character being all “you expect me to do X?” Gilligan Cut to character doing X
the squad gets captured and interrogated separately, and they’re all telling equally terrible, completely contradictory lies
people completely missing the completely unsubtle, very visible dangerous thing in the room with them
alternatively, people absolutely seeing the completely unsubtle, very visible dangerous thing in the room with them and just not giving a shit
bonus points if it’s a beleaguered minimum wage employee who just goes about their business like “yep same shit as always”
someone pretending they don’t know another character is eavesdropping, only to casually reveal at the end of the scene that they know (*leaving* “tell tom that he can come out now” *tom drops from the ceiling in spy gear, irritated*)
choosing to deal with the villain by just leaving them alone in a room with another character
the “hands go down” trope
example: “any questions?” *everyone’s hands go up* “…that AREN’T sarcastic?” *everyone’s hands go down*
how could all y’all forget “ACT NATURAL!”
These are all great but let’s not forget two characters giving extremely biased flashbacks to the same event that each paint the other as an incompetent loon
i would like to respectfully add: scenes where a character walks into a room, sees something scary, and turns around and walks out with no reaction or change of expression
OK so I decided to look into the ridiculous state of the ACD canon’s copyright again and because US copyright protects certain things up to 95 years (HOLY HELL), ten Holmes stories remain copyrighted in the US, the latest going up until 2022.
Just add 95 onto that publish year and you’ve got when the copyright expires. Add onto this that the Estate itself had at one point claimed that “if anything remained copyrighted, it was ALL copyrighted” (that was shot down by various courts, thank GOD); and had also sued an author for writing a book about Holmes’ retirement (adapted into the film “Mr. Holmes”) because he pulled details from these last 10 stories…we have what I think may be the Main Fear for localizing DGS.
I know two of these stories have details–even if only very small ones–referenced in DGS. “Three Garridebs” gets a mention via John and Joan’s surname in the first game, while “Veiled Lodger” gets a light nod via the blue bottle filled with poison meant for suicide in the second. The copyrights expire for those stories in 2019 and 2022, respectively.
I don’t know if there are other smaller references to the events in these stories, or even to Sherlock’s actions, in the game, but given how god damn persistent the Estate is….even if there’s a chance DGS could fly under the radar in the US, I wouldn’t be surprised if Capcom didn’t wanna risk that.
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