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I WILL FINISH THIS GAME IF IT TAKES TEN YEARS AND KILLS ME IN THE PROCESS. For now, though, let's start by finally finishing chapter three!
This update wastes no time getting started, does it? After discovering the real Dr. Carrington's body, if you return to Ernie's office, he and Yvette are at it again.
(I'm standing behind the pillar; I didn't randomly disappear.)
Once you leave the alcohol lab, the bugs and their meat walk out as well. Like most things in this game, I am not making this up. They even allow you to act while they're walking (it's not a cutscene that ends after they've already left--you can look at them or use the magnifying glass on them or whatever as they go.)
If this becomes an actual legitimate part of the game, I swear....
In (possibly) more serious news, at this point, I realized I was in trouble. The window is closing on chapter three, and there are two extremely important items I need from Ernie's office. I might be able to come back for them in chapter four (I haven't read that far ahead in the walkthroughs yet) but I don't want to risk it. I would strongly perfer to get them now, before the plot advances any further. Unfortunately, I can only loot the office when it's unoccupied (obviously.) I'm 0 for 3 on that happening; twice I walked in on Ernie and Yvette, and once Ernie (by himself) was there and kicked me out after I finished asking him some questions. If I try to go back just after discovering him and Yvette, the door is locked.
So, for the first time in this playthrough, I find myself in the somewhat unusual position of having to kill some time.
I walked back and forth, even all the way to the now-empty party area and (locked) front door, in hopes of shaking something loose. I went back to the lab and...
ARGH.
So I did my rounds of almost the entire museum again, came back, and Wolf was gone... and the door was still locked.
Okay, fine. There are still... what, two or three plot flags to trip before chapter three is over. Maybe I can get into Ernie's office after the next one. Which, according to one of the walkthroughs, is supposed to be overhearing a conversation between Yvette and Det. O'Riley outside Yvette's office. However, I lingered on that screen forever and the conversation just would not happen. Did I miss that, too?
Maybe... maybe I can trigger the next event after that, and then come back for both the other ones? Hopefully? I'm really trying not to have to do the whole Dr. Carrington sequence a third time, here.
Speaking of repeating ourselves, though, our next stop is in the armor room, where we advance the time by hiding behind the tapestry, again. Only it's not the Countess we're after this time....
I think this was meant to be some important hint or clue at someone's true motives, but honestly, I can never tell with these two. Their other conversation was about twenty times as incriminating, and that one was an easter egg/joke. (I think.) This one is comparatively mild, but... serious, maybe? I don't know. At this point I could catch one of them literally in the act of murdering someone and still not be 100% sure whether Sierra actually meant it.
Let's just pretend this was a legitimate conversation, and that there is some sort of subplot about Dr. Myklos and Herr Heimlich plotting to take over the museum. Maybe they're bumping off the potential competition! I don't know. It's probably a red herring.
After this, a bunch of stuff happened that I'm not going to screenshot just yet, but suffice it to say that the next few plot events start to move very fast, one after the other in an apparently unbreakable chain, and that it is definitely way too late to go back for anything. (Well, maybe I could still raid Ernie's office sometime in chapter four, but that Yvette conversation is gone for sure.) I already missed my chance. There is zero room whatsoever to get into Ernie's office after discovering Dr. Carrington's body but before the end of chapter three. That window just does not exist there. So, remember how the entire last update was me having to do the bit between confronting the Countess and discovering the Dr. Carrington, and how I closed off saying this update might see me actually moving forward for once?
Oops.
So, fine. Back to just after the Countess scene AGAIN. I hate everything.
Fast forward through a bunch of nonsense, including the fact that it's literally random whether Ernie is in his office when you go to visit him just before discovering Dr. Carrington, even though you need him not to be. I ended up reloading and doing this exact same sequence a total of four times because of one mishap or another, and of those, he was there twice.
So we finally, finally have the place to ourselves... but not for long. Your reward for even making it this far is that there's a time limit before Ernie comes back and kicks you out.
