Just as an interlude, I am playing The Lost Crown in German. No, I'm nowhere near fluent in German, but I speak it well enough to follow the game, with the subtitles and my rather extensive knowledge of the game, having played it at least four times (or more).
Why? Well, Jonathan has created a little filler game called Silent Night, which he promises will actually be out in December. And both he and Matt say that they expect Blackenrock will be out before then. Yes yes, I know they say that every year, but this time I think it's real.
So a replay of TLC is in order!
Also, I have never collected all the achievements in the game, as I only got it on Steam a while back--all my playthroughs came from the CD version. And I've never managed to find all of the photos and EVPs available in the game. There are guides to all the achievements, photos and EVPs. I found those. I'm following them.
Alas, it seems that at least two of the achievements are bugged and not available in the English version. You can, however, get them in the German version. German is a bit of a hobby of mine, so I thought I'd try it!
So far so good! If I need help with translations I go to a YouTube walkthrough in English. Easy.
I have run into several bugs while playing and thought that I had a corrupt copy of the game, but I've figured out how to get by them.
First, in the conversation with Prof. Hardacre in the caverns, there was no "exit" line in the dialogue. Apparently it was "below the fold," as it were, and I couldn't click on it. I had to "end task" to get out of the game because I couldn't get to the menu either. Fortunately I had a recent save and continued from there without talking to Hardacre at all (I'd already earned his Steam achievement with an earlier English replay). Turns out you can continue the game without having that conversation, so I did.
Later as I was trying to tackle the monuments puzzle out in Carrion Wood I couldn't get the game to accept the sticks that you place into the first monument so that you can turn it. The game kept telling me that I needed to talk to Robert Karswell. So back to his lab I went. I picked up the map of Carrion Wood. Nigel is supposed to automatically "make a note of it" and puts the map in the inventory, but he didn't, after many tries. Because I didn't have the map in my inventory I couldn't even start the puzzle. And I'd never get to Northfield, obviously.
I tried to reload the game that I saved and couldn't even get the game to load, so I went to a previous save, which turned out to be in just the right spot anyway. This time Nigel made the note, I solved the monuments puzzle and went to Northfield.
At Northfield, however, I couldn't pick up the "M" metal letter. The game just would not respond to the hot spot. So again, I saved, quit the game, reloaded and it worked right away!
Just now I was in the Museum on the second floor, trying to get back to the first floor, but the game wouldn't respond to the hot spot for the "1" button. Again, I saved, quit, reloaded--and it worked immediately!
So now I'm quite sure that I'll be able to finish the game. When I downloaded the German version, it sent my whole Steam app into glacial response times. It was taking a good five minutes to load the game and several more minutes to load a saved game. Obviously, the cache got seriously overloaded, but that cleared when I shut down the computer and restarted the next day. Something must still be overloaded in there--I seem only to get these unresponsive areas after I've played for quite a while. Now I know that I can just save, quit, and reload to fix the problem. Whew!
However, the Steam screenshot task isn't working, nor can I take shots just for the computer. Too bad. I'd really like to get some shots, because wow, they really did a fantastic job translating this game. They not only hired all new German-speaking actors, but they translated virtually all the text, including poems, into German. Of course, the environmental signs are all still in English, but I'm seriously impressed with the extent of the job they did with the translation.
And I'm doing well with it! I haven't gone to the English-language walkthrough for quite a while--I don't need it. Of course I don't understand everything, but I'm getting probably more than half of it. My knowledge of the game and the subtitles help a lot. And I'm learning new words. Ausgezeichnet!
I may have missed one achievement, but I'm betting that I'll get it. The "Good Listener" achievement requires you to listen to a story (which you can't really hear) on the dead telephone every day for four days. I missed the first one, but went back to a saved game and did it. I think that Steam is recording those events as they happen. Even though I didn't save it within the game, I think it will be there once I get to Day 4. I note that all the achievements I had earned in an earlier English game were still there (I only played through about the second day in that one). If I don't get it, shoot, I can go back and get it with another playthrough, wahrscheinlich auf Deutsch!
But to prepare for Blackenrock, it just demands another playthrough of TLC! Doing it in German keeps interest really high for me!
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