u/CheatyDM

I've been trying to revisit details I've taken for granted/overlooked, and I realized I hadn't looked at the Apple Orchard for a while. (I'm assuming mentioning its existence doesn't imply a spoiler because it can clearly be seen on day one.)

Looking back over the Gardener's Logbook, I just noticed a detail that'd never stood out to me: on the Soil Survey, and specifically the rendering of the 45-room mansion, the lower block of rooms, representing the early ranks, is rendered with "alleys" - double lines - between rooms. On the higher ranks, the rooms are rendered with single lines. And this is a game in which anomalous details are almost always significant.

Now, it occurs to me that this is one of a small number of renderings of the mansion as a grid throughout the game. Most of them are connected to significant puzzles: the Study, the chessboard, and treasure maps. The latter give us a framework for understanding an X as significant.

The other thing that occurs to me is that >!we can explore a version of the mansion that does, indeed, have alleys between drafts of the rooms: the Atelier!<. If the Logbook would be connected, I'd wonder if the big ol' X for "Barren Ground" is significant. And if we could read it instead as "Baron Ground." >!There's no known green puzzle-path in the Atelier, right? Although if there were a puzzle-path, it would be directly in the block of rooms indicated by the Logbook. The room marked with the X is the start of HEWAM BLEST. That room is also the Bedroom, which in the mansion is the home of Baron's Bafflers, a puzzle that so far seems like it doesn't connect to anything. Darn it, you could almost trace a walking path that is MANTIS within that area. Alas, for lack of an I!<.

As always, this could all be nothingburger - I'm aware of datamining - but I thought I'd share since I hadn't seen that detail mentioned before, and I don't believe it's an accident or oversight.

This probably isn't an original thought - it's not even a complete one - but I wanted to put it somewhere so it'll out of my head. And I know there are some brighter-than-me folks on this Reddit.

The notion of Major Nicolas Key IV has been bugging me; he feels like a hint to a puzzle I've not yet located, and at first glance, it seems like it should connect to the Music Room - 1 Major Key & 1 Minor Key - and the music sheets, which we already know contain more than one clue chain. It's been bugging me that the music sheet in the Greenhouse is green, which doesn't match any other pattern I've found. It bugs me that it's the same room in which we find a number of cut-out letters, some of which map to musical notes: A B C E, and the P that looks like a lower-case D. I don't know enough about musical notation to know if anything on that sheet is in a major key. And oh boy does "denoted in verse" bug me, specifically that it could be read as "denoted inverse" or "d e note d inverse."

I found the >!Blue Tents memo for the Music Room!<today. >!"THERE IS A MAJOR KEY HANGING ON A WALL IN THE SAFEHOUSE."!< And, dammit, I'm at a point where the>!Safehouse!<is inaccessible until I do an absurd amount of fiddling with the bleeping >!Pump Room!<. I... do not love that puzzle, and I'm a little concerned I might make it completely inaccessible if I'm not extremely careful with >!that particular laboratory experiment!<.

I'm very much on team "the actual end of the game can't possibly have been been reached." I feel like a truly satisfying ending would have to involve Simon reuniting with his mother, even if we get no detail beyond the fact of it. And for there to be a mechanism for that, I feel like the most likely path would be >!the station in the Safehouse. Those hints in the guide to Reddington about the underground have gotta be pointing at something, and I seem to remember that the metro map in the Safehouse has a key.!<

And while I'm at it, I just don't put it past the game to pull one more "this game is much larger than we've led you to expect" out of its back pocket. I found it really interesting that >!after opening the holly door and discovering The Blue Prince, the two additional microchips don't go back to their usual locations, they go back to Blackbridge Grotto, the door in which is open by default. It feel like there should be something else unlockable beyond those doors, up that staircase.!< And since I'm clearly just incoherent rant mode, it makes no sense for >!the Blue Tents memo in the Pantry to simply be referring to the painting puzzle, and I only buy that it might be in reference to the red letters if my suspicion that the eighth red letter can indeed be found. If that's the case, I'm assuming the missing letters throughout the game - the coffe, the i from the keyboards, etc - must be the clues that would point the way to the eighth letter.!<But I've only got suspicions.

And I know that many brilliant people have played this game, and it sure seems as though, if there really is more to discover past >!the Atilier!<, nobody's found it yet, which is mindblowing.

Okay, if you've made it this far, thanks. I'm not even really here for the puzzles so much as I feel like there's a little more fleshing-out to the story that's gotta be buried somewhere.

This is just a "was it my imagination?", but at the end of the episode's post-opening Hallowed Round segment, it sure seemed like Azune and Vaelus were given an opportunity to head to leave the Hallowed Round vicinity and head to Obrimus Manor. Did it seem to anyone else like Brennan was maybe hinting at that possibility? I can't quite tell whether the players didn't catch the maybe-hint to begin with, or if they were just dedicated to making a character-appropriate choice in the moment and/or not-metagaming and/or anticipating things eventually going to hell at the Round. But maaaan...! As a viewer, I would've loved to have seen one or both cross over to the other storyline (probably in a subsequent episode.)

I should also say I only just finished that part of the episode. Next, I get to see how things proceed for Team Obrimus. I suspect that'll color my opinion of the entire thing...

Fantastic episode, absolutely gripping TV, and nevertheless, I was squirming through the last scene as the players kept not throwing Robbie a narrative bone. These recent episodes, the cold open for this one aside, have been incredibly Kattigan-light.

I just keep thinking that if my character was stuffed into a bag for an entire very-lengthy, highly-consequential scene during which the DM keeps saying "everybody give me a roll" when my character isn't in a position to fully observe, much less act, I think I'd be a pretty dissatisfied player. I adore what Robbie brings to the table, and while the end of the episode looks semi promising in terms of upcoming Kattigan story, I'm really rather concerned that none of the players seemed to remember that the tailor shop is what they'd had to rescue Teor from at the beginning of the series.

The cliffhanger was good, but that was an awful lot of Robbie sitting at the table with nothing to do. For me, it kinda hurt to watch.