The Mystery of the Druids: A Bizarre Adventure Game

I was just fucken waching some of your vids the fuck

robbing hobos will do that

Poor thing

That's not a deal, that's a punishment

The Druids are finally upon us! I'm going to savour this later.

No... Halligan is somehow worse. Hahahahaha

*eye roll*

explain

@NerveDamage Watch a summary of the Odyssey

The beggar is Polyphemus and the salt arc is Circe's island

I mean…Halligan probably cares more about his puzzle items than actual people.

Perhaps her ex was worse and he seems sane in comparison

@Cold Station 12 that... Is a frightening thought.

She didn't have a puzzle item

How? Through the magic of the Druids!

He's basically if the Bachelor dropped out of college to become a cop

You should ask the real question: Would Pathologic survive Halligan?

@Galedex no

@Galedex he would destroy that world for pitza money

@Galedex The amount of poisoned hobbos and skeletonized bodies would skyrocket

"You stabbed me you barsterd."
"It was to save the wooooorrrrrrld, Melanie."
"And?????"

It's not a crime if you resurrect her later, apparently.

@Chandra Pandhita i mean, she technically didnt fully die, so she can probably choose not to press charges. So you're not wrong. XP

it's actually pretty funny that he can actually stab himself and the result is still pretty much the same

@ultimateninjaboi At that point it's just assault, right?

Not to mention by the logic of the vow he could have just stabbed himself instead but of course he didn’t because he’s Halligan. I honestly wonder how much of his characterization was intentional and how much of it is just weird/sloppy writing lol

@Jackson B Or not even stab. If all it took was one of them being harmed, he could have just made a small cut.

I think Mandalore really got it in one saying Halligan has the mind of an insect, I busted up at that

There are also a lot more incredible characters, I daresay a disproportionate amount, on death row.
Twenty years ago, I would have also said something to the effect of "great characters who are unlikely to have prospective girlfriends," but a lot of seriously jacked-up stuff has become the norm' over the past half a decade.

@Jackson B I thin 1:11:17 answers that. "No matter how illegal, corrupt or immoral"

That could be a twist ending.

@Marijan Karaula That's technically how you will say it in Italian: /pitsa/

I was really expecting some cheesy ending scene where they show up at the place and he gets kicked out because he never payed his tab.

Pizzagate...

I have to agree. He does crazy things but never does the idea that he is breaking character occur to me. Heck even when he is just casually eating human flesh pre-mind control.

It's so messed up that it's honestly a pretty tame thing for him to do.

Honestly at this point I just want to know the logistics of how he smokes so many cigs a day. Like they take a bit of time to get through, does he do like 2 at once or something?!

By my math, smoking 28 cigarettes a day should take about 2 1/2 hours. It must be all this man does in his spare time. I can only imagine the smell on that jacket.

@Sea Logic Even just walking in to a room with that thing will make it smell like a smoker was living in it.

I was a two pack a day for a bit so it's not that hard for me to believe.

@Turtle ofPride >2 pack a day
Alright, how'd you do it? Please, I am genuinely curious as to how you managed to go through so many.

Thats true - be random and your enemy is too confused to plan an attack!

It’s like a new alignment: lawful chaotic

@ColdHawk halligan is not lawful. he's chaotic chaotic

he's not a hero - he's a cosmic horror to the villains

he's a terrible ally but a terrifying foe

Could have been snark on his behalf, but that works just as well.

​@One Doomed SpacemarineI mean, he did think the forensics guy has a great job because he's a cabinet away from medical alcohol

Ah, that makes sense......

He needed her iv bag

He needed her dinner fork to repair his jeep so that he can fly over the cliff towards the druid fortress and lockpick the castle gates with it.

HALLIGAN!

Check if somebody's issued an arrest warrant for King Charles.

The villain saving the day lol

@Someone ___ Wouldn't really call him a villain. He doesn't have any villainous goals in mind, he just wants to solve the crime in the most psychotic way possible.

True chaotic neutral

@drugMATE I'd say he's the alpha villain, actually, think about it, he could've sold Melanie down the river to remain a neo-druid, but he opted to use time travel & a grammatical loophole in the application of a celtic curse to ensure that he not only got the girl but is now the last ordained drood, thus allowing him great power that he doesn't have to share with Sinclair & his brethren, as soon as he figures out that magic missile spell that'll be the end for Lowry & Miller.

As a Brit who was born in the 90's and doesn't know what's real and what's rumours about the Royal Family, heck I can barely keep track of who's who really, how close was/is Halligan to whatever truth has been revealed?
Also shame we'll never see her glorious shades of green again.

@Helghast Stalker That doesn't answer my question but that much I knew, thanks XD

@SomeAmountOfBees Ah, right, yes. I remember hearing stuff about Di and Charles on the car radio when I was very little before That happened and mum just going "well just divorce him then!!".
And I almost consider my parents old fashioned given there's a 40-year gap between me and them XD Didn't think they'd think of that as an option.

You just KNOW Jean Vicquemare levitates in his chair.

