The Raven: Legacy of a Master Thief, Chapter 1 Review

And then there was fun.

And Then There Were None, Death on the Nile, Murder on the Orient Express; these represent some of the literary world's most spectacular and memorable mysteries. With its fantastic first chapter, King Art's The Raven: Legacy of a Master Thief, receives such a great setup that it thus far feels worthy of comparison to both those timeless stories and the best of the point-and-click adventure genre.

Chapter 1: The Eye of the Sphinx has all the elements of a great mystery story: a dastardly crime by an imposing villain, an unlikely protagonist, a series of exotic settings, and a cast of eccentric suspects. The characters are its main strength: From the get-go, Swiss Constable Anton Zellner’s hands are full convincing a world-weary French investigator he’s needed to track down the infamous jewel thief known as The Raven; after that, his social skills are taxed by a precocious kid with a penchant for toy pistols, a baroness who uses haughtiness to hide a drinking problem, a penniless musician with a taste for the finer things, and a self-absorbed doctor with mysterious motives for moving his practice.

Those characters are brought to life with a striking blend of realism and caricature. Their solid, rounded look and heavy, stylized movements build on King Art’s signature aesthetic (established in The Book of Unwritten Tales series) and make even the least pleasant characters visually appealing. A few odd lip-sync animations mar what would otherwise be surprisingly lifelike models – notably, there’s a young boy who talks like a toothless old man. Even so, most of the character work is strong, bolstered by universally great voice acting and a script that uses distinct speech patterns to convey each character’s unique personality. Add to those a soundtrack that channels the jazzy feel of a Henry Mancini film score, and you have a cast of characters worthy of a classic ‘60s mystery movie.
This chapter’s second strength is its plot. Good mysteries keep you guessing, and Eye of the Sphinx’s sinuous construction expertly manipulates expectation as suspicion falls first on one character and
then another. The setting – a train passing through the Swiss Alps – is a pressure cooker, and the tension builds as our detectives and suspects wait for the thief to strike again. Stress like that makes people do strange things, and every time Zellner thinks he’s got someone’s number, they say or do something that dramatically alters their ranking on the suspect list. Pursuit of The Raven involves the usual gathering of clues, interviewing of suspects, and picking of locks. As key things are discovered, you earn “adventure points” which are used for two things: to reveal interactive areas during the chapter, and to determine your detective rating at the end of it. While the latter might not matter that much, the former is highly useful since it minimizes the pixel-hunting. Also helpful are the hot spots themselves, which contain descriptive hint text that on occasion tips its hand by being a bit too explicit, but more often is just enough to keep you from getting stuck.
Its third major asset is, of course, in its puzzles. In general, they’re decidedly practical, asking you to overcome obstacles like retrieving an inaccessible object or gaining entrance to a locked room. Considering the realistic setting, this makes perfect stylistic sense. The best ones involved discoveries that made me feel as sly as a real detective, forced me to take chances to obtain evidence, and challenged me to help Zellner escape imminent death. Admittedly, one or two puzzles do exhibit some annoying gamey contrivances (such as making a small object un-takeable and forcing another kind of interaction with it) but most are intuitive, sensible, and based on real-world logic.