Here is a list of vat contents in the lab. Supposedly, there should also an intercom call from Dr. Myklos to Ernie's office complaining about something screwy is going on with a valve in vat 13. That was the one in which, several updates earlier, we discovered (and pocketed) the authentic Dagger of Amon Ra.
I was going into this update expecting to have to write an apology to Sierra for some of my earlier criticisms about the sheer unintuitive randomness of my actions in this game. Many instances I had decried as coming from out of nowhere (how were you supposed to know to look in vat 13 to get the Dagger, when nothing in the game ever hints at it in any manner whatsoever?) were actually just me accidentally sequence breaking. According to the walkthroughs, Dr. Myklos does mention vat 13 near the end of chapter three; I just rushed out and took the Dagger on my own well before then. So, I was expecting to have to acknowledge my oversight, admit I was wrong, and concede that maybe some of the puzzles in this game do make sense....
... but that intercom call never happened.
Dr. Myklos never called me in Ernie's office. No one on the intercom called me in Ernie's office. I tried waiting a little in case someone did, but you can't really do that here--remember, you're on a strict time limit before Ernie himself comes back.
So, no, I take back my takeback. The Dagger being in vat 13 is unexplained (and so are many of the other equally random solutions.) This game is absurd.
Unless... unless it skipped the call because I already have the Dagger, thus making the clue for it unnecessary? I'm seriously trying my best to give the game as much credit as I can, here.
Whatever. Moving on.
Wire cutters! We need those.
Snake lasso! We need that too.
Obvious historical error (it obviously wasn't referred to as World War I in 1926, considering World War II hadn't happened yet)! That one we don't actually need, but hey, while I'm here anyway.
All the stuff in this room from before I had to go back to my previous saves! We need it, again.
Before opening up Dr. Carrington's steam trunk again, I would just like to take a moment to apprecuate Laura's seemingly magical Purse of Holding.
ANYWAY, THEN I DID ALL THE CARRINGTON STUFF AGAIN AND GOT US ALL CAUGHT UP TO WHERE WE ALEADY WERE, AGAIN. AGAIN.
I think we really are on the right track this time, though! I have the wire cutters and snake lasso, and once I got back upstairs, the Yvette conversation actually happened! (The one-on-one conversation with Ernie from last update didn't, though, since I needed him to not be in his office so I could steal his stuff. Fortunately, I don't think he said anything absolutely essential. The thing about his keys having gone missing was optional flavor text. I think.)
Whoa. Okay, the walkthroughs weren't kidding when they said that this was a juicy one I didn't want to miss.
If (if!) Ziggy was telling the truth (and Yvette is telling the truth about Ziggy having told her this,) then Det. O'Riley andDr. Carrington Watney Little were co-conspirators in the theft of the Dagger which started this whole mess. This would explain why Det. O'Riley's official police report on the burglary so far is so vague and awful and like he wasn't even trying to solve the case. This would also explain why Watney Little's police file (complete with "Remember our deal" note) was in Dr. Carrington's office. Det. O'Riley must have had a hand in springing Little, helping him assume Carrington's identity, and covering his tracks by pulling and hiding his file, in exchange for getting in on Little's Dagger theft once he was in power. Add in the painting smuggling scheme Little and the Countess had, and it's starting to become clear why any one of those three wanted Dr. Carter (and possibly Ziggy) dead.
Something tells me that Yvette isn't going to be around to appreciate all these revelations for much longer, though.
Well, uh, you two have fun with that, I suppose! Meanwhile, I'm off to go do that tapestry eavesdropping thing again.
But first, since the pterodactyl room is on the way....
There! Now the crime scene has been thoroughly tampered with and the most incriminating piece of evidence stolen. You're welcome, killer!
Er, I mean, there, now I have a length of wire that I'm probably going to need later. Yeah, let's go with that one.
HE'S BEEN THERE FOR ALMOST FOUR HOURS.
