Black Mirror 2 – Walkthrough – Chapter 3

Black Mirror II - Walkthrough

BLACK MIRROR II ♦ WALKTHROUGH ♦ CHAPTER 1 ♦ CHAPTER 2 ♦ CHAPTER 3 ♦ CHAPTER 4 ♦ CHAPTER 5 ♦ CHAPTER 6 ♦ PUZZLES ♦ SCREENSHOTS ♦ DIARY

CHAPTER 3

GORDON’S PALACE HOTEL

We find Darren outside a hotel. Enter. Darren automatically talks to proprietor Murray, gets his keys and takes a room and learns Angelina has the one next door. Use the double doors to the left and Darren automatically drops off his backpack. You need to get into Angelina’s room to see what’s going on with her. Proprietor Murray won’t just give you the key — and you’ll have to ask him about Angelina and then her room key so he can say so — so you’ll have to create another diversion: a smoky little fire in the pile of leaves outside. For this purpose, you’ll need the matches from the ashtray in the middle of the table in the lounge outside your room and, since the leaves are wet, some kind of kindling. The newspaper at the left edge of the table will do admirably. Place the paper in the leaves, use the matches on the leaves and then go back inside and tell Murray about “fire.” (This may feel like another timed sequence, but isn’t. Murray stays outside until Darren has the key.) Use your new key on the door to Angelina’s room or simply try the door. Inside, you’ll find an oddity that seems designed to attract Darren’s attention: a framed picture of Angelina on the left wall. Take it down with two left-clicks and you’ll find two seemingly blank sheets of paper behind it. Darren speculates they contain a message written in invisible ink. So they do. Angelina used lemon juice as her ink and the wood sliver on the table as a pen. You just have to make the message visible by oxidizing the ink. A little heat should do the trick — as you’ll learn if you use the matches on the paper — but the heat source will have to endure longer than your average match. Take the Schnapps from the table in the hotel lobby, pull a woolen thread from the ratty blanket on the bed in in Angelina’s room and use both on the glass on the table beside the window in Angelina’s room. Then use the matches and finally the papers on the glass over on the table. Then right-click on Angelina’s singed message in inventory to read it. It’s series of short diary entries that sketch out a little about Willow Creek and Black Mirror castle, supplies details about the ring Darren recovered from Borris’s safe (evidently the symbol of a secret society that “wants to summon up dark powers”) and refers to Borris’s appearance at the hotel, Angelina’s desire to “investigate the passage” and her intention to “send off some insurance.” Darren assumes that Angelina is being held prisoner by Borris — remember the answering-machine message — and suggests putting an ear to the ground in Willow Creek.

WILLOW CREEK

Take a postcard from the display in the lobby — this isn’t required, but, as in Biddeford, enables instant travel between previously-visited locations — and exit right from the hotel exterior to reach the village. In Willow Creek, Darren almost runs into the town librarian, Miss Valley. She’ll give him a tour of the place to the tune of Darren’s conversation topics and finally bolt when he asks after the symbol on Borris’s ring and she discovers Darren is from Maine — as though she’d suddenly put 2 and 2 together and the answer frightened her. Talk to Tom at the chili stand about Miss Valley for a rather unsympathetic take on her sad history: She’s the sister of young Vic Valley — murdered by Samuel Gordon in the original The Black Mirror — and seems to have been almost as much a victim as her brother.

That little freak-out sets your agenda. You want to learn more about The Order. You can do so at the museum. Enter, listen to the German tourist complain and then left-click on the display case initially just off-screen to the right and in the closeup read the Gordon Family Chronicle within. It supplies the rules of the Order, but not what the society is about. You’ll need to read the earlier pages to sort that out. A quick chat with guard Bobby establishes that he’s not permitted to remove the book from the locked case — but that he does have the key. Distractions make Darren’s world go around and he needs to distract Bobby twice to steal his key. Bobby’s initial three topics don’t suggest avenues for distraction, but he grows additional topics as you examine locations around the museum: the broken display case to the left of the door (which quietly becomes relevant in Chapter VI) and, more importantly here, the “bubble mixture” on the front counter. Use the latter topic and it turns out Bobby is hungry and would accept something to eat. Leave the museum, cross the canal to the chili stand and order a bowl of chilli from Tom. Give the bowl to Bobby or just talk to him about it. He’ll provide a sparkler in exchange and remove his jacket. However, he remains in his chair. To coax him out, talk to him again about the bubble mixture and Darren volunteers to refill the bubble container with soapy water. Take it with you. The soap can be found in the supply cupboard to the left of the display case. (Darren automatically squirts some into the bubble container.) You’d think the water would be easy, being that there’s a river right in the middle of town, but the surface of the reveals no hotspots. The closest thing is the rope tied to the little pier off the left side of the waterway. Reel it in to find that there’s a bucket at the end and that, naturally, it’s full of water. Use the bubble mix container on the bucket and Darren’s work is done. Give the mix back to Bobby, who promptly stands up and starts blowing bubbles out the window. While his back in turned, left-click on his jacket to take the key. Check out the broken display case to the left.This is explained in Chapter VI. Look at the display case in the close-up view and use the key on the lock at the top … only to learn the museum is closing for the evening. Browsing in the Chronicle will have to wait until Chapter IV. Darren leaves automatically for a run-in with a bedraggled man who calls him “Death” and refers to “the curse.” You can now return to the hotel, where a new task awaits.

