question to those who have finished the game.

[randomuser12322]

did anyone had to look up answers for steelside warehouse and final level? those 2 are big difficulty spike compared to previous levels. i couldnt figure out the names of the homeless people. and at what point did you figure out the identity of the main villain? i kept thinking it was echo.

I also got to say the story of this game feels very unique and unpredictable

[Athanais]

I didn't use hints or look up answers personally, but I agree with you that the dockside case and the final level certainly had a spike in difficulty. That being said, I think the spike was intentional; as you're getting closer to the end of the game, I imagine the designers wanted the puzzles to get harder to truly put all of your sleuthing skills to the test.

The identities of the homeless men are tricky, but you've got to treat every possible scrap of information as a clue. Possessions in their respective homes, the dates of people coming and going, journal pages, the tiny dialogue snippets we get from the conversation, etc, etc. It really helps to have a physical sheet of scratch paper, so you can keep ongoing lists of all the information as you go.

As for the identity of the main villain, I also believe it was intentional for players to think they had it all figured out, and then suddenly discover Hunter Wolf is not who you thought they were. Then, it's up to you to go back through previous cases, look at the information provided in the case selection rooms, and so on. There are lots of clues, if you keep an open mind and pay attention to everything you see. I, for one, really enjoyed the eleventh-hour reexamination of all the clues to figure out what really transpired.

For the longest time, I thought Nathan Hoyle was actually Hunter Wolf (notes in the final stage about how weird it is he keeps coming into the lab, he keeps making comments about the potential applications of it, etc), until I reexamined the letters where he asks everyone on the team for their ideas for the idol. I was like, wait a second, why would he answer his own question and then reject it? That's when I was like oh heck, it's someone else already on the team who believes in the power of intelligence! Then I started thinking about it more as I reexamined older stuff, and the pieces started to fall together.

[taggedjc]

I'm pretty sure that Nathan Hoyle is very interested in the project because of its military applications. There's hints that he wants to contact the military and arrange a contract with them but wants to have a completed showcase of its capabilities first, hence the O-Range program. Kind of good that was thwarted, since I expect that replacing a populace with a trained zealous soldier would probably not be ideal for society either and would be much worse than a populace of Isaacs.

[Moknicorra]

For the most part, I was able to brute force the answers I couldn't figure out too easily (like which name went with which bum), but I had to look up an answer pertaining to Luke and Elijah Sinclair. Because of the previous chapter taught you that the memories of a person mattered more than their body in determining their identity, I had everything set to say "Elijah did this" instead of Luke. Due to the fact that the name is repeated fairly often in the solution, I couldn't get down to 2 wrong or less to try to brute force it.

Hell, I still think my thinking was right in this, despite how the game wants to answer. Why the hell would Luke continue to write in Elijah's diary after the transfer if he's Luke and not Elijah? (Only way I could make sense of this is if Elijah transferred twice, first to Harry and then to Luke, which makes some sense considering Harry's body is still warm and the bums hinting a Luke's new body, but considering I had to brute force Harry's identity in the first place, there's obviously stuff I missed concerning him in the first place)

[Melbac]

Originally posted by randomuser12322:

did anyone had to look up answers for steelside warehouse and final level? those 2 are big difficulty spike compared to previous levels. i couldnt figure out the names of the homeless people. and at what point did you figure out the identity of the main villain? i kept thinking it was echo.

I also got to say the story of this game feels very unique and unpredictable

The last two puzzels had a good spike in difficulty, and you are not supposed to solve those in 25 minutes. Come back later and go through everything again. Small stepps. They were comparable to the DLC-puzzels of TCOTGI.

And there is on BIG hint that require you to carefully think about the last cases: There is only one person in the OPIC team that knows that you can combine the lenses and what effects could be archived by doing so.

[taggedjc]

Originally posted by Moknicorra:

For the most part, I was able to brute force the answers I couldn't figure out too easily (like which name went with which bum), but I had to look up an answer pertaining to Luke and Elijah Sinclair. Because of the previous chapter taught you that the memories of a person mattered more than their body in determining their identity, I had everything set to say "Elijah did this" instead of Luke. Due to the fact that the name is repeated fairly often in the solution, I couldn't get down to 2 wrong or less to try to brute force it.

