reading them, I noticed that it said that the Olivia blimp crashed on its maiden voyage on week 2 of the races. After seeing that, I realized that the two 6's in the picture were just two separate signs in the stadium both broadcasting that race 6 was going on at that time. So I printed out a ticket for week 2, Tuesday, race 6 and got Lola's secret picture. Hopefully from here it is straightforward what to do. Now I just need to figure out that stupid forklift puzzle. More like fucklift.

Here it is: So those are definitely cat bras, not cat hats. Also, I did previously notice the #114 in the bottom left corner and the "Marry me Olivia??" blimp in the background but so far nothing else is jumping out at me and I'm not seeing how either of those two things come into play.

Thanks for posting that. That is fantastic!

What the hell am I seeing in those pictures? I'm so confused!

Ooooh, those spoilers are so tempting! I'll grab one when I get home later. Honestly, the hats look kind of like pointy bras more than hats.

Another update. After wandering around for a little while longer, I eventually happened to try giving Lola's ticket to Lupe and upon doing so, discovered that it was one of the tickets for her new coat system. After giving that to her, I got Lola's coat in return, which had a note in it about the rusty anchor or something like that. So I re-visited a few areas again and eventually tried showing the note to Olivia, who proceeded to tell a special poem about the rusty anchor. There didn't seem to be anything else I could do besides hear her tell that poem so I moved on. I continued on from here until I finally made it back over to the tattoo parlor. Once inside, I showed the note to the tattoo guy and he opened his tattoo book where he found a picture of a recent cat race. He then gave me the picture and I started heading towards the cat race area. Once I had made my way back to the cat race area, I took some time to study the picture I had just received. The picture showed two big 6's (which I assume indicated this was a picture of week 6, race 6) and a bunch of people in the stands wearing kitty hats (which obviously indicated this race took place on a Tuesday). That seemed to be all the information I needed for my ticket printer so I proceeded to print out a ticket for Tuesday with both numbers set as 6. Unfortunately, I didn't get anything useful from either of the booth guys. The kitty hat dude immediately noticed that my ticket was fake and refused to take it and every time I gave the ticket to the other betting stub guy, he just gave me some kind of useless cat sticker which Manny immediately discarded. So I'm not sure if there is some "luck of the draw" element to this where I just need to keep trying until I win something or if the picture I have isn't telling me what I think it is. Or maybe I need to somehow trade my ticket out for a 'real' one so I can get something from kitty hat asshole guy. Since I couldn't seem to get anywhere with my ticket printer scheme, I moved on again and decided to give the poetry lounge another go. Luckily, this time I randomly remembered that I had those notes from Sal and thought maybe they would be of some use since I hadn't attempted to use them in any way yet. There wasn't really anything poetic in the notes so reciting some kind of poem from them didn't seem to be an option. However, once I showed them to the group of skeptical poetry guys, I was able to convince them that I was the real deal and they finally agreed to let me borrow their book. And just for the hell of it, I went back up to the mic and recited another poem which went over much better after having earned some respect from those dudes. With the book in hand and an audience that finally appreciated me, I came to the conclusion that reciting poetry was just a cool thing you can do in the game (or maybe just a clever way to distract from the real puzzle solution) and that it didn't have any bearing on any puzzles. From the poetry club, I went straight over to the worker bees and handed the book to the main guy. Now that he finally had some useful words, he started getting everyone all riled up, which drew the attention of Chief Bogen who promptly locked him up. Manny indicated that the lawyer, Nick, owed him a favor at this point and that he could get the lead worker bee released. Unfortunately, Nick was still in a private meeting with Maximino so I have yet to make any more progress on that front. Finally, I eventually wandered back over to the mortician's place where I made my last discovery. As I entered the room, I remembered that I had that metal detector and realized that I could probably give it to the mortician so he could find the ID tags that I had thrown on one of the bodies. To my delight, that ended up being the solution and I was able to finally secure my spot on the ship after the captain was notified of Naranja's "demise". I've played for about 2 hours since making this last discovery and I am completely stuck at this point. I'm not sure if I should just keep printing out tickets to see if there is just some luck element to the betting stub thing or if I should be focusing on that stupid forklift puzzle. I've spent quite a bit of time with both but they seem like complete dead ends at this point. Unfortunately though, these seem to be the only unsolved puzzles that could possibly be solved with what I have since Nick is still hanging out with Maximino. If this forklift puzzle does turn out to be solvable with what I have now, I have a feeling the solution will end up really pissing me off considering how much goddamn time I've spent scouring that barrel room and the elevator and riding that forklift around like an idiot.

You know, that's actually a brilliant idea.

I completely agree with that philosophy. Unfortunately, I have been trying that tactic for years with no luck. I'm feeling a little more optimistic today though. I mean, there are a lot of pants in the world and chances are, if I look hard enough, I'll find some that were made specifically for weirdos like me.