It kind of says something about either this game or how inept I am at it that I'm using multiple walkthroughs and have still had to repeat this segment so often that I'm getting tired of it. Yeah yeah blah blah ascend to power uh huh got it.
Next is some actual forward progress, though! Onward! To...
... oh.
DEATH #4: MASTADON'D!!!
Victim: Ernie Leach
Gruesomeness: 1.0 / 10
Absurdity: 7.0 / 10
You know, before I get into this, I just have to say on a personal level that I'm kind of upset about this one. I liked Ernie. Yes, there was obviously no way he was going to make it out alive. The usual disadvantage of being the sole black guy in a "people are dying" setting aside, it was revealed that he had racked up considerable gambling debts to a shady underworld figure known only as "Icepick" and he was worried he "saw something he shouldn't" within this very museum. The Soviet Union didn't have that many red flags.
But damn it, he was a good, solid character, possibly the only one in this entire game. The rest of the cast is comprised of single-note gimmicks passed off as characters, as well as the largest collection of shallow ethnic stereotypes I've seen assembled in one game without Little Mac having to box them. Amidst all that, Ernie was just a decent, hard-working fellow, gambling debts and fencing aside>. His back-story had little bits of extra flavor sprinkled in, such as the fact that (according to a comment I didn't take a screenshot of in that conversation in his office that officially no longer happened) he served in the Great War and picked up an injury there, and having fought against the Kaiser makes him somewhat mistrustful toward Wolf Heimlich. Just, little things like that. Even his theme song was surprisingly inoffensive and just plain cool, at least by this game's standards.
It's not really much consolation when they just took my favorite character in this game from me, but for whatever it's worth, at least with Ernie and Ziggy down we are now three deaths away from transforming into the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.
Anyway, rant over, back to the examination.
It is immediately obvious from the examination that Ernie's body is wet, but looking a little closer reveals that it's specifically wet with alcohol. This implies that he was probably drowned in one of those tubes down in the alcohol preservation lab, then brought up and artfully arranged over the mastodon tusks. This is why the gruesomeness score is so low: it probably wasn't a pleasant way to go if you think about it, but at least as far as how grim a sight it is when we stumble across the body, this one isn't so bad. There's no blood or gore or anything like that. His facial expression is a little eerie, but even that I can't take seriously for too long, because all I can think of when I see it is... well....
My dear readers, I take it back; this crime is far more heinous than I imagined. The killer murdered Ernie's mustache.
Anyway, the absurdity score may seem a little high at first glance; being drowned in the alcohol preservation lab vats is a surprisingly plausible fate in a game where the previous victims were stabbed with a pterodactyl, beheaded with a paper cutter, and impaled on a stuffed porcupine. No, that part is fine, I'm not contesting that. It's the display that's utterly nonsensical.
Let's pretend for a moment that you are the murderer in this game (and that there is only one murderer, I suppose.) You are whichever character in this cast is secretly out to slaughter everyone else one by one. You have just successfully slain Ernie Leach via alcohol lab drowning. Congratulations! Now, do you...
A) Leave him there. That's it! You're done! Simply by doing absolutely nothing further, you ensure that Ernie's body is in a fairly remote area that won't be found for at least some time, and that you will most definitely have a clean getaway because of this. Or,
B) Fish his body out of the vat and carry it either up the stairs or through one of the two downstairs-to-upstairs secret passages, both of which lead to places as least as far if not farther away than the stairs. Seriously, look at this map:
The stairs lead to that black dot in the upper-right corner. There's a secret passage that leads to the Egyptian Exhibit room in the upper-left corner, and another one that leads to Dr. Carrington's office (marked here as "President's Office") in the lower-right corner. Pick one of these three equally long and arduous routes and either drag or carry Ernie's body all the way to the big central Dinosaurs room, dropping him off in almost the very center of the museum, hoping that somehow no one sees you. Drape him over the tusks, then make your now-much-harder getaway from a very high-traffic area. All for what? Because putting him on the tusks looked cooler?