Hell, I still think my thinking was right in this, despite how the game wants to answer. Why the hell would Luke continue to write in Elijah's diary after the transfer if he's Luke and not Elijah? (Only way I could make sense of this is if Elijah transferred twice, first to Harry and then to Luke, which makes some sense considering Harry's body is still warm and the bums hinting a Luke's new body, but considering I had to brute force Harry's identity in the first place, there's obviously stuff I missed concerning him in the first place)

Luke was transferred into Elijah, overwriting him. Luke (using Elijah's body) continued to write in the diary because why not? It's a diary. Harry was transferred to someone else altogether, very recently - the rich man on the boat. Harry then sabotaged the instrument since he doesn't actually have any skill with it.

[Moknicorra]

"Why not" is not a good enough excuse in a puzzle game.

[taggedjc]

He wanted to write diary entries and he had a diary, so he wrote in the diary. It's a perfectly reasonable thing.

[Moknicorra]

except there are zero indications that he ever wrote diary entries before his memory was transferred to elijah's body.

[Athanais]

The journal itself has a whole bunch of clues that something is amiss.

--From one page to the next, both Elijah's prose style and attitude completely change. Short, choppy sentences ("Locals are weak") vs. longer, much more intelligent style with greater vocabulary. ("This despicable body...")
--On the first page, he records drug deals and talks about how he's going to make a dramatic comeback. On the next page, he's talking about working on bettering himself and "ensuring the safety of the mission." Huh? This should set off alarm bells.
--One of the other homeless men notes one of Luke's dominant characteristics as "loyal." On the second page, he writes that Wolf has earned "his full loyalty." When specific words recur in the span of a single case, it's oftentimes a clue.
--In Wolf's room, there's a note that Elijah is a "problem." Huh? If Wolf earned Elijah's "full loyalty," why would Elijah be a problem? This is intended to not make sense, and signal to you that something bizarre happened.

The notion that Luke used the journal (while not journaling before) didn't bother me at all, as it's a ton of clues all bundled together.

[SingularByte]

There's also a couple more hints about Luke being in someone's body:

• One of the journals talks about Luke getting his leg injured, then in the next entry starts talking about the 'new' Luke that appeared the moment the bandit was gotten rid of.
  
• The Luke that people are talking to looks nothing like the red-eyed Luke with the military tags that got dumped in a pipe at the start of the game. Given that the red eyes are meant to signify losing all your memories, that heavily implies that Luke's memories were used to overwrite somebody.

[highelectricaltemperature]

I also thought it was Echo. I made the assumption that there could not POSSIBLY be more than one character who owned a puffy jacket.

[ohener]

The puzzle with the homeless guys made sense one i realized that you should worry about solving the timeline puzzle first (who arrived at the docks in what order) and skip figuring out their identities until after that. There's plenty of evidence to figure out the timeline, and once you figure that out you know the name of who lives in each dwelling and then figuring out their identities becomes way easier.

[ohener]

As for the ending twist I got stuck thinking it was Issac for the longest time, admittedly i had been playing the game for 10 hours straight at that point and was probably getting tired, but i think i was hung up on that early cutscene that shows someone acquiring the golden idol from the first game. I was thinking Isaac had somehow acquired the first idol and had been sneaking around experimenting with it behind the scenes the whole time. Once i finally realized there was not more than one idol being used, only the I.D.O.L., it kind of became obvious that the only person who could be Hunter Wolf was Jack.

[Bennoni]

I found out the homeless guys myself, but I didn't fully understand what happened in the scene, for instance the Luke/Elijah thing, like who is who and who is in whom now.
There were 1 or 2 other occasions when I solved a case without fully understanding the course of events.

I needed a hint for the last scenario, but even with that it took long time to finish it, about 2 hours after the three hints, I had to search a good while til I found that Ikarus mention again.

I won't lie, towards the end I was a little lost and my understanding of everything became more vague, but I solved it myself nevertheless :)

[Zelakon]

Like OP the first time I struggled was with the names of homeless people during the warehouse scenario. I think if there had been a separate 'Names' requirement window (like with previous challenges) then this would've made things easier for me to keep track of.

However I didn't have much issue with the final clash, as this was what easily gave away the antagonist's identity:

Originally posted by Melbac:

And there is on BIG hint that require you to carefully think about the last cases: There is only one person in the OPIC team that knows that you can combine the lenses and what effects could be archived by doing so.