Description
Ankh-Morpork is a city surrounded by darkness, where the cold river Ankh flows, where it always rains, and where dwarves and trolls co-exist with secret societies, religious fanatics, stupid police captains, and bar pianists. It is also where a bitterly sarcastic sharp-eyed private investigator named Lewton tries to earn a living solving bizarre cases. A mysterious woman named Carlotta hires him to find her lost lover. Wandering through the dark city and gathering evidence, Lewton has to solve the case, confront a sinister conspiracy, and once again become torn between love and despair.
Discworld Noir differs from other
Discworld adventure games not only thanks to its more serious tone and much darker "film noir" atmosphere, but also because of its gameplay. Instead of inventory-based puzzles there are clues, which Lewton writes down in his notebook and which should be then used whenever there is a connection between the clue and the situation in question. Most of the gameplay is thus dedicated to detective work in conversations; but the usage of the right clues at the right place is still comparable to inventory-based puzzle-solving of other adventures. Graphically,
Discword Noir features three-dimensional character models and pre-rendered backgrounds.
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Trivia
References
- In the middle of the game, you meet a red-haired archaeologist girl, who carries a lot of ammunition, wears shorts and is called Laredo Cronk...
- Some of the detective things in this game are taken from Murder, My Sweet (1944), a P.I. Noir movie with Dick Powell playing Philip Marlowe (later a remake with Robert Mitchum was made, the title was renamed to Farewell, My Lovely, though). Lewton says "If I'd always knew what I said, I'd be a genius." which is exact phrase from the fore-mentioned movie. Also, there is a detective Nulty in both game and the movie, with same attitude of main character towards him.
References: Casablanca
There are plenty of references to famous noir films in
Discworld Noir. Many of them allude to the classic
Casablanca. For example, the game's romantic ending mirrors the ending of the film to the point of directly quoting the dialogue. Just as the heroes of the movie agree that they will "always have Paris", Lewton assures Ilsa that they will "always have Pseudopolis Hotel".
The demon pianist Samael is named after Sam, the pianist from
Casablanca. There is the following dialogue in the game:
Lewton: Play it again, Sam.
Samael: You know what? No one's ever going to believe you said that.
As fans of the movie would know, the line "Play it again, Sam" was never actually said in
Casablanca, but has become erroneously associated with it.
Ilsa Varberg is named after Ilsa Lund, the heroine of
Casablanca. Lund and Varberg are both cities in Sweden.
Release
The game was only released in Europe because the US branch of GT Interactive had financial problems and collapsed, dashing hopes of a US release.
Information also contributed by
Macintrash,
MAT and
Unicorn Lynx
