Jigsaw: Chasing an attractive stranger through the 20th century

The cross-shaped reflection of sunlight on the Fernsehturm tower is kind of visible in that image. Because of the Communist Party's views on this kind of thing, it was called the "Pope's Revenge," but they were asking for it when they made a building that looked like a Christmas tree ornament.

Agreed! D'X H-how has it come to this time already? ; n;

But I had a feeling the graffitied wall would be the Berlin Wall. c: Interesting~ :D

D'awww, thanks guys. I've had a lot of fun doing this LP. And it's not quite over yet. The best is yet to come, after all.

You'll see, eventually. ;)

/bounces on the edge of her seat *σ*

Excitement~ :DD

This is what happens if we try going east.

Damn, we're blocked by the guards. Guess we'll have to go back west.

Why are there rabbits near the Berlin wall? Well, time to get sketching.

You've got to be kidding me.



These guys are obviously so bored that they've taken to messing with people for some excitement. Well fuck the police, we're sketching those hares no matter what it takes.

Whoa, White's gotten better at this whole stealth thing. We really are the perfect superspy~

Success! Now all we have to do is get out of here in one piece.

Well that was exciting. Our own little bit of rebellion against the system.

One gross slimy rope acquired.

Checkpoint Charlie was the most famous crossing-point between East and West Berlin and became a symbol of the divide between East and West more generally during the Cold War.

First no sketching and now no hang-gliding?! Communists obviously hate fun.

It's basically a jelly doughnut. They're really good.

East and West Germany (and by extension Berlin) had different currencies. Since West Germany was backed by the USA and was a part of the western trade networks they were much richer than East Germany. The Soviet Union was just too poor to support it like the USA could for West Germany. A lot of people crossed into the west through Berlin for this reason, which was why the wall was built in the first place.

And we might as well take the purse as well. You never know.

Guess what I did during math class.

I was just doodling so nothing's really accurate.

I LOVE YOU SO MUCH PARA! You get the extra-special hug gif that I made myself.



And I was just about to start on my next post, so this is excellent timing.

PARAdoxial you are awesome.

Oh god, guys, I just realized. Jigsaw is a Christmas/holidays game! Well, technically it's a new year's game, but that still counts.

Okay, sorry this is so late. I've just been enjoying my post-exam euphoria.

So, now that we've gotten all that can be taken from the apartment building, we go back down to the street and head east.

Hey, it's Checkpoint Charlie! Man, it feels like we're in a spy film or something.

Our eyes wander to the blockhouse.

Seems innocuous enough.

*sigh* And there's Black.

Perhaps we can get close enough to speak with him.

Oh I'll bet it isn't.

This is what happens if you ignore the warnings and try to get past the guards.

It's only a few meters separation, but it looks like we're not going to be able to talk to Black.

We go north instead.

We try opening the car, but it's locked. Good thing we just found a promising-looking key, then.

Whooo! We've got ourselves a set of wheels!

Okay, perhaps it's not the greatest set of wheels, but it's better than nothing.

Well, I have a feeling that the car's windows really need to be cleaned. Let's give the guy a chance.

Wait, what? What was that?

What the heck did he throw into the car?

Of course. Looks like Black thinks he's in a spy movie as well. Truly a match made in heaven.

Let's see what the note actually says.

Goddamnit, Black, explain now. Why, exactly, is it vital for the Berlin wall to stay up until '91? Seemed to turn out pretty well when it came down in '89. And how exactly were you planning on keeping it up?

We can only hope that he doesn't have any more explosives on him.

What is that from?

Knowing him? ...We should find a safe chunk of wall to hide behind.

The Cat Returns. The cat she's hugging is voiced by the same guy who did Westley in The Princess Bride, if that means anything to you.

Only one of the best movies ever. It's called The Cat Returns and it was made by Studio Ghibli. I was watching it the other day and I just had to make some gifs of the ballroom scene.

It's about an ordinary girl who one day saves the life of the prince of the cat kingdom, and to repay her, the cat king says he's going to marry her to his son. She's then offered help by the Baron (the cat in the gifs). It's all about believing in yourself, doing the right thing, and all that heartwarming stuff.

I DID NOT KNOW THAT. I didn't think it was possible for me to love the Baron any more than I already did but...I guess I was wrong.

Interesting that Nelson didn't go for the Trabant, which is the iconic lousy-East-German car...

You do wonder whether Nelson thought out all of these what-if paths or just asked himself "what's the dumbest thing Black could try to do at this point?"...