Reaction Speed(Success: Medium): "Wait, the Bank of England...?"
Encyclopedia(Success: Trivial): "The Bank of England is the central clearing branch, Lowry, you can't draw money from there."

Espirite De Corps (Faliure: Impossible) Try to understand just what in the name of disco is wrong with Detective Halligan.
Your mind warps and contorts into new, untested shapes. The primordial lurking within squirms away like Commodore Red down your throat in the face of such chaos. Your brow gains a new wrinkle and sweat beads on your forehead as you invent a new form of hangover from just trying to understand him. But eventually, the self-evident fact smacks you hard in the face.
Inland Empire: This man is an unhinged lunatic.
Empathy: Agreed.
You have learned nothing. But you do feel more afraid of the world, which from a certain point of view is almost the same thing.
Reaction Speed (Success: Trivial):Detective Halligan has begun to look speculatively at your wallet, you and the Lieutenant have to leave NOW.

Oh my god I'm turning into an DE head and this just exploded my brain

Big Edge of Darkness vibes tbh

When I saw the office, it was a really surreal experience, it felt like being taken back in time.
The offices I worked at looked exactly the same, polished flat floors floors that were always very cold, that weird bubble textured walls that were dirtier at the bottom than the top and those box folders that always hurt your hand when taking paper in and out.
The graphic artist should really be commended on their realism and ability to exactly replicate the look and feel of a room.

And what do you know, it depicted a stabbing

Not to mention the late 90s/early 2000s obsession with the Royal Family and the bureaucracy of big, public institutions. It's SO British.

Agreed. This game has the vibe of the police dramas which were all over UK television in the 90s: A Touch of Frost, Inspector Morse etc.
Like one of those, if the protagonist was a beetle person with no concept of human empathy 😅

And it WORKED, the old man just went “Alright. I’d better get back to work now”

And the funniest thing of all is that he could have just shown his badge and told him he's a cop and he heard a car alarm going off and he chased off the actual car jacker. But instead he just starts gaslighting the guy??? Funny as hell, in a "what the fuck" way.

@tiacat11lol honestly, I was so wrapped up in halligans bs that I didn’t even think abt that. He decided to go for the much more insane answer and yet I was like “yep, makes perfect sense. Halligan would definitely do that, and there’s no more sane answer here”

Ah the British accent.

This is how the world fell to the British empire

He kicked the cocaine habit, but the damage was already done.

Halligan is truly the best detective they have. Until Lowry deigns to stop levitating and rule the world.

@Rattles idk, Lowry put an innocent man in jail and got that man killed. He may have transcended humanity but he’s a lousy detective.

@Rattles Lowry may be a superchad. But he's still a pretty subpar detective.

To be fair to Lowry, we only see him in the context of the _one_ case where the detective being as loony as Halligan and equally prone to conspiratorial tangents is helpful. He probably does better on ordinary cases.

I can’t describe to you how hard that made me laugh

I figured that was implying Lowry doesn’t provide sensible results either. Which he doesn’t, remember that case file full of nonsense.
In their own ways, both Halligan and Lowry are headaches for the chief, and a menace to England.

@Ise no Kami now i want a sequel starring lowry

Don't slander my man like that. He even knows what the central bank of England is.

TBF, she doesn’t know him that well at that point.

She had a psycho ex-husband at 18. Her standard is pretty low.

I just love the way the Chief is furious with Halligan for not having some kind of breakthrough on the case when he has had it for like, 6 hours

he’s singularly quirked up, funny tidbit

Pitza is how you pronounce it in Italian as well, so it's the "canon" name, so to say.

@One Doomed Spacemarine isn't it "pee-tza"

Actually the Oxford English Dictionary (the British version as opposed to the American one) lists "pitsa" as a valid pronunciation of "pizza".

Adventure Games should really be more accurately relabelled "Sociopathy Simulators", or perhaps "Kleptomania-'Em-Ups". In some cases, I suppose, "Ludicrous Guesswork Bonanzas". But a lot of the time, especially with the "modern(ish) setting, plausible protagonist" ones, it very often boils down to "Who the frick would actually behave like that? Put a spider in some guy's tea so he'll crash his fucking truck?! Steal the candy from the baby to distract a seagull so you can take a ring from its nest for a wax imprint?"

I like how Quest for Glory is one of the most sane adventure games out there because it's also an RPG.
There's kleptomania, but you have to be a thief and not get caught.

I think I read somewhere that that's basically what happened. They weren't sure if they wanted this to be a more comedic or a more serious type of Adventure game....and so they ended up with this amazing hybrid that is Halligan 😆

look up Deponia :)

So… Sterling Archer?

@Passing Rando aw man, it's one thing to be eaten alive but to not even taste good? That's too much :(

Get a job

Literally Patrick Bateman shit

Maybe you should try getting a job?

Average Tory supporter

Hey, from a certain perspective, he's right. Sinclair had no idea what he was getting into with Halligan.