GORDON’S PALACE II

Outside the hotel, you’ll find an agitated Miss Valley. She doesn’t say much that is coherent — except to disclose that, every 12 years, something terrible happens here. Inside, Darren finds Murray fiddling with a letter. Turns out its for Angelina. Could this be the “insurance” she mentioned in her diary? Naturally, Murray refuses to turn it over and, once again, you’ll have to find a way to get around him and into the lockboxes behind the central columns. Darren automatically moves to the lounge outside the rooms. The next time he returns, he’ll find find Murray reading the paper and drinking tea. If Darren could drug the tea, he’d have the run of the place. Happily, there is a sleep aid in the cabinet under the TV in Angelina’s room. Simply use it on the tea. No special stealth or prep work required. However obvious the maneuver, Darren automatically leaves again and returns to find Murray catching Zs. He’ll be out of commission until wakened by the tourists later in the chapter. Left-click on the lockboxes to the right and you’ll learn Darren’s reluctant to risk waking Murray by searching his pockets for a key. That leaves a lockpick. Who around here might have a lockpick? If you spoke to Bobby and Tom only on the necessary topics, you may be a little vague on that. But if you asked Bobby about himself and then Tom, it’ll be crystal clear: Tom is a burglar. Return to Willow Creek. At the pub, talk to Tom and simply keep up the cycle of “shops” and “beer” topics until he’s sufficiently drunk to turn over the lockpicking tool. Back at the hotel, use the lockpick on the lockboxes to start another mini-game.

Lockpick Puzzle

Open the lockbox, remove the letter and open it with a right-click. As we guessed earlier, it’s the “insurance.” Angelina is scared of noises coming from a space beneath her floor and seems to be trying to smooth Darren’s path in that direction with an entry code should she disappear. “The solution was known by two story-telling brothers from Germany,” she writes. “GFT/62/17/1/25.” Where’s the entrance? If you played the original game, you probably have guessed: Angelina’s hotel room was James’s room at the asylum and there’s still a sewer-access hole under the bed. Just move the bed to expose the manhole — now equipped with a cover and an intricate locking mechanism.

Grimm Puzzle

Accent on dark. Darren won’t descend without a light source, But you’ll have to make him look down the hole twice in order to mention the darkness and thus set up the next task. Darren needs a light. That may give you pause. The Schnapps ‘n’ thread candle on the desk has gone out and the game won’t let you waste a match on Bobby’s sparkler. But given that Willow Creek is pretty much shut down for the night and the rest of the map currently inaccessible, there are only so many places you can look. Check the lobby. The “soul keys” on display between the masks and the postcards — left-click three times on the souvenirs to take one — are supposed to light up. Alas, they don’t come with batteries. The clock atop the bookshelf in the lounge does contain batteries — and I’d venture that they’re probably dead, being that the clock is only right twice a day– but Darren can’t simply remove them, being that the clock is screwed to the shelf. No screwdrivers are in evidence so he’ll have to improvise, using the butter knife from the little table in the lobby. (Click on “Dishes” to take it.) Use the knife on the clock and the batteries on the soul key and drop down into the sewers.

SEWERS

This is a small maze. You’ll have to find a metal gate — and the means to open it and keep it open — and beyond it the entrance to a World War II bunker. (You may have read about this earlier if you clicked on the rolltop desk at the right side of the museum.)

