The Final Chapter – A Carol Reed Mystery review

• Reviews by Sean Parker
• Published:

Is this the end? You’ll want to book passage to Sweden to find out in another comfy, beautifully photographed mystery adventure

The Final Chapter starts with a shocker. But not a ghastly murder or a brazen theft – it's a series-upending bombshell that Carol Reed is leaving Sweden... the place she's called home for over twenty years (and twenty prior games). With the passing of her father, an opportunity comes up to relocate and take on a new job, and Carol is ready to make the big transition – after finishing up some unfinished business with "one last case," that is.

There's a sense of finality to much of the proceedings from the get-go, which made me sit up in my chair in "are they really doing this?" curiosity. With this series, I'm much more used to being fully relaxed while playing, not anxiously leaning forward at the edge of my seat. However, it isn't long before things settle back into a rather familiar groove.

The plot here surrounds the disappearance of writer Aldred Bauer, who fell out of contact with his literary agent right before the deadline of his next book. All he had left to write and submit was – you may have already guessed – the final chapter. Carol is tasked with finding out what happened to him, or at the very least, uncovering what became of his seemingly unfinished work, which is the publisher's higher priority.

As mysteries go, it's a bit lower stakes than some past installments, and just like last year's 20th anniversary release Murder Malady, it lacks the grandeur players may hope for in a “milestone game.” After all, it frequently teases this might be the end for such a long-running franchise, so one would reasonably expect it to go big. Nevertheless, series fans don't really play the Carol Reed games for high drama, but for gentle sleuthing around many locations in picturesque Sweden, and The Final Chapter delivers plenty on that front.

This story takes place in the spring, and the seasonal setting really makes the pastoral landscapes shine. Even with the fairly low-key slideshow-style presentation this franchise has always served up, the environments are a real pleasure to navigate. This time, there's the requisite parks and offices, plus an unnerving storage unit, a thoroughly ruined cabin, an encampment for thieves, and a wide variety of outdoor racetracks and other arenas, as Aldred is (or was?) a bit of a sports enthusiast, having left all kinds of clues behind at his usual haunts, inadvertently or otherwise.

The usual suspects show up here, of course. It pretty much wouldn't be a Carol Reed game without a certain trio of supporting characters popping in! Stina and Bigge do their regular thing of providing helpful research and scavenger hunt challenges, respectively. Only the tech-savvy Jonas appears to make much of a deal out of Carol's impending departure, primarily marked by a humorous farewell gift – one which leaves the impression that, despite his own new relationship blossoming, maaaaaybe he harbors some feelings toward Carol of his own.

I've always had a soft spot for the humble music of the Carol Reed games, and the soundtrack in The Final Chapter is really quite strong. It includes perhaps my favorite arrangement yet of the classic Carol Reed "home theme," a nice orchestral rendition with deep strings and a plucky xylophone for the familiar melody.

When sneaking into a BMX racetrack, the score feels effectively eerie, adding a lot of tension to an area that otherwise would have felt quite serene. There are some really great themes at the pier locations as well, with lovely chord progressions I couldn't help but take notice of. A few tracks are repeats from prior games, but they slot in nicely and the double-dipping is totally forgivable. Overall, it's one of the strongest soundtracks in my experience with the Carol Reed games, other than the occasional use of unconvincing synthesized horns that sound more dated than the rest.

The Final Chapter

Genre:	Mystery
Presentation:	2D or 2.5D, Slideshow
Theme:	Crime solving, Missing persons
Perspective:	First-Person
Graphic Style:	Photorealism
Gameplay:	Hacking, Investigative, Puzzle
Control:	Point-and-click
Game Length:	Medium (5-10 hours)
Difficulty:	Medium

The voice acting is generally fine here, around the same standard we’ve come to expect of this series. The actress who plays Aldred's daughter has a clear case of "voice does not match appearance" (another hallmark of the franchise, a byproduct of using different voice actors than the people whose photographs actually appear), but it's no deal-breaker. At one point Carol has an interesting way of saying "illegible," pronouncing it more like "ah-lidgible," but perhaps twenty years in Sweden can shift the accent of any Brit.