If you picked B, congratulations; you're the type of person who would view a stuffed hedgehog as a viable murder weapon.
*Sigh*
There are some alcohol-soaked animal hairs stuck to Ernie's shirt, which only appear if you think to use the magnifying glass on his chest. We'll probably need these later. For evidence? Or as an actual item we'll use to solve some puzzle that comes up in a later chapter? You decide! Whatever, either way, I'm sure just stuffing some stray hairs in a comically overcrowded purse is the perfect way to preserve them and make them easily and instantly retrievable later.
Time advances (but remains stuck there; loitering around without furthering the plot won't advance it any farther) and we regain full control, but not for long. The next plot point is to report this murder to the authorities, which happens automatically once you enter the Old Masters room (where they are currently hanging out.) There's really nowhere else to go at this point that isn't beyond that room, so their presence has effectively created a bottleneck that makes reporting the murder the only thing you can do next.
!!!!!
See, this is why moving Ernie to the mastadon room was such a comically bad idea! The killer--who is Det. O'Riley, it's really not even a spoiler anymore when the game is suddenly that obvious and direct about it--just completely gave himself away!
Oh, I'm sure you will.
Dramatic music plays, the screen fades to black, and....
Chapter three finally, finally draws to a close.
WELL THAT SURE WAS SOMETHING WASN'T IT.
Fortunately, chapter 3 is by far the longest portion of the game, bigger than chapters 4 and 5 combined judging by how many paragraphs one of the walkthroughs devotes to each. Does this mean I will finish this game within my natural lifetime? Probably! I am approaching the endgame now, I believe. I'm not going to have the entire game beaten next update or anything; there's still some content left to go through. But soon. (Well, soon by "how long it takes me to make updates" standards.)
After this, because I know this series has gone on a while and even I am having trouble remembering details from six updates ago by now, I'm going to post a revised current (as of the end of chapter 3/beginning of chapter 4) list of characters and notes about them, along with current (also as of the end of chapter 3/beginning of chapter 4) speculation regarding the various crimes that have taken place so far. I'm actually going to get right to that, so you can probably expect it uploaded later today! After that, I'll get back into moving forward with chapter 4... whenever I can, I guess.
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I WILL FINISH THIS GAME IF IT TAKES TEN YEARS AND KILLS ME IN THE PROCESS. For now, though, let's start by finally finishing chapter three!
This update wastes no time getting started, does it? After discovering the real Dr. Carrington's body, if you return to Ernie's office, he and Yvette are at it again.
(I'm standing behind the pillar; I didn't randomly disappear.)
Once you leave the alcohol lab, the bugs and their meat walk out as well. Like most things in this game, I am not making this up. They even allow you to act while they're walking (it's not a cutscene that ends after they've already left--you can look at them or use the magnifying glass on them or whatever as they go.)
If this becomes an actual legitimate part of the game, I swear....
In (possibly) more serious news, at this point, I realized I was in trouble. The window is closing on chapter three, and there are two extremely important items I need from Ernie's office. I might be able to come back for them in chapter four (I haven't read that far ahead in the walkthroughs yet) but I don't want to risk it. I would strongly perfer to get them now, before the plot advances any further. Unfortunately, I can only loot the office when it's unoccupied (obviously.) I'm 0 for 3 on that happening; twice I walked in on Ernie and Yvette, and once Ernie (by himself) was there and kicked me out after I finished asking him some questions. If I try to go back just after discovering him and Yvette, the door is locked.
So, for the first time in this playthrough, I find myself in the somewhat unusual position of having to kill some time.
I walked back and forth, even all the way to the now-empty party area and (locked) front door, in hopes of shaking something loose. I went back to the lab and...
ARGH.
So I did my rounds of almost the entire museum again, came back, and Wolf was gone... and the door was still locked.