I had this same internal conflict while playing the game. When I finished it, I wasn't sure if the overwhelming feeling I was left with was one of regret or a sense of accomplishment. Usually it is pretty easy to distinguish those things but that game made me question the deepest foundations of my being. That being said, I think I liked it? But I will never fucking touch that game again or even consider playing any of it's successors. Edit: Actually, no, fuck that game! I just remembered I was never able to defeat Long GUI and was robbed of the true sense of accomplishment that I deserved after putting 90 fucking hours into that game.

My wife says I need to get new work pants because all of mine are frayed and starting to look a little shabby. This stresses me the fuck out because it will take a lot of wash cycles before my new pants will feel as comfortable and worn in as the ones I have now. And my last few pants-buying experiences somehow went horribly wrong and I wound up with pants that, after a few washes, ended up making too much contact with my legs when I wore them (and if you recall one of my earlier posts, I don't handle pants that make too much contact with my skin very well). I wish I could just immortalize my 4 pairs of preferred work pants that strike the perfect balance of bagginess and being-washed-so-many-times-that-the-material-can-make-some-skin-contact-without-freaking-me-out because I could go the rest of my life wearing those pants and would be perfectly content.

Tangentially related to this, copper theft is actually a huge problem for a lot of government agencies. It is crazy how easy it is to just pull up near a junction box, put some hard hats on, tie the end of the cables to the back of a truck, and drive off, yanking hundreds of feet of copper out of the conduit. A lot of agencies we've done work for have even had to resort to burying and locking their junction boxes to make it harder for copper thieves to locate them.

Yeah, I have a tendency to spend ridiculous amounts of time with a game, even if it isn't super compelling. Case in point: I played Final Fantasy XIII for about 90 hours. Horrible story and characters but the battle system was interesting enough that I couldn't stop until I had beat all the high level bosses and fully leveled all my characters.

That's totally fair to not be a big fan of this style of game and I'm glad that you're liking it despite that. Also, that's awesome that you're going as a "sneaky bowman". I can't speak for any other build but I found the combat as a stealth-archer type to be very satisfying. Especially when your archery and stealth are fully leveled up and complemented by some Illusion magic. Going through a dungeon and killing everyone before they could even figure out where I was never got old for me.

I've noticed the same thing and am equally confused. I absolutely adored Skyrim and it is most definitely in my top 10 favorites of all time. Even after putting 250+ hours in as my stealth archer, I still regularly think of jumping back in and going through it all again as a different class. The only reason I don't is because I know it will completely dominate my gaming diet and I will play nothing else during that time. But then again, I also really liked Oblivion and had no issues with that game either so I am probably just partial to Bethesda's style of open world game.

Thanks for the kind words Thrik! If you think any of what I've been posting here makes for an interesting enough read, feel free to use it however you want. I'm just happy to be able to share my experience and thought process with others.

I got through a few more puzzles the other night. After having obtained the cigarette case, I continued going back through previous areas until I had made my way back to the security checkpoint area with Carla. Upon showing her the cigarette case, I went through a few dialog options until I was finally able to trick her into thinking it was a bomb, at which point she threw it in the detonation chamber and cracked the case open. I was able to get a key from the remains of the case and eventually found that I could use it to unlock the door at the lighthouse. After walking through the door, I witnessed a cutscene where Lola had just been shot and was quickly sprouting. She said a few touching things to Manny in her last moments and then disintegrated, leaving behind nothing but a ticket (it has a number on it so maybe it has something to do with the cat race ticket I am supposed to print out?). I wandered around for a little while after this and eventually found myself thinking about that metal detector that I still needed to get from Carla. As I was thinking about how I could get it to detect a metal object on me after I put all my items on the desk, an idea popped into my head. Since that Goldschlager had gold flakes in it, I figured I should be able to drink some of it right before trying to walk through the security checkpoint and then Carla's metal detector would go off on the gold flakes in my skeleton stomach. So I gave it a shot and was pleased to see my plan work as I had hoped. From there, Carla took me to the area behind her desk and proceeded to talk my ear off. I carried the conversation as long as the game would let me but eventually my true intentions were revealed and, in frustration, Carla tossed the metal detector out the window and into the kitty litter below. I ran downstairs to try to fish it out and quickly located it by waving my scythe around until I heard the metal detector go off, at which point I was able to pull it out. I played a little bit more after this and tried to use the metal detector in various places, including the area with the forklift and wine kegs, but wasn't able to make any further progress and stopped playing for the evening. I hope to play a bit more here shortly and my next course of action will be to comb back through various areas to try to figure out how the metal detector and ticket from Lola come into play.

Thanks for the clarification. Framed that way, I'm completely on-board with what you're saying.

I apologize if I came off that way. My comment was meant to be a general statement about someone hating a group of people.

This statement bothers me. Even if someone has been given "good reason", I don't think it is ever acceptable to hate an entire group of people. And I have to agree with Twig that anybody who honestly thinks an entire group of people should die is indeed a little crazy.

Dude, are you actually aware of what you posted (hint: I provided it in my post above yours)? There is literally no other way to interpret it.

That... is such a beautiful picture.

I don't think anything else needs to be said.

Sorry dude. Your posts are rude and offensive. If you were actually "discussing issues" that would be one thing but your posts have been pure trollshit.