I know! Those things were everywhere in the pictures of east Berlin that I found. Perhaps Graham Nelson's a Skoda fan?

Some of Black's plans...sort of make sense, but they fail to take into account the long-term causes of certain events. Saving the Archduke, for example, probably wouldn't have stopped WW1, and preventing Lenin from getting to Russia certainly wouldn't have stopped the revolution. Then there are the plans that betray a certain naïvety on Black's part, such as the double agent schemes, trying to get the British to let go of the Suez Canal peacefully (they wouldn't have done it, even with that piece of paper), or thinking that someone else would do a better job discovering Penicillin. Finally there's Black just being dumb and/or petty. Bringing a petrol bomb to a suffragette rally is dumb. Sabotaging the Beatles is petty.

Also, I should mention that Graham Nelson included some footnotes in the help menu (which I haven't read yet). I'll post them after I've completed the game.

My favorite hypothesis is that Black is from a timeline where things DID turn out differently, and from Black's point of view, you're the time saboteur. It makes his actions seem a lot more sensible if a "mistake" by Black created your timeline, or he landed there by accident, and he's just trying to get home. His "improvements" are, in at least some cases, attempts to make things turn out the way they "originally" did.

The moon sequence seems to clue this possibility pretty heavily.

That makes a lot of sense. And he's a more likeable character when his reasons for changing things are more than petty.

I'd buy that explanation more if Black didn't seem to be working from the same conception of historical events that we are for 90% of the game. He knows that the assassination of the Archduke led to WW1, that the Titanic sank, that the Berlin wall came down in '89, etc. The only point of divergence seems to be the Apollo mission ending in disaster, so I have to assume that that's the only difference between Black's timeline and ours.

And I don't think Black wanting to change history is petty. Certain things that he does are, but by and large his motives are admirable. History contains come pretty horrible events, and if you suddenly had access to a time machine wouldn't you be tempted to go back and kill Hitler? At times, I think it's sort of a shame that we have to keep history exactly the same in this game or else everything is ruined.

Well, the whole point of a lot of time travel fiction is not "history is good the way it is" but "little things make big changes you can't predict, so stop screwing things up." Maybe it's just a "devil you know" thing, but I wouldn't go back in time and kill Hitler because I wouldn't want to be responsible for anything bad that happens in place of Hitler.

Yeah. Part of the reason I find this game so compelling is that I can see both sides of the argument. And I do think White is justified in stopping Black (or I wouldn't be playing, I guess). It's just a bit bittersweet to kill Ferdinand yourself, even if it had to be done to preserve the future. I also like your explanation (i.e. we don't know what will happen if we mess with the past so we'd better leave it alone) rather than the "best of all possible timelines" thing.

By the way, I love listening to period-appropriate music while I'm writing these things up. Here's what I've got on right now.



Anyways, we now have a rough idea of what Black's doing here. Let's see if he's managed to get past the checkpoint yet.

This is where we got the car in the first place, so let's just leave it here.

He's still in line. Let's wait for a bit and see what happens.

Hmmm. I was sort of looking forward to confronting him, actually. Just staring at each other from across the checkpoint feels sort of lonely.

*sigh* Doing anything else will probably get us shot again.

Well if Black can't get over here then problem solved, right? Wrong. In this case we have to help things along a bit, like we did back at Kitty Hawk.

Yeah, idling is bad, but we're trying to save history here.

Well that's suspicious.

That's the game preparing you for a sudden death, by the way.

There we go. Guess we picked the wrong direction. Undid that turn and went southwest this time.

Perhaps if we find a way to sever the phone cables it'll cause enough confusion among the Vopos to kick-start the fall of the Berlin wall. Alright, so what've we got to work with? Well, we have a crappy car and a slimy rope. Revolutions have been won with less. Let's do this.

(iTunes just started playing Street Fighting Man. Too perfect.)

Our work is done here. Let's get back to the car.

White is awesome. We might've started out this adventure as the sort of person who stays in the kitchen during a party, but what we just did took guts.

I'd be interested to know how aluminium foil brushes were (are?) used to stop car sickness. |D;

Otherwise, yess, White just keeps doing awesome stuff. \(o)/

A kind of snake oil still sold today... I might believe a reduction in static electric shocks (but sceptical); claiming to work on motion sickness is just trying it on.

