The Studio Secretary Murder - My confusion is real

[Catatonic Twitch Streamer]

I haven't finished the case and made a break. The game was really awesome until now, but now I am starting to doubt it. Surely the game seemed like it was made on a fairly tight budget, but I am just a bit confused and maybe I just missed something, just please enlighten me, will you? But there is some things i particularly noticed in that case which were bogus.


1) How come the police department gets to know about the hocked rings that we are introduced with at the beginning of the case? Seems more than unlikely to me that this would ever happen. The store owner surely didn't report any of this, why would he?

2) What is the connection to the "Golden Butterfly" case and Deidre Moller really, because it is rings and not Golden Butterflies that were somehow identified.
Yeah, sure, we already found the Golden Butterfly brooch in the hands of that pedophile, so that cannot be it (!), but Deidre Moller's daughter said her mother wore a gold rose wedding band and a matching diamond and ruby engagement ring. It was a gold rose wedding band and not a rose wedding ring and another engagment ring.. Turns out the rose wedding ring is actually the ruby diamond ring, but I don't see where the golden engagement ring is coming from. The corpse of Deidre Moller we were investigating before showed signs of one single butchered finger and possibly just one stripped off ring and a stripped off gold rose wedding band. She probably didn't wear two rings on one finger, did she?
We never even got to see what her supposed rings actually looked like?! Just Saying.
So they presumably mixed up the rose wedding band with the engagment ring in development.

3) After clairvoyant Cole Phelps is trying to draw the connection between another dead body and a crime scene we haven't even investigated yet and the hocked rings that were mentioned prior to that, Rusty says Hugo Moller was identified by the groundkeeper which he was not..?!
I was suddenly chasing that pedophile, and Hugo Moller clearly never was the suspect to begin with either, unless he is the world's dumbest criminal.
The groundkeeper said he couldn't identify anyone at least.

4) Suddenly we get to know that the victim of the "The White Shoe slaying" case, Theresa Taraldsen, had another message written on her body scraped onto it. How did the coroner was able to miss that? Yeah sure, just let me lock up some more useless people until you have undressed her. But sure, we're in a hurry and need to solve every case within 24hours....
And no way.. This murder victim supposedly has no marks according to the coroner at the crime scene again.. He won't do the same mistake twice, and not undress her again before giving me advice or does she actually not have marks? xD

5) For a while I didn't raise my brows, but when interrogating Grosvenor McCaffrey apparently it is sufficient enough to prove that he's lying and must be involved in the crime scene when I show him the torn letter that was found on the crime scene as well as in his apartment, but the bloodied tire iron (which surely is the actual murder weapon and not some requisite drained in pig blood) laying next to the letter is not?! WTF.
I already understood that it's about some serial killer and actually I did present the letter first, before trying it the other way round, but that does not make any sense,
other than him trying to desperately cover up James Tiernan who is sitting in the other interrogation room already, because McCaffrey definitely knew that the bloddy tire iron was in his apartment.
At that point why really would he completely refuse his cooperation? WTF

6) And Ok, if it's not Grosvenor McCaffrrey being the serial killer, then why the hell does he play with his ♥♥♥♥ing doves on the balcony when his apartment is full of blatantly suspicious evidence? Is the game trying to tell me, the serial killer just popped up minutes and broke into McCaffrey's apartment before I rang his bell? How long is he spending his time on the balcony with his doves?
EDIT: It is explained! It was the point I stopped playing.
Cause after back and forth interrogation you get to know that apparently McCaffrey woke James Tiernan up in his own apartment and found the evidence of the murder alongside with him. At first it seemed like both suspects were just making things up and accusing one another, but probably it happend like they finally said although it sounds a bit crazy that McCaffrey is that resistent to give the story up even at the police station... Also I wonder how the evidence was planted there? The serial killer most likely threw the evidence through the window in the 4th floor the night after the suspects had a decent hangover after a crazy night together which explains why both started accusing one another for mudering Evelynn lol or sth even crazier. Probably this will be explained though.


I didn't really notice it in the other cases prior to that but this one had quite a few inconsistencies, and it is really exhausting putting people into jail who didn't do ♥♥♥♥ tbh...

