Zeusthecat

The Big LucasArts Playthrough

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When I hear other people talk about solving the puzzles in games like this, I really do wonder how the hell I ever figured these things out myself. Seriously, on paper the logic is absolutely hilarious, and seeing an insight into your thought processes while knowing the solution is fascinating. Just a reminder that this thread is great and appreciated. :tup:

 

It would also make a great alternative walkthrough for the substantial overhaul that I'm giving the Grim Fandango Network:ph34r:

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Oh nice, I hadn't noticed that was you. Good work, looking forward to the overhaul!

 

Udvarnosky or whatever it is wrote some of those excellent MixNMojo retrospectives, right? I'll be recommending Zeus reads through those and your site when he's through.

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When I hear other people talk about solving the puzzles in games like this, I really do wonder how the hell I ever figured these things out myself. Seriously, on paper the logic is absolutely hilarious, and seeing an insight into your thought processes while knowing the solution is fascinating. Just a reminder that this thread is great and appreciated. :tup:

 

It would also make a great alternative walkthrough for the substantial overhaul that I'm giving the Grim Fandango Network:ph34r:

 

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.

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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.

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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

 

Sanspoof

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Zeus, would you be able to take a screengrab of the Kitty Hat photo, please? I want to take a look to see how clear the hats are but I can't find a shot online anywhere.

 

The smallest hint about your line of thinking on that race ticket puzzle:

 

The two sixes both refer to race six. You need to work the week out elseways.

 

And a slightly bigger hint about the forklift as it may be something you aren't able to visually discern:

 

Look at (with your eyes, not with Manny) the passing wall as you go up and down in the elevator.

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Ooooh, those spoilers are so tempting!

 

 

Zeus, would you be able to take a screengrab of the Kitty Hat photo, please? I want to take a look to see how clear the hats are but I can't find a shot online anywhere.

 

I'll grab one when I get home later. Honestly, the hats look kind of like pointy bras more than hats.

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To lift your spirits, here's an optional song that you missed out on by sending Glottis away before getting the Rusty Anchor clue:

 

(Beware: There might be some spoilers in the youtube comments!)

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To lift your spirits, here's an optional song that you missed out on by sending Glottis away before getting the Rusty Anchor clue:

 

(Beware: There might be some spoilers in the youtube comments!)

 

Thanks for posting that. That is fantastic!

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The lead programmer is interviewed on the GF Network site Thrik linked to, and says about the song:

 

I'm sad that we didn't do Glottis' first few lines by hand... That always jumps out at me as a terrible bug though no one else seems to notice it. His sync for the rest of the game was pretty good, though one of the last things I did on the game before it shipped was to write a special tool that stuck together the lip-sync markers for all of his lines when he sings the Rusty Anchor song. That was a bitch, but it looks great.

 

Watching that video again, his lip sync is really good. Amazing that so much effort - writing, recording and animating - went into this little musical number that a lot of players will miss.

 

Thanks in advance for the screencap, Zeus. The fact they look so little like kitty hats is what I want to see it for, in fact!

 

Btw, my spoiler-tagged hints are pretty light, so is bkbroiler's; mike's is relatively heavy.

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That's some really cool info, Ben (thats my real name :)) I always thought Manny's lip sync was fantastic in the game, I wonder if he uses a different tech?

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I don't think this counts as a spoiler, so I'll just point out to Zeus that there's more in the photo than he's noticing. One more object of... significance.

 

Read this spoiler if you want a hint on what part of the photo to look at:

On the top-right, if I recall correctly.

 

Don't read this spoiler until you've solved the puzzle, Zeus.

I don't really like the way that information is presented to you in that photo. It's not entirely clear that the airship is crashing.

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listening to Tone Control with Tim Schafer made me realise I never played Full Throttle or The Dig, so I would be keen to play along. also need to replay Curse of Island. it is one of my all-time favourite games, but I haven't played it in years...

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Thanks in advance for the screencap, Zeus. The fact they look so little like kitty hats is what I want to see it for, in fact!

 

Here it is:

post-31977-0-79185400-1397101985_thumb.png

 

 

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.

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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.

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Yeah, I think Thorn trod the line with that hint!

 

Thanks for the pic. The hats really aren't very clear. I guess the best view is the one of the guy holding his in his hand, but they're pretty dark and the person wearing a different hat also confuses it a bit. On my most recent playthrough, I noticed that the generic image for a ticket in Manny's inventory has Tuesday visible, and "solved" it that way!

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Damn, my Escape From Monkey Island playthrough just got cut short by a bug. Zeus, if you go on to play EFMI after GF, try to avoid going into the foreboding manion on Lucre Island - it gets Guybrush stuck in a certain animation. If you do, definitely don't save after that happens, as it crashes the game and screws up the load system so you can't get back to earlier saves. It's a shame Residual haven't managed to get it working properly - it's generally very buggy even outside of that game-breaker.

 

The game is a pretty big come-down after the heights of GF anyway - it's really ugly, and the writing is cheesy and overdone. It lacks the bite of the earlier MI games.

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Yes, best to go into that one with expectations lowered. Even the pre-rendered art is pretty weak.

 

I did actually encounter a weird animation but when I played through Grim Fandango in residual just a month or so ago. Manny put away his scythe and just went into a rigid standing pose, which he remained in even as I moved around. Switching scenes, reloading, making other animations occur, etc didn't help. Eventually it fixed itself when I entered a certain puzzle-related animation not too long afterwards.

 

I guess that with these games being so old, it's wise to back up your saved games folder every so often so that if disaster strikes and wipes them all out you can just restore the folder.

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Yeah, I think Thorn trod the line with that hint!

Hehehe. Would you believe that what's up there is the third revision of my post, as I tried to make it more vague and less spoilery?

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Thrik, I think I may have encountered that in GF as well, but was pretty easy to get out of. Not so in EFMI, unfortunately. And yeah, backing up the save games folder is a good idea, but I'll reiterate DON'T SAVE WHILE STUCK IN AN ANIMATION CYCLE!

 

I wonder whether using this launcher rather than Residual would be less buggy. I couldn't be bothered and just watched a (blessedly sans commentary) playthrough instead.

 

Thorn, you know how to make things less spoilery? SPOILER TAGS! ;)

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Thorn, you know how to make things less spoilery? SPOILER TAGS! ;)

Well, yes... but Zeus doesn't read spoilers. I was trying to give a clarification to stop him getting lost, rather than a hint.

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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.

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Damn, my Escape From Monkey Island playthrough just got cut short by a bug. Zeus, if you go on to play EFMI after GF, try to avoid going into the foreboding manion on Lucre Island - it gets Guybrush stuck in a certain animation. If you do, definitely don't save after that happens, as it crashes the game and screws up the load system so you can't get back to earlier saves. It's a shame Residual haven't managed to get it working properly - it's generally very buggy even outside of that game-breaker.

If you go the PS2 route, only talk to Otis once on Jambalaya Island if even at all (It's not required). If you talk to him a second time, you can never move again after finishing the conversation. If you save, it saves your state of not being able to manipulate controls.

 

I know this because I encountered this bug three years ago and had to start over. ;( I didn't even mean to save, just I was frustrated and the game prompts you to save when exiting to the main menu so I ruined it by pressing a bunch of buttons. Should have just reset the PS2.

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