Okay, fine. There are still... what, two or three plot flags to trip before chapter three is over. Maybe I can get into Ernie's office after the next one. Which, according to one of the walkthroughs, is supposed to be overhearing a conversation between Yvette and Det. O'Riley outside Yvette's office. However, I lingered on that screen forever and the conversation just would not happen. Did I miss that, too?
Maybe... maybe I can trigger the next event after that, and then come back for both the other ones? Hopefully? I'm really trying not to have to do the whole Dr. Carrington sequence a third time, here.
Speaking of repeating ourselves, though, our next stop is in the armor room, where we advance the time by hiding behind the tapestry, again. Only it's not the Countess we're after this time....
I think this was meant to be some important hint or clue at someone's true motives, but honestly, I can never tell with these two. Their other conversation was about twenty times as incriminating, and that one was an easter egg/joke. (I think.) This one is comparatively mild, but... serious, maybe? I don't know. At this point I could catch one of them literally in the act of murdering someone and still not be 100% sure whether Sierra actually meant it.
Let's just pretend this was a legitimate conversation, and that there is some sort of subplot about Dr. Myklos and Herr Heimlich plotting to take over the museum. Maybe they're bumping off the potential competition! I don't know. It's probably a red herring.
After this, a bunch of stuff happened that I'm not going to screenshot just yet, but suffice it to say that the next few plot events start to move very fast, one after the other in an apparently unbreakable chain, and that it is definitely way too late to go back for anything. (Well, maybe I could still raid Ernie's office sometime in chapter four, but that Yvette conversation is gone for sure.) I already missed my chance. There is zero room whatsoever to get into Ernie's office after discovering Dr. Carrington's body but before the end of chapter three. That window just does not exist there. So, remember how the entire last update was me having to do the bit between confronting the Countess and discovering the Dr. Carrington, and how I closed off saying this update might see me actually moving forward for once?
Oops.
So, fine. Back to just after the Countess scene AGAIN. I hate everything.
Fast forward through a bunch of nonsense, including the fact that it's literally random whether Ernie is in his office when you go to visit him just before discovering Dr. Carrington, even though you need him not to be. I ended up reloading and doing this exact same sequence a total of four times because of one mishap or another, and of those, he was there twice.
So we finally, finally have the place to ourselves... but not for long. Your reward for even making it this far is that there's a time limit before Ernie comes back and kicks you out.
Here is a list of vat contents in the lab. Supposedly, there should also an intercom call from Dr. Myklos to Ernie's office complaining about something screwy is going on with a valve in vat 13. That was the one in which, several updates earlier, we discovered (and pocketed) the authentic Dagger of Amon Ra.
I was going into this update expecting to have to write an apology to Sierra for some of my earlier criticisms about the sheer unintuitive randomness of my actions in this game. Many instances I had decried as coming from out of nowhere (how were you supposed to know to look in vat 13 to get the Dagger, when nothing in the game ever hints at it in any manner whatsoever?) were actually just me accidentally sequence breaking. According to the walkthroughs, Dr. Myklos does mention vat 13 near the end of chapter three; I just rushed out and took the Dagger on my own well before then. So, I was expecting to have to acknowledge my oversight, admit I was wrong, and concede that maybe some of the puzzles in this game do make sense....
... but that intercom call never happened.
Dr. Myklos never called me in Ernie's office. No one on the intercom called me in Ernie's office. I tried waiting a little in case someone did, but you can't really do that here--remember, you're on a strict time limit before Ernie himself comes back.
So, no, I take back my takeback. The Dagger being in vat 13 is unexplained (and so are many of the other equally random solutions.) This game is absurd.
Unless... unless it skipped the call because I already have the Dagger, thus making the clue for it unnecessary? I'm seriously trying my best to give the game as much credit as I can, here.
Whatever. Moving on.
Wire cutters! We need those.
Snake lasso! We need that too.