I just remembered that for at least some of the time Black is just as much in the dark about the "why" as we are:

So presumably a lot of this is Black following a todo list from Kaldecki (indeed right when we first meet Black says "He left me instructions"). I guess I could see taking it on trust if I got a big long list from this genius I admired that said "prevent WW1; defrost Cold War; etc etc, and oh by the way increase the popularity of prog rock"... And we couldn't be at the Beatles recording at all if it wasn't actually a historical turning point, so in that sense making any kind of change here isn't "petty" if you know what you're doing. Which we, er, don't. Oh well :-)

I forgot about that. That really does make a lot of sense. I also theorized that Kaldecki may have some sort of organization to provide support for Black changing the past, such as getting him that Lunar Lander, or Waldo.

Happy apocalypse, everyone!

Sorry about being so slow with the update. It's partly because I was studying for my last exam, partly because of the holidays and family obligations, and partly because I kinda don't want to see this LP end. I've had a blast doing this.

Anyways, we're still on the balcony while the city of Berlin is in chaos. The portal appears and we make our final trip to The Land.

Like we've done many times before, we enter the pyramid and go to the jigsaw board. However, this time we have to go to another part of the monument next.

Remember this place? It's been a while but this is the display case we saw when we first ran in here after fleeing the party. We finally get to open it! I said we'd be back, didn't I?

The only possible way to get the case open is to use that mysterious device we got in Russia.

The very last jigsaw piece.

Do we get to keep the unlocking device?

Guess we do. Cool.

Alright, back to the board. Time to complete that puzzle.

And here's what the completed board looks like.



Last area, here we come.

ANTICIPATION

Chapter fifteen, wherein we get some answers.

Looks like we've arrived in the midst of a party.

A party at the turn of the century, in fact. How...symmetrical.

This guy seems important somehow. Perhaps he'll talk to us.

Guess not? Oh well, nowhere to go but north.

Wait, what? Machinery? And where are we going?

Oh...wow.

The gatekeeper, or whoever he is, is just standing around now. This is the part where all our questions are answered. Mostly.

Ah, so this is the Hinge at the End of the Universe. Or at the beginning, I suppose. And this guy is the person who looks after it. I have a feeling that he was also the person who sent us the unlocking device, and the one who got us out of that apartment in Egypt.

Now, what was that he said about machinery?

I have a feeling he's talking about the Kaldecki monument.

Oops. Guess changing the past is a pretty big deal. Like, potential apocalypse sort of big deal.

Eeep. He was going to kill Black? Guess that was the backup plan if using White to fix the past didn't pan out.

Not funny.

Time for the big question.

Oh you bastard. Have you not seen how awesome White is? We may have been that sort of person at the beginning of the adventure, but we definitely aren't anymore.

Also, "not too bright"? Fine then, you try solving the Enigma Machine, and not crashing a B-29 the first time you fly it, and ending the Cold War, and making the perfect shot with an ancient sniper rifle under pressure. Hmpf.

Whoa, White speaks! And that's a damn good observation, if I do say so myself.

This is, uh, a lot to take in. What happens to us if we destroy the monument? We can ask, but we're not getting any more information out of the Timekeeper.

Still, at the end of the day, I think it was worth it. We definitely came out of this thing a better person, or at least a more interesting one. We're definitely not the wallflower we were in the opening sequence. Alright, one last adventure. But first, the Timekeeper was wearing an interesting-looking amulet when we first saw him.

As the incorrigible hoarder we are, we just can't pass up the chance to get more stuff.

Dun da dun duuun! Ladies and gentlemen, our reward for saving time and the universe as we know it.

Sooo, I guess we just leave now, huh?

Yep, we're on our own alright.

Now that's much better. This is what The Land is supposed to look like. Strangely, we can't actually sketch the tiger.

By the way, an icosahedron is a polyhedron with 20 equal sides. A d20, essentially.



The spiral staircase leads back down to the hinge, but we're finished there so we head east.

That...wasn't here before (and I knew it, they were fossils after all).

Well, let's see if we're up on our dinosaur anatomy.

Emily's animals book is a scientific treasure by this point.

Let's try nabbing the interesting-looking black rod while we're here.

Well that was easy.

The eel is just flavour text, but we can sketch the apes.

We're getting tons of animals from this area. Guess it's a last-ditch effort by the game to help you get the number you need. As I said during the prologue, getting at least 5 (iirc) of them is essential. You'll finally see why after this chapter.

Let's continue our tour of The Land. I'll bet there are other changes to the area.

