#nancy drew the silent spy

[vgtrackbracket]

Video Game Track Bracket Round 2

Raymond Shields - Joking Motive from Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor's Path

vs.

Tradition from Nancy Drew: The Silent Spy

No propaganda was submitted for either track. If you want your propaganda reblogged and added to future polls, please tag it as propaganda or otherwise indicate this!

[netscapenavigator-official]

Five tasks into Nancy Drew: The Silent Spy, and Nancy has already done exactly what the Scottish government told her NOT to do.

We’ve spilled the beans to a random man claiming to be a cop.

We (unprompted) asked him about the terrorist organization we’re investigating, to which he got suspiciously angry.

We received a call from the terrorist group telling us to do their bidding which we then did.

And we showed up at the front door of someone that both our father and the Scottish Government know to be dangerous, and now, we’re buying her snacks.

Great job Nancy. There could’ve been a bomb in that locker. That letter could’ve been laced with the viral chemical weapon we’re current investigating. That man could be a field agent for the terrorist agency or a monitor for the Scottish government to make sure we don’t fuck up. Nancy Drew: worst undercover spy in existence.

[barbiestuffps]

Nancy Drew: The Silent Spy, 2013

[whythobestie]

I love spy women aaaaaaaa

[heytherenancydrew]

"Nancy Drew stories are supposed to be cute and fun, nothing deeper."

Me:

[thenancydrewtimes]

A teaser for a video I have coming in September!! *cue the waterworks* 😭😭 After playing SPY again, I was so moved by all the emotional ties to Nancy’s mom and the flashbacks, I knew then that was our next ambience video. I found those flashbacks while listening to the rhythmic train sounds so soothing, so I hoped to capture that again in accompaniment to the Silent Spy soundtrack.

BUT! I felt like this particular ambience needed a prelude to gear you up for the ride, so incomes Lani who graciously lended her voice to another project 😍 When you hear the whole thing, trust me when I say: you’ll probably cry. Cause I certainly have 😭😭🥹

This should release sometime mid-September! 🚊

[doyoudrew]

the chemical weapon plot in SPY was actually just whatever was going on at the glasgow willy wonka experience

[ndconceptarchive]

Shirt concepts for Ewan Macleod from Nancy Drew: The Silent Spy.

"So our character designer at the time was given direction to have Ewan's shirt be kind of nerdy and crazy. So these were his three options and our design team settled on… the Minecraft pixelated shirt, of course." – Little Jackalope

[papenniesandbentoboxes]

wow, babe, this sex sure is neat, I guess, but can we get back go why Nancy's mother had to leave behind her family in order to protect the greater good and stop a terrorist attack experiment from destroying the city of Glasgow, and how that doesn't make her a bad mother just because she had a bigger plan with her life, because it wasn't like she was being an irresponsible mother since they always had Carson and Hannah to take care of Nancy but because of society's gender roles around women, especially mothers, she is perceived by some fans as selfish and unloving towards her daughter and husband when in reality, if she hadn't done her job, Nancy would have grown up in a much different and darker world, and that the notion that a woman doing a dangerous job is a selfish thing is inherently misogynistic, and how society at large still sometimes says that a woman's only sign of worth is how and if she is a mother?

[henrikvanderswoon]

nancy: "so, you have to go back there and reset it every time the alarm goes off?"

ewan: "aye."

nancy:

[incorrectnancydrewquotes]

Nancy: I’m American. Bridget: Sounds right. You can always spot an American by them telling you, unasked, that they are American.

[vgtrackbracket]

Video Game Track Bracket Round 2

Waltzing on Rooftops and Cobblestones from Assassin's Creed Syndicate

vs.

Kate from Nancy Drew: The Silent Spy

Propaganda under the cut. If you want your propaganda reblogged and added to future polls, please tag it as propaganda or otherwise indicate this!

Kate:

a beautiful and tragic song written by a woman for her family. even in-game the story of this song is tragic

[barbiestuffps]

Nancy Drew: The Silent Spy, 2013

[perpetuallylocked]

clue crew playthru: the silent spy

[henrikvanderhussy]

Okay, we've gotta talk about The Silent Spy. I didn't remember much about it before replaying, and you never really see anyone calling it their favorite game, so I knew it wasn't going to be great, but I was still disappointed.

Similar to The Shattered Medallion, which I talked about here, I do think there's a GOOD game in there somewhere, but it's bogged down in some really messy structural problems.

Those problems are also very similar to MED's problems, which makes sense since MED was the next release after SPY. Just like in MED, the character interactions were all over the fucking place. I felt like I had the same conversation with each character about 12 times. Asking Moria "What was the Colony operation?" I dunno Nancy, maybe you could have figured it out from the newspaper article, the archives database, the info from every other character, or the papers at the cabin. And it feels like this is something that would have been relevant way earlier in the game.

But then at the same time, there are these bizarre jumps where it seems like you've missed conversations. We're asking Ewan if we should trust Alec when we've never even talked to Ewan about Alec before and there's no reason they should know each other.

Speaking of feeling like I missed stuff, the poem was the worst. "I need the full color copy of my mom's Jabberwocky poem" Girl, what Jabberwocky poem?? Apparently it was in Nancy's luggage, but the luggage gets stolen immediately when you start the game and we have no idea what's inside of it. She briefly says something to Alec about a poem, but that was after Nancy already noted she needed it to solve a puzzle.

Also similar to MED, there was such a weird manufactured sense of urgency. I was soooo very frustrated by the tests set by Revenant. I got the first call and thought "hmm, not sure what choice I want to make. I'll poke around at some other things first and then decide if I want to follow their instructions or not." Then all of a sudden I get a call saying that I've failed their test.

How was I supposed to know there was a time limit? What was the time limit based on anyway? Was it a literal amount of real-world time? Did I trigger another plot point in the game that ended the window? Hell if I know

The result is that you're left feeling like things could end or change at any moment and you have to do them quickly, but also simultaneously feeling as if it doesn't matter since obviously the game will continue anyway if you miss anything time-sensitive.

A weird combo of both stressed and 'eh fuck it'. Thanks I hate it.

This post is getting longer than I planned, but here's the thing, I actually think these problems could have been addressed with a really simple fix: Let Nancy sleep.

If the call from Revenant says "you have until midnight to give us what we want," then the player knows that if they want to follow the instructions, they need to do it before sending Nancy to bed.

If all of that weirdness in character conversations was because I was talking to characters and doing things out of the intended order, then structure the game so that certain things need to happen before you can go to bed ("I can't sleep yet, I have to xyz!"). Then make it so other actions can't happen until the next day. VOILA, problem solved.

You still want the structure to be somewhat loose to allow the player to explore, and so not everything should be confined to specific days, but it would allow linearity in the things that do need to be linear.

Nancy has a hotel room! There's already a bed and everything! It would have been simple to put in a sleep mechanic, just like in so many of the other games.

Look, I'm not a game designer, so I'm definitely speaking more confidently than I have any right to, but I just feel like the problems in The Silent Spy are fixable! And I really wish they had been fixed!