Walkthroughs: Black Mirror III: Final Fear - A Game Guide

Version: This is version 1.0. It’s based of the US edition of the game.

Contact: Mistakes? Lingering questions? Something unclear? You can write to me at peternolafson@yahoo.com.

Copyright: This document is copyright 2012 by Peter Olafson. You may not post it, distribute it, edit it, excerpt it (except for "fair use" purposes in news coverage), sell it or publish it in any fashion without my prior written consent. At this time, the only site with permission to post the guide is JustAdventure.com.

Introduction

This is essentially the second half of Black Mirror II (BM2) and begins very like that game: a Gordon running wildly through the woods. Only this one gets caught. After the events in the summoning chamber at the close of BM2, Darren arrives back at Black Mirror Castle to find it in flames and  police on the scene. He is quickly taken in custody on prima-facie evidence for other people’s crimes: Angelina’s murder of Order leader Amanda Valley and Louis’s attempt to burn down the castle. (The smoldering torch in Darren’s hand and his wild story about  the Order and Angelina can’t have helped.)

Cut to earlier scenes -- discovery by police of Miss Valley’s burned body at the lighthouse, the inspector’s cursory interview with pub-owner Tom, a search of Miss Valley’s  house -- and finally back to the present: a session with psychiatrist Dr. Winterbottom and a rather abusive interview with Inspector Spooner in which the principal revelations are that police have not found any support for Darren’s assertions ... and that Darren has been released on bail.

Odds & ends: Our protagonist will be called both Darren and Adrian in the early going and Adrian thereafter. To keep things simple and consistent, I’m just going to call him Darren throughout.

Chapter I

Police Station

To get out of here, you have to collect your belongings in the cells through the door to the left. There’s just Darren’s diary and pencil -- but the diary is missing from the locker in the left cell.

Darren’s neighbor has gotten hold of it. Talk to him. Skinhead Matt Newcastle then reads choice passages before tearing out pages, balling them up and tossing them onto the floor. (If you can’t trigger this sequence, you haven’t yet looked at Darren’s locker.)

A haunted-looking Darren then imagines himself jabbing the pencil in Matt’s eye -- the first of what we’ll call “Mordred Moments”-- and automatically retrieves the remains of the book. You’ll be able to read this -- there’s not much in there right now -- once you’re out of the police station.

Leave the cells by the exit to the left. Darren automatically signs a raft of documents for the constable, learns he is to check in daily with local psychiatrist Dr. Winterbottom (not something you need to remember; this meeting will always occur automatically), receives his lawyer’s business card and finds himself in a new location: the village square.

Odds & ends: The vision is a signal that Darren is now seeing through two sets of eyes: his own and, as a result of events in the  BM2 endgame, the embedded spirit of the evil Mordred Gordon. (More about Mordred in Chapter II.)

You’ll note afterward the appearance of a flashing golden padlock in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. This indicates that access to the video of the stabbing sequence has been unlocked (as #4: “Vision 1”) in the “Extras” menu. (You’ll also see there that the rendered portions of the intro (#1) and the sequence at Dr. Winterbottom’s office (#2) are already available.)   

Twenty-nine of the 33 video segments become available in due course by simply playing through the game as designed. I won’t make note of the unlocking of these common-to-everyone segments, but will note availability of the four optional videos as well as all 24 pictures and two of the four mini-games. (The pictures start becoming available as soon as Darren is released -- see below for details on the first two -- and the first of the mini-games in Chapter II.)

- You won’t be able to return to the cells once you’re out -- this is the first of several one-visit locations -- so either save your game here or get your fill of the many location descriptions now.

- Oddly, Darren says he found his locker open -- but he didn’t. (You have to open it to find the diary missing.)

- Spooner has more to say. Most of it is just chatter or variations on his traditional hostility. But ask about “Gordon family” and you’ll learn that Adrian Gordon is buried in the Gordon family crypt and that, according to a death certificate signed by Dr. Heinz Hermann -- the corrupt coroner from the original The Black Mirror (hereafter TBM) -- Adrian died of fifth-degree burns. (In Chapter II, you’ll get a different account of Adrian’s death from Father Frederick.)
    
 - Note that the cursor remains red when placed over the photocopier even after Darren has fully examined it. This is a signal that an item or location has some further role to play, will change its state later in the game or has some supplementary interactivity. (For instance, you may be able to try to use another item on it.)  For the copier, a further role is just a little down the road. See “Fix the Copier” below.

- An example of that “supplementary interactivity:” In inventory, you can try to use the pencil on the diary throughout the first five chapters -- the pencil vanishes in the sixth -- without noticeable effect. (The implicit point being, I guess, that anything important is already being written down for you automatically.)

- Note also the picture on the side of the evidence locker outside the entrance to the cells. That’s Darren’s father Samuel -- the protagonist in TBM -- and he’s currently being used as a dart board!

Free at Last

Call the lawyer in the phone booth outside by either using the business card on the booth in the full view of the square or on the phone in the closeup.

You don’t have to use any of the sub-topics to get the basic thrust of Darren’s exuberant attorney: You’re stuck in Willow Creek while the American embassy and British authorities hash out your case. Jones suggests you do some investigating on your own to identify soft spots in the allegations against you. To start on this task, you’ll need your police file. (Once you have read it, you’ll be able to move through the game world with relative freedom.)

Odds & ends: The lawyer is “Mr. Jones” on the phone but “Dr. Jones” on the business card. Was he the psychiatrist at some stage in development -- or is this just an Indiana Jones gag? (I’m betting the latter, given that another Indy reference can be found deep in the game.)