Uh-oh, we don't have the time to get knocked out by a field of poppies. Let's take a different route.

We go back to the field of rye, then northeast to the pyramid and then west.

Ah, the Pagoda. We haven't been here in forever. Maybe something's changed on the inside.

That's new. Let's nab it for our collection.

Have you read Namesake? If you haven't, it's awesome, get cracking. If you have, lethal poppies are showing up everywhere.

Even among ineffectual old sages, the Timekeeper stands out as being unusually lousy at doing his job unaided.

I think my theory is also confirmed, though admittedly the streaks are pterodactyl rather than bird guano :-)

When I logged on today I had, no joke, 133 new alerts. Every single one of them was from Hannavan and Lady Octopus who had just discovered this LP (Hannavan blitzed it while Lady O is finishing up the double agent storyline at the moment). Hope you guys are enjoying the LP! :)

Anyways, this is a good time to continue the finale. I took a bit of a break for christmas, but I'm finally back to finish things up.

After getting the cage we exit the Pagoda once again. Now, I wandered around The Land for a bit and got more than a little lost, so I'm not going to subject you to a step-by step transcript. Here are some of the highlights, though.

That pterodactyl has been following us. Also, two-foot-long spider.

We can, in fact, sketch the spider. I'll put the image in spoiler tags, just in case there are any arachnophobes reading this LP. Rest assured, though, I've found an image of a beautiful spider.

Now just imagine that but two feet long.

Not exactly sure what the "shapeless creatures" are supposed to be, but the Ash River is making me think of the River Styx from greek mythology, and I wouldn't be surprised if that's what it's supposed to represent.

Nothing of particular note here except that there sure are a lot of crops in this new version of The Land. Rye, Barley, Poppies...

Nothing else seems much different until we come to...

A...hand grenade? This game sure does like its explosives. Though I suppose it's only fitting for a grenade to be rolling around in front of the Door o' War. We do need this, though. Remember, our task here is to destroy the pyramid and this is the only way to do it.

Dammit! The pterodactyl evidently mistook the grenade for an egg. We have to get it back.

/gasp!

I've been found out! I must flee!

Just kidding, but still, I hadn't realized I liked so many posts, though, I have a problem with liking everything. XD And yeah, I JUST finished that storyline when you posted, and very "BUT WHAT DID THE SECOND ENCRYPTED MESSAGE SAY?" Because I am terrible at these games. Sob, Sierra and Ifnkovhgroghprm, you are in my nightmares.

Ahahahaha~
Well, I read all of it while I didn't have an account. Of course I made one, came back, and had to like everything you posted.
This game is just. So good. It's been a while since I read any IF, so this is really fun!
Especially given that I cannot puzzles. IF, you break me with your puzzles.

I had to.

Edit:

Because how else can I get the Berlin Wall to fall on my birthday- I MEAN. 9u9

*gives Lady Octopus an understanding pat on the back* I'm pretty terrible at IF games, myself, but oh I love them so. I'm very thankful that a ton of people have made walkthroughs for Jigsaw. Without them I'd never have been able to complete it the first time.

And I'm gratified that you like my LP enough to like all of those posts. ;) It's quite amusing to watch people follow along through their liking progress.

Thanks. I'm glad you like the game. Pretty much nobody except hardcore IF fans know about Jigsaw, so I wanted to use this LP to introduce the game to people who might not have heard of it.

Oh god...can't breathe...dying. I love you, Eddie Izzard, even if you can't pull off a Kennedy impression.

If he'd waited until '92 the Berlin Wall would've come down the year I was born. It's odd to think that I wasn't ever alive during the Cold War, especially since my parents' lives were so affected by it. My mom was living in Havana during the Cuban Missile Crisis, for example.

MFW

(Seriously, I looked just like that, except I'm on a laptop.)

Oh, I know what you mean. I remember my mom telling me she was so scared when she was either having me or my older sister, because it felt like the bombs could be dropped at any time, and she was so scared for us. :(

There are a disturbingly large number of adventure game puzzles in which a flying creature mistakes some ovoid object for an egg and must be distracted while you make a swap. I wonder what the first usage of this was?

Edit: Zork doesn't count because maybe the jewelled egg actually belongs to a jewelled bird. Baldur's Gate 2 also has egg-swapping.

There must be some other game I'm neglecting to mention, too...

HOLY.
I think you're right! Did any of the King's quest games have that? I don't remember.