Possible spoilers so don't read if you haven't finished the whole series or you don't care ;)



I've just finished the last game and I must admit that the series is brilliant. But I'm slightly concerned about the future. This secret organization is worrying me because I suspect that next parts will be more like save-the-world-as-we-knew-it cliché or at the very least exposing great conspiracy. You know, something global. And that's not what I like. I was very positively surprised to discover a game that deals with ordinary (so to say) people, without resorting to world-scale problems. And now... I'm slightly concerned. But we will see. I hope that the organization will be somewhat more local.

It's too bad that a lot of sequels (of games, books, movies, all alike) tend to be over dramatic and deal with the fate of the whole planets... I hope it'll not be the case with Blackwell series!

Without living people, Blackwell would be an existential horror game. Ghosts are beyond help. The idea of existing as a ghost forever stuck on the mortal plane is disconcerting, but as long as we don't posit that what comes after release is hands-down better, death is death. It is therefore not surprising that what Rosa is doing has a side effect of helping living people.

What is interesting is that she is not doing feel-good stuff common to ghost stories in general, such as relaying unsaid last words to friends and relatives - things that real-life mediums claim to do. Instead, Rosa is actively preventing murder. Every Blackwell game so far had a murderous villain on the prowl. So I don't really think stopping evildoers is a new theme for these games.

I can't help but wonder why stopping evildoers is a theme. It is at least consistent with the high standards of ethics upheld by WadjetEye games. Making a game about a medium and the afterlife is shaky ground - we know that IRL mediums are either fraudsters or self-deluded people, and IRL afterlife is... ahem... a source of much disagreement and the basis of extremely ill-advised decisions. However, the Blackwell mediums are very different from IRL mediums (Rosa only advertises her abilities with great reluctance), and the afterlife portrayed as real in the games does not promote any IRL religion while being fully compatible with utilitarianism. Was it a conscious choice, or just seemed like a "good idea", of the sort that come naturally to good people?

I also wonder how the hell WadjetEye manages to uphold those high standards of ethics, since the prominent games - Blackwell, Resonance, Gemini Rue, Primordia - are all written by different people.

I do share some of the concerns of the series going a bit cliché, but I think it could be done right. Though a clear linear pathway can be found to join up all the games, it felt like everything had been building to this climax.

It's good to have a situation evolve out of a small-world view into discovering what Rosa and Joey's place is in the rest of the world. Rosa never actively seeks to find out why this has happened to her family or how many others are like her (though that has obviously been dealt with). It would be nice to see Rosa actually searching for these answers rather than just going along with the random situation thrust upon her. I think as long as the conclusion deals with questions bugging me for ages (such as: what the hell happened to Rosa's aunt to turn her into a crazy wreck?!), I'll be happy!

I think we got that answer in Convergence, or possibly Legacy. From memory...

SPOILER:


She refused to acknowledge Joey so she could properly look after Rosangela. Over time, constantly pretending Joey didn't exist took its toll and she gradually lost grip on reality as she convinced herself he didn't exist but kept seeing and hearing him.

Fall into? They already have. Even in-game they continue to reference Rosa writing up the previous games as "The Foo and The Bar". Ever since the second game it's been the formula and it's been rather grating that they can't get beyond it. Even more recently it's become even more specific: there's an opening that we get thrown into while they're in the middle of it, but still close enough that we can solve the problem. Then the central story starts up and we have to deal with the two ghosts that will form the plot. Finally the central villain appears and there's a climactic scene where Rosa vanquishes them. Hell, they even reused the same villain and a good chunk of plot for 2 and 3 (making it even more obvious that 2 was originally just a flashback for 3 that got expanded... they both felt slight as a result). The only exception in this one was that the usual "pick which ghost to help first" point was instead gated a bit so you had, essentially, two sets of two to deal with.

Ahhh, I thought that was being implied, but when Joey said things about "making a mistake", I thought there was something more to it than that. Ta!

Did it ever say that Lauren pretended Joey wasn't there? She stopped going out on "missions" and wouldn't be swayed any other way, but I don't recall it saying that she ignored Joey.

Remember they've been around for a long time and never threatend the world, only individuals they can feed on. I can't imagine making it some kind of a global plot. What would Rosa do? Tell everybody that she discovered a gang of souleaters? She'd end up just like Laureen, in a mental institution.
If that organisation goes down, they'll go down quietly.

I don't think it said Lauren ignored Joey. While ignoring Joey could believably have caused Patricia's breakdown, Lauren already knew that he was real and should presumably have no issue with that, seeing as she spent about 10 years saving ghosts with him. Also, word of god says that Joey was in love with her, so I doubt he would have caused her insanity on purpose.