Obvious historical error (it obviously wasn't referred to as World War I in 1926, considering World War II hadn't happened yet)! That one we don't actually need, but hey, while I'm here anyway.
All the stuff in this room from before I had to go back to my previous saves! We need it, again.
Before opening up Dr. Carrington's steam trunk again, I would just like to take a moment to apprecuate Laura's seemingly magical Purse of Holding.
ANYWAY, THEN I DID ALL THE CARRINGTON STUFF AGAIN AND GOT US ALL CAUGHT UP TO WHERE WE ALEADY WERE, AGAIN. AGAIN.
I think we really are on the right track this time, though! I have the wire cutters and snake lasso, and once I got back upstairs, the Yvette conversation actually happened! (The one-on-one conversation with Ernie from last update didn't, though, since I needed him to not be in his office so I could steal his stuff. Fortunately, I don't think he said anything absolutely essential. The thing about his keys having gone missing was optional flavor text. I think.)
Whoa. Okay, the walkthroughs weren't kidding when they said that this was a juicy one I didn't want to miss.
If (if!) Ziggy was telling the truth (and Yvette is telling the truth about Ziggy having told her this,) then Det. O'Riley and
Something tells me that Yvette isn't going to be around to appreciate all these revelations for much longer, though.
Well, uh, you two have fun with that, I suppose! Meanwhile, I'm off to go do that tapestry eavesdropping thing again.
But first, since the pterodactyl room is on the way....
There! Now the crime scene has been thoroughly tampered with and the most incriminating piece of evidence stolen. You're welcome, killer!
Er, I mean, there, now I have a length of wire that I'm probably going to need later. Yeah, let's go with that one.
HE'S BEEN THERE FOR ALMOST FOUR HOURS.
It kind of says something about either this game or how inept I am at it that I'm using multiple walkthroughs and have still had to repeat this segment so often that I'm getting tired of it. Yeah yeah blah blah ascend to power uh huh got it.
Next is some actual forward progress, though! Onward! To...
... oh.
DEATH #4: MASTADON'D!!!
Victim: Ernie Leach
Gruesomeness: 1.0 / 10
Absurdity: 7.0 / 10
You know, before I get into this, I just have to say on a personal level that I'm kind of upset about this one. I liked Ernie. Yes, there was obviously no way he was going to make it out alive. The usual disadvantage of being the sole black guy in a "people are dying" setting aside, it was revealed that he had racked up considerable gambling debts to a shady underworld figure known only as "Icepick" and he was worried he "saw something he shouldn't" within this very museum. The Soviet Union didn't have that many red flags.
But damn it, he was a good, solid character, possibly the only one in this entire game. The rest of the cast is comprised of single-note gimmicks passed off as characters, as well as the largest collection of shallow ethnic stereotypes I've seen assembled in one game without Little Mac having to box them. Amidst all that, Ernie was just a decent, hard-working fellow, gambling debts and fencing aside>. His back-story had little bits of extra flavor sprinkled in, such as the fact that (according to a comment I didn't take a screenshot of in that conversation in his office that officially no longer happened) he served in the Great War and picked up an injury there, and having fought against the Kaiser makes him somewhat mistrustful toward Wolf Heimlich. Just, little things like that. Even his theme song was surprisingly inoffensive and just plain cool, at least by this game's standards.
It's not really much consolation when they just took my favorite character in this game from me, but for whatever it's worth, at least with Ernie and Ziggy down we are now three deaths away from transforming into the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.
Anyway, rant over, back to the examination.
It is immediately obvious from the examination that Ernie's body is wet, but looking a little closer reveals that it's specifically wet with alcohol. This implies that he was probably drowned in one of those tubes down in the alcohol preservation lab, then brought up and artfully arranged over the mastodon tusks. This is why the gruesomeness score is so low: it probably wasn't a pleasant way to go if you think about it, but at least as far as how grim a sight it is when we stumble across the body, this one isn't so bad. There's no blood or gore or anything like that. His facial expression is a little eerie, but even that I can't take seriously for too long, because all I can think of when I see it is... well....