- A business card for Tarot reader Madame Fortuna can be found just below the cracked pane in the phone booth’s door. It’s non-essential, but use it on any phone in each of the six chapters for a preview of potentially deadly upcoming events. Here, it yields a prediction that Darren will be “ripped apart by wild beasts” and rather obvious-sounding solution: “Stay away from beasts!”

- While Darren is on the phone with Jones, you’ll see a blonde woman walk by in the background. This is Denise, who works at the cafe. It’s closed when you leave the police station, but open once you’ve completed the call to the lawyer. You can put in here and, irrespective of not having yet asked Spooner for your file, get a jump on the next puzzle: getting Spooner out of the station for a while. (See “Time to Freeze the Donuts” below for details.)

- Between the cafe and police station is an “Old fashioned shop.” Enter this little grocery store to automatically scare off elderly customer Dorothy.

Talk to proprietor Abaya to break the ice -- you don’t have to select a topic -- and when you’re done chatting click on the “walking maps” (on the counter between candy and baguettes). The terrified young woman will give you one for free. This won’t become an essential item until you need to visit Warmhill later in the chapter, and you can’t yet use it in a meaningful way -- being that you haven’t yet visited any other locations.

But once you -have- visited a location, you’ll often be able to use the map to travel back there directly, saving a lot of intermediate clicks in the process. (Summoning the map with a right-click also makes at least one minor adjustment to a descriptions. Via the hotspot below the right of the two bridges, Darren can now identify as the “Glanceriver” [sic] the canal that flows through the village. )

A potential disadvantage: These instant trips usually skip over the intervening countryside (a feature new to BM3) and potentially interesting side roads and sidelights therein. You’ll learn the lay of the land more quickly and completely if you just do the traditional adventure-game thing and walk from place to place. 

If Darren looks at  the knives in the left foreground of the shop, there’s another “Mordred Moment” like the one from the jail. Darren spends a little too much time balancing a knife in his hand and savoring its sharpness. Leave the shop and return and you’ll find the knives have vanished. (Click on the block again.“Sold out,” declares Abaya.)

- You can cross the bridge and pay another visit to Dr. Winterbottom. She lives to the left of the currently-closed museum -- this reopens in Chapter III -- and can shed light on Spooner’s issues: He’s a “bit of a trigger-happy cowboy” whose botching of a case in London led to his banishment to the provinces. Via the “Dr. Winterbottom” topic, she’ll also reveal her connection to Dr.Hermann from the original game.. (Remember this, as it’ll prove meaningful in Chapter II.)

Note that, like the copy machine, the waste basket beside the doctor’s desk never loses its interactivity. Sometimes this just means you can have some nonessential fun with it in the future. (Here, the future is Chapter II.)

- You’ll never get inside the Three Kegs Inn (located to the left of the square) -- even though the interior was modeled for Spooner’s exchange with proprietor Tom in the introduction. But note that its door and menu board display the same lingering interactivity as Dr. Winterbottom’s waste basket and the police station’s copy machine. Tom’s status will change a couple of times in the later stages of the game and the door descriptions change to reflect it. (I’ll reference the menu board below in a different context.)

- Same story with the hotspot just below the right of the two bridges. This may come into play in Chapter III. (“May” because the game also offers two other water sources.)

- In the village square, left-click on the hard-to-see raven in the shadows between the old pretzel stand and the table just to the left.

Welcome to a little hidden-object sub-game. Yes, the raven appears non-interactive -- there is no accompanying hotspot and the cursor doesn’t go red when placed over it -- but the bird will nevertheless fly away with a "caw” and the unlocked-padlock icon will flash in the upper-left corner of the screen.

Save your game, exit to the main menu and click on “Extras.” Under “Pictures,” you’ll find you’ve unlocked picture #4 -- an artist’s rendering of the police-station interior -- this one with an apparently working digital clock and no cell access pictured.

It’s not the only raven here. In front of the Three Kegs Inn, click on the one up on the roof. (It’s located to the right of the hole above the door.) This one unlocks picture #5 -- an artist’s rendering of Amanda Valley’s parlor. (You saw this cluttered location in the intro and will visit it in Chapter IV.)

You can unlock 24 such pictures in the course of the game. Thirteen are tied to ravens. The other 11  can be unlocked by ordinary game interactions: when you make a particular phone call or right-click on a particular inventory item (both in Chapter II), complete an optional sequence (Chapter III), read twice certain documents (chapters III, IV and V), talk to a particular character on a particular topic (Chapter IV), click on a given location, try to use an item on a particular location or examine a location as a particular character (all in Chapter VI). (One also unlocks automatically in Chapter VI just before the endgame.)

While it’s tempting to interpret the raven as something like a witch’s “familiar” haunting Darren’s footsteps, the birds have no stated part in the story. Darren never comments on their presence and takes note of it  only once -- and that in a scene in which the raven itself isn’t interactive.
 
- The village square is one of two locations -- the other is the hotel -- with incidental, non-speaking characters. (Shades of Biddeford, ME from BM2.) Right now, there are just the two ladies on the bench at the lower left -- the only incidentals whose presence Darren can note -- but later in the chapter you’ll find a man in front of the veggie table outside Abaya’s grocery and, in Chapter IV, a man and woman having an animated discussion in the nook in the square’s upper right corner.

An oddity: On rare occasions in Chapter I, a man in a dark suit and hat and blue tie will appear around the corner of the phone booth and make his way across the bridge in the lower-left corner. (See pictures.)

  

This may be a bug. Restoring the automatic save the game makes after Darren leaves the police station, I’ve found this same man on the bridge -- poised in a sitting position with nothing for him to sit upon. My guess is that, after the two women vanish (as they do once Darren delivers a picture to hotelier Murray), this fellow was supposed to take their place on the bench.