Thimbleweed Park, unanswered questions

Adventure/Lucasfilm Games
1

The game began with the question “Who is this German man (Boris), and who killed him?”

…but after finishing the game, I’m not sure if there is something that I missed, but I never got an answer.

It clearly wasn’t Willy, who was charged with it.

Even if he somehow knew who this Boris was, why would he want to ruin their business plans, when it would take power away from his worst enemy; Chuck?

Somebody else called Boris to the river. Who?

And Willy doesn’t just kill random people.

And even if he did, he’s not capable of jumping up from his dunken sleep in an instant, running behind the character up the path totally unnoticed, and then turning into a ghost as he hits them over the head…

None of that makes any sense! and his “confessions” were obviously total nonsense!

He obviously just found the body and took the wallet to get more booze, he didn’t kill him.

So who or what (it certainly looks like a ghost) is guilty of the murder? And why?

…

And also, who killed Franklin?

He was killed in the hotel after making a call apparently to Boris, but was Boris even at the hotel at that time?

…because from how Boris was talking (to himself) at the river there was nothing to suggest he had just killed a man, and it actually sounded like he didn’t spend any time in the hotel at all, it sounded like as soon as he arrived in his room he noticed and picked up the letter calling him down to the river and then immediately started heading there..

Yeah, he was carrying one of Franklin’s Pillowbear prototypes, but Franklin had probably already mailed him some of them, and it would make sense for him to bring it along..

And there was nothing to suggest Boris had any motive to fly across the world to kill his potential business partner…

So who or what killed him?

…

Was it Chuck who killed them both?

He obviously didn’t want them turning the factory into a toy factory.

But was he even aware that they were talking?

And even if he was, surely he wasn’t that dark as to kill hem both…

(at least not before he became the crazy computer)

And he doesn’t look like a ghost.

And if the fact that Chuck didn’t want Franklin taking any control over the factory is proof beyond rational doubt that Chuck killed them both, then why doesn’t Franklin’s daughter (or anybody else) care about this?

…

I am confused???

(Games aren’t supposed to leave me feeling this way!)

2

…I forgot that the shadowy figure who killed Boris shows up again after the murder, kidnapping you, after Chuck’s heart attack…

So it can’t be Chuck.

And after reading what other people are saying, I have realised there are no answers……

There are no answers to who did the murders. There are no answers as to who did the kidnapping. There are no answers as to who was watching the town on the cameras.

There are no answers to anything!

it’s all just confusion!

I don’t even know who the characters are anymore!

….and so I looked up what Ron had to say, and he thinks that it’s cool to make a game that concluded with nothing but confusion………..

….

*Bleep* you Ron!

3

I suppose it must have been the guy who’s the Sherif, coroner, and hotel manager who did the murders, kidnapping, and spying….

He obviously he didn’t want a proper investigation, and can been seen doing a lot of spying…

He also retained his job(s) thanks to Chuck after the machines took over, so he may have been working directly for Chuck.

But I don’t know how he found out about what Franklin and Boris where talking about?

And it seems really out of character that Chuck would be so cold as to have them both killed….

And why kill 1 of them in the hotel, but not the other?

And he doesn’t look like a ghost…..

And like I said, if the evidence points to the Sherif/Chuck then why don’t the other characters (particularly Franklin’s daughter) have anything to say?

And why doesn’t Chuck confess to these horrible acts after he stops being evil?

….

I’m still confused…..

4

Franklin’s daughter (I forget her name) knew that on the same day her father disappeared (she later realises it’s the day he died), a “man with a big nose” also strangely disappeared from the hotel, and that another man staying there was murdered, and that he was a foreign investor who had her father’s prototype bears pillows……..

Why doesn’t she (or any of the other characters) ever consider the possibility that maybe Franklin’s disappearance/death is connected with Boris’s???

If even after reading Chuck’s journal (and living with him) and learning about how much he hates her dad’s stuffed toys, and how much of a horrible person he can be, she doesn’t consider for a second that Chuck’s behind it all, then how can Ron Gilbert expect us too???

None of this makes sense Ron!

5

Seriously, when I went to try and free Willy only to realise that the characters either thought he was guilty, or simply didn’t care, nothing in the game made any sense from that point onwards!

….I thought me and the characters were playing detective together, trying to get to the bottom of it all!