At the bottom of the ladder, you’ll find yourself at the near end of a dark corridor. You can go only one way: “round the corner” to the left at the far end.
Here you’ll find a ladder. Presumably this leads up to the manhole from The Black Mirror — now hidden under the fountain outside the hotel. In any case, Darren can’t open the lid at the top. From here, head right to find two sets of stairs flanking a channel. Grab the metal bar from the right side of the bridge between them. You’ll need this shortly to pry up the gate.
The path continues right from here. That’ll work — but this much longer route has greater potential to get you all turned around, being that it includes two extra four-way intersections. So instead, return to the ladder from #2 and head left (“back that way”) . You’ll find yourself at the front-right portion of a screen with pipes on both walls and two exits to the left (front and back) and a third to the back-right.
Use the back-left exit. You’ll find yourself in a dead-end corridor with an oblong hole near the floor in the right near corner. Follow it to the end, where you’ll find a short, sturdy bit of wood leaning against the right wall. Take the beam — this is your gate support — and retrace your steps to the four-way intersection.
Following the rat that passes through this scene, use the right rear exit and you’ll come to a gate. Pry it up with the metal bar. This is the another spot where Darren can die, so be sure to use the little beam to prop up the open gate.
On the far side, you’ll find yourself at the front-left exit of another four-way intersection. The right exits loop around and reconnect, so use the back-left exit and then go right twice to an impassable gate. You’ll find a pipe protruding from the left wall with a piece of green fabric on its rim. Left-click on the pipe once to take the fabric and again to slide down the pipe.

TANK ROOM

In your fall at the end of the pipe, the soul key shatters and Darren thus finds himself in total darkness. You can use the flash on your camera (right-click) to sort out your surroundings, but it’s not strictly necessary. Just skate your cursor around the screen. In the process, you should locate several “??” spots. Just left-click on them to identify them by feel. The important ones are: – a metal door over to the left (important right now only as a reference point for the bucket below) – a bucket containing oil (to the right of the door) – a rag (lower right corner) – a metal tube (lower left corner) You’re going to make a torch. Take the rag and tube, combine them in inventory, dip the combination in the oil bucket and light the torch with your remaining match. Escape now is simple. Try the metal door, remove the blocking metal bar (which Darren does not keep; he’ll be able to take it later in the game), reconnect the cables below the switchbox to the left and activate the box with one left-click to turn on the lights and another to open the door.

CELL

Leave the room to discover you’re still locked in — the door leads to a cell — and for a brief exchange with a masked man (who quietly uses some levers to close the door back to the tank room). Your lockpick won’t work on the rusty padlock. However, look at the padlock and Darren will come up with an alternative: creating welding powder that will melt the lock. This consists of iron oxide (i.e. rust) and aluminum powder. Simply use the butter knife from the hotel lobby on the rusted cell bars to scrape together the one and (in inventory) on one of the aluminum trays on the table next to the camping stove for the other. Darren collects the powder on the table of contents page from the Grimm Fairy Tales book. Then use the powder on the lock, the igniter hanging from the left side of the shelf to light the stove, the stove to light the sparkler and the sparkler to light the welding powder. Success! Simply open the door and Darren has access to the bunker’s dark outer room.

THE BIG ROOM

Try the big steel doors at the left end — en route, Darren flicks on the light switch left of the compressor (this’ll happen before any action in the big room) — to discover you’re still locked in. You can’t go back the way you came. That is, you can get back into the tank room — throw the leftmost of the three levers to the left of the shelves to open the door — but the pipe is too slippery with oil to climb at this stage of the game. The only way out is the closed hatch. Open it and descend the ladder to find a second hatch in the floor. The wheel on this one won’t move. You’re going to need explosives. Dynamite can be found in the left of the three lockers topside, fuse cables in the right locker and a detonating device amid the junk atop the crate in the corner to the right of the steel doors. Use the dynamite on the stuck hatch and Darren tapes it in place with I don’t know what tape. Use the cable on the dynamite, return to the main room, use the other end on the detonator and activate the detonator.. Kaboom. Well, sorta. The place rocks and rolls a bit, but when you descend again to see your handiwork you won’t find much more than scorch marks.