The gameplay is fun even though it doesn't do much to move the needle, which is to be expected with just about any franchise in its 21st installment. (Hey, not everything can be Casino Royale.) Still, exploring the home of the missing author yields some neat detective work. While initial searches of Aldred's rooms don't turn up much of interest, recurring conversations with his daughter yield some clues on how to search the home for important notes and items cleverly stashed within everyday objects. It adds quite a bit of flavor to Aldred's clearly paranoid mental state, and as you return to the place again and again with new leads for combing through it, there's a sense of progression that's not always seen in these games.

Some classic series quirks are present once again, such as the inability to exit a full-screen close-up of a hotspot until you've returned everything to the way you found it (barring any items you've stashed in your inventory in the process). So if you've found and opened a zippered bag, you can't just exit the view without clicking on the zipper one more time to close it first and then set it back down. Moments like this feel unnecessary, but thankfully aren't that big of a hassle, just an extra click here and there.

The Final Chapter also continues the series' tendency to gate progression with obstacles that can only be bypassed with common household objects found at random at unrelated locations along the way. I don't mind it, but you'd think Carol might be able to go back to her apartment to grab a flathead when there's a barrier that needs unscrewing, but no, she has to first go somewhere else and use a spatula to retrieve an out-of-reach object that can be used as a makeshift screwdriver instead. Speaking of spatulas, can she get one from her own kitchen? No no no, that'd be too easy. She'll have to happen upon one out in the wild. It's a little silly, but nothing returning players are likely to scoff at too much.

Also typical for the series is the inclusion of some slightly weird puzzles that don't make all that much logical sense for something this otherwise grounded. Most, or perhaps all, of the games in this series that I've played have at least one combination lock embedded in a common household item turned into an odd kind of safe (like the back of a hairbrush), where you have to press colored shapes or letters in the right sequence to open it up. The Final Chapter is no exception. It also contains what might be the most unintuitive use of a tripod I've ever seen, in-game or otherwise, but maybe that's just the photographer in me wincing at its misuse. (Which does beg the question of whether there’s a funny real-life story here, and if designer Mikael Nyqvist ever had to use a tripod in a similar way during his many adventures taking photos in hard-to-access, often condemned locations.)

Nevertheless, I still enjoyed the simple inventory puzzles, the thrill of seeing something in the environment that might be a clue to a brainteaser I’d not yet cracked, and the joy of finding new items to pick up amid expansive locations you can fully traverse in a few seconds of furious clicking. The formula hasn’t changed... but that’s for a reason.

I liked The Final Chapter in the same way that I've liked pretty much all the games in this time-honored yet under-the-radar series, but as I got closer to the end of my five-to-six-hour adventure, there was a sense of fatigue setting in with one of its design choices – chiefly, its habit of throwing so many locked boxes at you that you have to keep track of. Many of them you may not find the key or code for until hours later, when they might be long-forgotten.

All too often when a new location was unlocked, I'd spend a very brief amount of time poking around its node-based screens until finding the single important inventory item in the zone, and then would have no idea where I was supposed to even use it, resulting in either A) revisiting every available location and combing it over for the hotspots I couldn't remember, or B) consulting the in-game journal's hint feature to be told where to go next. There’s not that much satisfaction in option A, so guess which I picked, almost every time...

It's touches like these that keep the Carol Reed games in their own charming, somewhat idiosyncratic lane: You can't really take them seriously as great detective stories, just fun little DIY mystery jaunts with an emphasis on low-stakes exploration rather than stressful, cerebral challenge. There's an honest effort put into telling a cohesive mystery, but it's more of an excuse for the series of puzzles you encounter, and players don't have to actually do any deductive work in solving the crime. 

Final Verdict

The Final Chapter is exactly what one should expect of a Carol Reed game by now: no more, and no less – aside from the added uncertain air of maybe-finality. Whether this truly is the end for Carol in Sweden is something the game addresses by its close (which I won't dare spoil), but I look forward to whatever solo developer Mikael Nyqvist of MDNA Games comes up with next. In the meantime, you can bet I'll be catching up on more of the (many!) older entries in the Carol Reed series I still have yet to play. This latest game may not be much different from the half-dozen that preceded it, but there can definitely be a comforting value in the traditional. 

Sean played The Final Chapter on PC using a review copy provided by the game's publisher.