….but the game spat on me…..:-1:

It said “None of that really matters at all actually! You thought these characters were trying to figure out who this Sherif guy is with you….. You were wrong! They tricked you! They actually just don’t care at all! Not even the girl who apparently lives for logic who’s father is dead! None of them care at all about the case! They’re all happy to just pin it on the easy target, Willy!”

…..I just wanted the characters to say to each other; “Well, it’s a very quite country town of only 80 people, and within hours of the murder 2 other people reportedly vanished. And all 3 were noted at the hotel before hand. And the murder victim had something(Pillowbear) that was 100% from one of the guys who vanished(Franklin)….. THERE’S GOTTA BE A CONNECTION HERE! Come on guys, we can’t just give up and let Willy rot and the real murderer roam and just forget all about Franklin and the guy with the big nose when they could be bleeding to death somewhere! let’s get to the bottom of the case!”…..……..

But it never said that….

Instead, it just made me go to the factory to do some other dumb crap, and then it somehow got even weirder with the 4th wall stuff…….

6

Seriously, imagine if you were called into a tiny town to investigate the murder of a foreign investor, and then you are told that within hours of the murder his local business partner also vanished, how could you not be almost 100% certain that this missing man (in this case Franklin) is either also dead, or locked up, or dieing, or the murderer, or fleeing after witnessing the murder?

Surely investigating Franklin’s disappearance would have top priority for anybody who wanted answers!

And yet, the characters never consider any of those things at all…… Franklin never crosses their mind……

It’s so totally mind numbingly lame!

.

I don’t understand why the characters couldn’t all just acknowledge this blatantly obvious connection! along with the fact that the Sherif is the kind of person who refuses them entry for not having a map straight after he took all the maps! and that fact that Chuck framed his man slaughter on the loyal security guard that died because of him (though he still didn’t seem like a murderer…)!………..

And then towards the end of the story, after they all refuse to pin it on Willy, it could have been written so they could all go to the factory to investigate what Chuck had been doing, and his relationship with the Sherif….

And in the factory the player eventually stumbles onto a secret document from Chuck about a new prototype Android escaping the factory, which the Sherif has been order to suppress any news of….

and then latter you find out that this rouge Android learnt of Chuck’s (it’s beloved creator) thoughts about Franklins ideas, which then caused it to begin to hate them……

so much so that it stalks Franklin to the hotel, and then kills them both……

And now the case is closed.

(And the credits roll without any meta stuff)

7

I have to admit I really enjoyed the, ahem, meta stuff. :slight_smile: Also with a very good jump scare iirc.

8

You thought it was cool to spend all that time invested into a detective game, only to “close the case” by being forced to frame a clearly innocent man, so you could instead so play through that mess??

I don’t believe you!

1 Like
9

The game does begin with the pretence of being a detective game, so I can see the frustration if you wanted it to actually be a detective game.
It kinda just drops the murder mystery at some point in the middle and we go onto the will reading thing.

Think of Ron kind of like M. Night Shyamalan… the whole thing revolves around a big twist at the end, and the mysterious stuff and plot points, etc. are just to give you something to do until we reach the twist.
Ron likes ambiguous “you decide how/why” concepts. He gives you enough unanswered mysteries and things that look like clues, so that you can spend hours trying to “figure it out” if you want and come to your own conclusions. Some people think this is genius, some people think it is lazy and confusing.
Which is the way he wants it, he said in this interview-

I think things that everybody likes are boring. Things that half the people love and half the people hate, those are interesting… if you get this nice balance of half the people hating it and half the people loving it, I think creatively that’s a really good and interesting thing.

I never really got that deep into the plot points, I just did the puzzles and laughed at the jokes.

6 Likes
10

When I think of TP’s ending, I always think of MI2’s ending. For me, MI2’s ending was perfect because its inherent zaniness didn’t break the narrative, it meaningfully added to it and set the third installment up to be something really special (alas).

TP’s ending is for sure crazy, but it breaks the narrative, which is frustrating for a time-invested player, and offers no real chance of future storyline.

if you get this nice balance of half the people hating it and half the people loving it, I think creatively that’s a really good and interesting thing.

This is not a cohesive thought to me, and speaks more to Ron perhaps giving criticism too much importance in his narrative considerations.

