Sherlock Holmes: TDD - glitches and observations pt. 3
10Some more glitchy findings from this game. Beware, the 2nd half of the video has some spoilers from the case Infamy!
0:00 - another small thing to try in A Study in Green: if you previously did the balcony sequence break so that you are free to move Watson for longer than usual, you can leave Watson in Holmes' way near the forge. This will cause the forge mini-game to play with both characters overlapped, and afterwards Watson will be floating in air.
0:57 - I found a way to create a glitchy checkpoint in Prey Tell during the part where you play as Toby. When I load this checkpoint, the game lets me press X to start the game much sooner than intended, causing Toby to appear before almost any of the level has loaded.
Here's how to create the glitchy checkpoint: have wagon loading screens enabled. When you choose to quick travel after taking Toby with you, the game takes some extra time to load before the wagon loading screen kicks in. You can use this extra time to open other menus in Holmes' apartment and cause glitches that way.
Admittedly, menus seem to freeze time, which means the menus and loading screen do not at any point overlap, reducing the amount of glitchy variations this loophole has. However... if you go to archives and find out a new clue through archives, the game will auto-save you at the same time the wagon loading screen begins. If you now quit and reload game before the loading screen is over, you'll find the most recent checkpoint has glitched up and you can start playing before level is fully loaded.
So what's the use? In this instance, not much. Toby just falls into the endless void beneath the map. Or, if you wait a bit longer in the loading screen or in Pause-menu, you can influence how much of the level is loaded. So you can alternatively get Toby stuck just underneath the floorboards too. That seems to be it, though.
2:12 - there's a short time window you can open menus after choosing to interrogate someone in the case Infamy. A subtle but pretty cool loophole... note, there are spoilers ahead.
If you solve the case right after asking someone into the interrogation room, the following happens: the game takes extra time loading stuff, and you see all the relevant actors standing in the interrogation room in t-pose. After that the ending cutscene takes place with some extra actors in place who do not belong there.
3:55 - There's another additional effect from all this: the actual interrogation scene is buffered and starts playing behind the ending results screen. However, you cannot overlap dialogue options and the ending screen because the game will automatically start next case after dialogue options appear on the screen.
It would be interesting to test what would happen if you chose to replay ending right in the middle of the interrogation intro cutscene, but sadly I didn't get a chance to try this because the game starting next case deleted most of the Infamy saves I had. There's really only one shot to test stuff with the interrogation intro scene before your current checkpoint is written over or deleted one way or another, which is kind of arduous...
Note: there are other points in the game where you can overlap solving a case and another cutscene, but sadly you only really seem to get glitch effects if the ending and the event happen in the same map. Infamy is the only case where I think it's possible at all.
4:19 - if you use the same loophole to quick travel (with wagon loading enabled) after choosing to interrogate someone, you get an endless loading screen.
(Not on the vid: quick travelling with regular loading screen enabled causes a very long loading screen, at the end of which game crashes or softlocks.)
I'm probably done with this game for now. It was pretty fun while it lasted, but I need a break!