Fair enough, jailing the wrong people for thoughtless motives and with insuffient evidence trying to make a quick evening while being confronted with manipulative serial killers, lowlifes and clueless civilians surely helps immersing in daily police work lol. the game is really great no doubt but it seems a bit unfinished and rushed in a few regards.

[Silhouette]

Well, not the same inconsistencies that I noticed in those cases so I cant speak much for them. But I can tell you, stick with the story. Its not gonna throw you the whole picture off of the bat.

[BetelGeuse]

Yeah dude the murder cases are actually supposed to not make much sense.

[Lil Ghork]

"Surely the game seemed like it was made on a fairly tight budget"
>ignores the months spent making pretty much every plot character's movement animations fully unique with motion capture technology, paying for real actors due to having to animate every character's face with face scan technology which was innovative for games, the same months spent doing research on the 1940's from the city of Los Angeles to every clothing item ever modelled and textured in the game to the cars to even the smallest of things, like the packaging of morphine syrettes of the period (spoiler).


I'm not so much defending the game as saying that there were a few billion things you overlooked making that statement.

[Catatonic Twitch Streamer]

Yes, those are some outstanding features we never get to see in other games, not even other Rockstar titles. And they are worth it imo and I appreciate them, but I was still suprised that L.A. Noire was released after GTA IV because from a technical standpoint it still does not really look like that with the fps cap and the bad level of detail and distance scaling. You can argue that they just didn't put as much effort in the PC port, but the gameplay feels a bit rough sometimes as well and it could have needed a tad more polishing and some cases are weird. It is really well done overall, but it falls short in some regards compared to other Rockstar titles. Maybe consider that this game was more of an experimental title from Rockstar Games than GTA. Maybe this game even had the same budget and they just had to make comprimises to make the game like that. What do I know. All I was trying to convey was that I felt compromises were made in the development, and you might as well just read past my very first words hehe.

[Catatonic Twitch Streamer]

I am done with this game I think. Tried to finish this bogus case, but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ interrogation just let me incarcarate McCaffrey, because either I didn't came right back to Tiernan after some phone call that popped out of nothing about McCaffrey or because I trusted Tiernan when he was saying that he regularly worked with wrenches.. I was able to leave the interrogation room, but only for streching my legs, that was about it, I had to return to his room and jail him. This is nothing but stupid quibble. I prefer to get the correct answers and the complete story. And how mad it makes me when I give the "wrong" answer, and no I don't enjoy reloading checkpoints all the time for some more intuition points or a better case rating or just the complete picture, when I already know I am actually jailing the wrong ppl and yet the game forces this narrow-minded dialogue system onto me, so what on earth is this ♥♥♥♥ about really...

[Silhouette]

Originally posted by Filthy Peasant:

I am done with this game I think. Tried to finish this bogus case, but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ interrogation just let me incarcarate McCaffrey, because either I didn't came right back to Tiernan after some phone call that popped out of nothing about McCaffrey or because I trusted Tiernan when he was saying that he regularly worked with wrenches.. I was able to leave the interrogation room, but only for streching my legs, that was about it, I had to return to his room and jail him. This is nothing but stupid quibble. I prefer to get the correct answers and the complete story. And how mad it makes me when I give the "wrong" answer, and no I don't enjoy reloading checkpoints all the time for some more intuition points or a better case rating or just the complete picture, when I already know I am actually jailing the wrong ppl and yet the game forces this narrow-minded dialogue system onto me, so what on earth is this ♥♥♥♥ about really...

Same way I like to do things. Buuuut its only a game after. Stick with it, It makes sense later. All part of the story, without giving away any spoilers

[Catatonic Twitch Streamer]

Thanks for the heads up, but I doubt it will ever make any sense.
Try better next time Rockstar Games.

[Lil Ghork]

Originally posted by Filthy Peasant:

Thanks for the heads up, but I doubt it will ever make any sense.
Try better next time Rockstar Games.

The story is much more all encompassing than you'd think. It seems like the traditional no-story cop game like police quest or SWAT or something, but it gets complicated.

[Catatonic Twitch Streamer]

I thought it was really decent so far, but how am I gonna get past that ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up interrogation without biting chunks out of my controller? I already feel sweat pearls forming on my forehead just thinking about it LOL

[Silhouette]

Bite your controller before hand then.