1 Like
11

Yeah, it’s also a very convenient criticism-deflection device - “you didn’t like my game? Aha, well I specifically designed my game so that you wouldn’t like it! Checkmate. Also please buy my next game.”

1 Like
12

See some old discussion [here]( (Spoilers) TWP game ending - #3 by Frenzie ).

1 Like
13

Paul, the game didn’t just begin with the pretence of being a detective game, the vast majority of it was a detective game.

I spend like 15 hours (2 full days) trying to figure out who/what did the murders… carefully examining everything, and considering every possiblity…..

And even after Willy was locked up, and the game changed, it was still all I could think about…. and I kept waiting for the characters to get back to the case, but it never happened……

Instead we got that 4th wall crap, that was such a total mess that it can’t even be talked about…. (and anybody who says otherwise is a liar)

.

That link to the interview is dead, but I’ve heard Ron say things like “it’s supposed to be open to interpretation” before. And I’ve also heard one of the other developers say something along the lines of “my favourite interpretation of the scene on the coroners table under the sheet, was that the character just wanted to have a nap”…….

This is not genius at all! It’s total garbage! (again, anybody who disagrees is a liar!)

An author’s job is to convey a message, if nobody can understand why they are saying then they have failed!

1 Like
14

By definition, a mystery begins in ambiguity!

But also by definition, a mystery ends when all ambiguity is gone!

A “mystery” that lives in ambiguity is simply brain rot!

.

Remember Lost?

It began full of apparent “mystery”, but most of just turned out to be a bunch of random crap that they never explained (even the stuff that was “explained” was done so in such a crappy way!)……

It was no mystery, it was just a bunch of brain rot pretending to be a mystery for as it could milk us!

It was shit!

And while I stopped watching long before it ended, I’m pretty sure it also had some kind of meta “it was all a dream” ending, as if that somehow excuses it from 10 seasons of brain rot……

It doesn’t!

15

Kinda nuts to call people liars because they disagree with you. A lot of people have been on this forum for years discussing and analyzing adventure games, it would be counterintuitive for any of us to lie about this sorta thing.

16

If there are people here saying that they think Ron’s a genius for leaving us all confused then they are liars!

17

Seriously, here we are on a Thimbleweed Park forum, almost a decade after the game was released, with the biggest fans, who have seen and heard it all, who had spent much time thinking and discussion it…………

And yet, nobody can tell me what the hell actually happened………..

That ain’t cool!

.

The most rational explanation that I can think of is;

Chuck somehow learnt of Franklin and Boris’s meeting.. (How? I have no clue)

Chuck decided he wanted them dead so he could keep the factory to himself.. (which would obviously mean that he was way darker than he was portrayed and thought of by his family)

Chuck had them killed, most likely by the Sherif… (even though he’s not transparent and dosen have red eyes)

Chuck then merged with his AI system (obviously an impossible thing to do, and not an idea I like, but as it’s a silly game I’ll let this slide) causing his body to die (of a heart attack).

And then as the AI, he continued to command the sherif, while he watched the investigation through the monitors, trying to stop it.

And he used the Sherif to frame Willy for the murders.

.

What do you guys think about that??

18

Even if the player is to agree with the characters and just say “I don’t give a crap who did the murders I just want to get into the factory” how does framing Willy and giving up your investigative powers help get you in?

Surely if you were in that position, you would take the report that Franklin is missing, along with his pillow bear found in the murder victim’s hotel, and Chuck’s journal entries which clearly state how much he hates pillow bears and what he is capable of doing, and you’d get a warrant to wherever you wanted to be!

19

Framing Willy just made no sense at all……..

You are a mystery Ron Gilbert.

20

I understand that the game is a cartoon, and so the rules of cartoon logic apply in it, meaning “fire breathing chilli” makes a character literally breath fire. And I have no issue with that, that’s cool!

But it’s not cartoon logic to make all the characters completely ignore the most blatantly obvious/relative facts such as;

“in a town of 80 people, when a person is reported missing around the exact time of a murder, they are almost certainly connected to it.”

“Franklin wanted to start producing toys in the pillow factory, and a prototype pillow bare was found in the hotel room of the foreign investor murder victim, so they were almost certainly doing business together.”

“There’s no need to chase after a confession from somebody if you already have it.” (Chuck admitted hes to blame for the fire in the diary you have)

……This stuff is just Zombie “logic”!