Player smarter than Bigby?
CathalOHara
Moderator
There's one criticism I've heard in Episode 3 (and I'm genuinely surprised reviews are polarized again for, if they don't like this there's no hope for TWAU getting well received) where the player is smarter than Bigby and it takes awhile for him to catch on what you as the player already knows. Can anyone tell me when that certain moment is? I even heard some users in the forum saying this, or are these reviewers just pretending to be smarter than they actually are? Either way it's annoying that something like this is considered a fault. People really like to complain about the tiniest thing.
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When Snow White expresses her doubt that Icabod Crane is the guy who committed the murders, all of Bigby's options seem to be "What?! Inconceivable!" whereas most players by that point have figured out that the case is much bigger than some desperate old pervert trying to get his rocks off.
I'll admit that it bothered me a bit too, just like how Bigby couldn't take the fucking hint when Nerissa kept repeating "These lips are sealed." I mean come on, Bigby! It's obviously a spell! Get with the program and stop harassing the poor girl!
I haven't read those comments, but I can agree with them to a certain extent.
I'm guessing they mostly refer to the occasions you're speaking with Snow about Crane. I definitely remember one occasion when I chose to stay silent because all three other choices were stupid and obviously wrong. There are a couple of situations where Bigby's dialogue is still implying you're thinking he's the killer, even if as a player you disagree. Particularly at the end where it's REALLY obvious that Crane is trying to find out who the real murderer is, Snow is very slowly thinking "Hey... maybe he's not the murderer!" and Bigby's choices are something like "He's the killer", "He's the prime suspect" or "He knows more about it". Even when you choose the latter, Bigby still seems to think he's the murderer. By this point the player has moved on.
In hindsight the best choice is to say that he's the prime suspect because it then transpires that Bigby is just really pissed at him for being a perv and wants to get vengeance for Snow (and when Snow reasons against him you get an amusing moment with Bigby saying "...well... it's still ****ing disgusting."
But yeah, I definitely understand complaints that Bigby's thinking is still way behind where the player is at that point. It doesn't hamper my enjoyment of the story though.
If I had to guess, I think the inability to outright say you don't believe Crane is the killer throughout the episode perhaps grated on some players' nerves. Even at the end, when Snow confesses that she doesn't believe Ichabod to be the murderer, Bigby acts surprised at the notion and the next bunch of dialogue options ("He's guilty.", "What do you mean?" and "How do you know?") kinda railroad you into this mentality, when - at the time - some players may have already reached the same conclusion as Snow. Due to the photos found at the end of episode 2 feeling kind of... 'planted' at the scene and it looking like Crane was being framed, some players might have held that thought for most of episode 3.
It didn't bug me so much through my playthroughs (it actually worked really well for my impatient Bigby), but you can understand that players might be annoyed by not once being able to express a very distinct possibility (or Bigby being forced to believe something the player doesn't) for the whole episode.
This is it, on both counts.
This goes all the way back to the very start of Episode 1, even. No matter if you pick up on Faith's hints about the ribbon with the lips and the repeated phrase 'these lips are sealed', it will fly right over Bigby's head. He can't ask about it, he can only be clueless.
As a detective, he just sometimes feels very inadequate. That's frustrating.
Ah, alright. I never actually saw it from that perspective. My bad! Make perfect sense too. But in my playthoughs it's funny, I normally don't think of what I "Want" to say more on the flow of what I'm expected to say. Afterall, you are roleplaying as Bigby in it.
I think that most of these issues can be chalked up to the fact that the player knows this is an episodic 5-part murder mystery, and Bigby doesn't. He's not necessarily less intelligent than the player, he just has less perspective. He's less genre savvy than us, and we're looking at things on a meta level that Bigby isn't privy to.
You might be right. I mean, in real life, Woody would probably be the prime suspect no matter what, but let's be honest... he's the first "bad guy" you encounter in the very first episode, it would be too boring from a gameplay perspective.