My dear readers, I take it back; this crime is far more heinous than I imagined. The killer murdered Ernie's mustache.
Anyway, the absurdity score may seem a little high at first glance; being drowned in the alcohol preservation lab vats is a surprisingly plausible fate in a game where the previous victims were stabbed with a pterodactyl, beheaded with a paper cutter, and impaled on a stuffed porcupine. No, that part is fine, I'm not contesting that. It's the display that's utterly nonsensical.
Let's pretend for a moment that you are the murderer in this game (and that there is only one murderer, I suppose.) You are whichever character in this cast is secretly out to slaughter everyone else one by one. You have just successfully slain Ernie Leach via alcohol lab drowning. Congratulations! Now, do you...
A) Leave him there. That's it! You're done! Simply by doing absolutely nothing further, you ensure that Ernie's body is in a fairly remote area that won't be found for at least some time, and that you will most definitely have a clean getaway because of this. Or,
B) Fish his body out of the vat and carry it either up the stairs or through one of the two downstairs-to-upstairs secret passages, both of which lead to places as least as far if not farther away than the stairs. Seriously, look at this map:
The stairs lead to that black dot in the upper-right corner. There's a secret passage that leads to the Egyptian Exhibit room in the upper-left corner, and another one that leads to Dr. Carrington's office (marked here as "President's Office") in the lower-right corner. Pick one of these three equally long and arduous routes and either drag or carry Ernie's body all the way to the big central Dinosaurs room, dropping him off in almost the very center of the museum, hoping that somehow no one sees you. Drape him over the tusks, then make your now-much-harder getaway from a very high-traffic area. All for what? Because putting him on the tusks looked cooler?
If you picked B, congratulations; you're the type of person who would view a stuffed hedgehog as a viable murder weapon.
*Sigh*
There are some alcohol-soaked animal hairs stuck to Ernie's shirt, which only appear if you think to use the magnifying glass on his chest. We'll probably need these later. For evidence? Or as an actual item we'll use to solve some puzzle that comes up in a later chapter? You decide! Whatever, either way, I'm sure just stuffing some stray hairs in a comically overcrowded purse is the perfect way to preserve them and make them easily and instantly retrievable later.
Time advances (but remains stuck there; loitering around without furthering the plot won't advance it any farther) and we regain full control, but not for long. The next plot point is to report this murder to the authorities, which happens automatically once you enter the Old Masters room (where they are currently hanging out.) There's really nowhere else to go at this point that isn't beyond that room, so their presence has effectively created a bottleneck that makes reporting the murder the only thing you can do next.
!!!!!
See, this is why moving Ernie to the mastadon room was such a comically bad idea! The killer--who is Det. O'Riley, it's really not even a spoiler anymore when the game is suddenly that obvious and direct about it--just completely gave himself away!
Oh, I'm sure you will.
Dramatic music plays, the screen fades to black, and....
Chapter three finally, finally draws to a close.
WELL THAT SURE WAS SOMETHING WASN'T IT.
Fortunately, chapter 3 is by far the longest portion of the game, bigger than chapters 4 and 5 combined judging by how many paragraphs one of the walkthroughs devotes to each. Does this mean I will finish this game within my natural lifetime? Probably! I am approaching the endgame now, I believe. I'm not going to have the entire game beaten next update or anything; there's still some content left to go through. But soon. (Well, soon by "how long it takes me to make updates" standards.)
After this, because I know this series has gone on a while and even I am having trouble remembering details from six updates ago by now, I'm going to post a revised current (as of the end of chapter 3/beginning of chapter 4) list of characters and notes about them, along with current (also as of the end of chapter 3/beginning of chapter 4) speculation regarding the various crimes that have taken place so far. I'm actually going to get right to that, so you can probably expect it uploaded later today! After that, I'll get back into moving forward with chapter 4... whenever I can, I guess.