So you’re going to do it again with the second stick and second cable — but this time plant the dynamite on the overhanging beam. (No, you can’t plant it here the first time around.) The hatch is gone. But the beam now blocks the hatchway and Darren must find some way to raise it. A self-inflating dingy can be found upstairs beneath the shelves to the right of the levers. But if you try to simply squeeze it under the beam, Darren opines that it will slip out when inflated. You first need to connect the raft to the beam. The chain in the middle of the shelf in the cell is ideal for this purpose, as this is connected automatically to the eyelets on the dingy. Use this on the beam, then the dingy (or vice-versa) and activate the dingy with a left-click to raise the beam out of the way. Enter the hatch to find a raft (groan) of new problems. This clearly wasn’t intended as an exit. The ladder leads down to a short tunnel and the tunnel to a shaft up to a grate outside the steel door — a shaft not equipped with a ladder. Left-click twice on the grate and Darren suggests flooding the passage. That’ll require access to the giant water tanks in the room where our boy landed with so little ceremony so, if you haven’t already done so, use the leftmost lever to open the sliding door to the tank room. Now you have to find a way to get the water from the tanks down to the hatch. Neither of the two hoses — one beside the left-hand tank and the other beneath the levers — is of adequate length, so combine them in inventory, hook the combined hose up to the outlet at the bottom of the left tank and drop the other end down the lower hatch. However, you can’t turn on the water just yet. Should you try, you’ll be reminded that live wires are still present in the shaft below the blasted hatch. Two are visible just to the right of the ladder. needless to say, you can’t handle them without protection. A pair of gloves can be found just left of the base of the first ladder. Take them — at the same time claiming a wrench. (Remember this: It’ll be important in the final stage of your escape.) Alas, the gloves are in bad shape and require repair. And that brings us to the middle locker — the one with blood pooling outside. How is it that we haven’t opened this? It contains a dying Reginald Borris. “Don’t … let it happen!” he implores Darren with his final breath. “You have too [sic] … stop … the evil!” Hmm. If the masked man is with the Order (as the Gordon Chronicle suggests) and Borris was working for the Order, why would the Order kill Borris? It’s another early clue that things are not quite what they seem. In Borris’s pocket, you’ll find part of a poem — you won’t hear the whole thing until Chapter IV– and in the locker a roll of insulation tape. Use the tape on the gloves and then the repaired gloves on the wires to remove them to the room above. Time for the water. Turn the valve atop the left tank outlet, then return to the lower chamber and drop down the hatch. The scene changes to the chamber outside the steel doors with Darren struggling below the grate — which turns out to be bolted in place. Another do or die spot: You have a few seconds to select your newly-acquired wrench and use it on the grate or Darren drowns. Did you think yourself free? You’re still locked in. The big gate upscreen can’t be opened. The crevice to the left of the gate is blocked only by a grate, and it’s pretty clear you’re supposed to pull off the grate with the wagon downscreen. But first you’ll have to repair the wagon, which is missing a wheel (as you’ll learn on a second left-click) and connect it to the grate. There is nothing even vaguely wheel-like in your inventory or this new chamber — but you may recall seeing a wheel against the wall to the left of the compressor back in the bunker. Alas, this remains as non-interactive as ever, but the neighboring compressor has an interactive flywheel that’s just a little smaller. And, no, you don’t have to swim back through the drowning pool to get there. Simply press the button above the steel doors back into the bunker (i.e. to the left of the doors, in-scene) to open the way, use the wrench on the flywheel and the flywheel on the wagon. (If the flywheel resists your best efforts, you haven’t inspected the wagon yet.) Give the wagon a left-click to test it out. (Shucks. You’d think they would have made the wheels turn.) In the process, you’ll dislodge the boards atop a mine shaft. (You can also do this by simply approaching the shaft sans wagon — but you do need to try out the wagon in any case.) Clear away the remainder. Now you need to connect grate and wagon. You had a nice chain connecting the concrete beam and raft, but if you drop down into the bunker’s lower chamber you’ll discover the beam, raft and chain have all vanished into the drink and that Darren has no taste for further diving. But there is another chain — initially hard to spot, as Darren’s standing right on top of it after he exits the bunker. It’s below the lower railing on the landing outside the bunker doors. Just connect it to grate and wagon. (If you can’t connect it to the wagon, you haven’t installed the wheel and tested it yet.) Is the wagon by itself heavy enough to rip out the grate when it falls? Maybe not. As Darren observes, he won’t have a second chance so you’ll want to make sure beforehand. Pile those stones just upscreen into the wagon. (If you can’t, you haven’t yet cleared the top of the shaft or tested the wagon.) And now of course the wagon is too heavy to push over the edge unassisted. You’ll need one of the cleared-away planks to the left of the wagon to gain some leverage. Take one with two left-clicks, use it on the wagon and over it goes, taking the grate with it. Darren can now crawl through the crevice and emerge in what appears to be the Order’s meeting room with a large portrait of Marcus Gordon (the same one that hangs in the main hall of Black Mirror castle in the original game). Not much to do here beyond inspecting the cloaks and banner, so try the door, which opens in response to Darren’s tantrum. Is that good or bad? It is bad. As Darren stops in the doorway to ponder the meaning of life, a masked man like the one from the bunker appears out of nowhere and shoots him with a blow gun. Darren’s dreams include a burning display case — a metaphorical reminder that our boy still hasn’t read the rest of the Gordon Chronicle.

Chapter 2

Chapter 4