This is Halligan we are talking about, nobody have any idea abouy any situation with him in it, and the danger that come with just being near this man.

I'd play that.

...That's actually not a bad idea.

Kek.

considering some of the pizza places I've seen it won't be the first bit of dubious meat he's eaten

The likes are 666 at the moment. I wanted to leave it like that

> implying Halligans pizza isn't already topped with human flesh

Unless it was an American

don't worry, it was halligan's first thought as well.

he tricked that guy out of his fancy fishing pole fair and square, it's Halligan's now

Halligan stole a co-worker's scarf and took it to France. He still has that fishing pole to this day and takes his children fishing with it.

@Gabriel Ferreira the only reason Halligan had children was because he needed them to solve a fishing puzzle

Considering Halligan’s a cop, I can at least respect the gumption it takes to convolutedly steal something in secret, and not steal things the way cops USUALLY do.

@The One and Only Michael McCormick He has no jurisdiction in France.

Built incorrectly.

​@KnightGamer724 he's built different (derogatory)

Druids: "Muahahaha! Halligan is now under our control!"
*42 seconds later*
Druids: "Holy shit, how do we undo the mind control spell?! This guy is fucking nuts even for our standards!"

He ate HOW many pizzas!?
I also feel like he would end getting them in trouble - he would drug the homeless man again to steal his hat because he can't find his own hat, and all the droods would get arrested...
Like that Al Capone going to jail for tax evasion

@Doug its pitzas

@kindbudkudos *Pizzen ;)
For clarity: Thats the correct GERMAN plural for the word and, as Mandalore pointed out already, in german the word is pronounced the way Halligon does.

@Der Fzgrld lol. my b. i was shooting for pronunciation. im not literate in zeet german.

That requires amazing core strenghth. He probably has a six pack

You know what they say, women love winners

Man’s got himself held up by nothing but his ankles

He's not floating. He has impressive leg strength

He just needed her pocket money

It's been twenty years, the pitza tab is probably in the millions by now

What a hero.

“Thanks grandma I needed your gold bars for the pitza tab.”

He needs her left lung to unscrew a door hinge and destroy the hour hand of Big Ben

There’s not nearly enough communism in the game for that to be true.

Halligan doesn't have HALF the charm and not even an EIGHTH the style of Harry Du Bois.

Harry Du Bois? I only know of a Raphaël Ambrosius Costeau

@Garrett Byrd exCUSE me are you trying to refer to Tequila Sunset?

Him being drunk the whole time would explain a lot

He definitely only knows because he's tried.

Halligan probably has a lot to say about central banks and "fiat currency." But you'd have to get some pitza and beer with him to hear about it.

lol yup

Medical ethanol is the same substance that is in your beer - ethyl alcohol (C2H5OH). What makes it 'medical' is just the purity and strength. Why Halligan passes out from just a sip is yet another mystery.

This woman probably *raised* Halligan, and half her genes came from her. She's got to be terrifying.

That woman must be an eldritch being , a lovecraftian nightmare come to life

Y’guys ever played Sanitarium?

I'm fairly sure his "mother" is Nyarlathotep.

@Smerg the Dargon Or Shub-Niggurath. Perhaps he’s one of the Thousand Young.

You very well know Halligan wouldn't do that

He also stabbed her right in the gut instead of like, the shoulder or something. Went straight for arguably one of the worst places to be stabbed.

He doesn't even need to stab anybody. Considering the vow was "Nothing will happen", pricking his finger or cutting his palm could have probably worked just as well. But then again, I don't know how "the magic of the druids" even work.

And then it turns out you ARE Halligan, in a big Fight Club esque twist

When you start to realize your case has a supernatural twist to it, you have to track down Halligan and ask him some questions. You find him passed out on a bench at Al’s Pizza Palace, and the only way to wake him up is with a whiff of Apple Schnapps (his favorite)

It's the magic of the droods

I can relate to him tbh

@cibo To be fair he did attempted murder in two occasions, messed with the time space continuum, illegally break in a suspect's house messing out the whole investigation, partake in cannibalism, committed arson against multiple people, framed an innocent man of thievery, destroyed historical buildings, desecrated evidence while disrespecting someone's grave. I'm even surprised he still had a job by the beginning of the game

@Drink Bourbon well he still saved the world i guess

@valletas yes he did. While being a terrible detective

@Drink Bourbon i disagree because by the end he isnt even a detective anynore he is out of a job

@Drink Bourbon so he's perfect FBI material

happened to me once as well!

Hate when that happens.

That would be so terrifying to wake up to, my God 😂

Lowry does give off Nero tol Scaeva vibes sometimes.

It wasnt?

Me too, LOL.

I thought the same thing until Blake opened the door and Mandalore's helmet was in front of the computer, so about halfway through the song.

I thought so too until i saw the Mandalor office in the video lol

Guys, not the army of predator drones flying?

Ikr. I knew the police were always recruiting, but this is ridiculous.

And that they’re both terrible?

@Ise no Kami I mean, Halligan managed to actually solve this completely nonsensical murder case.

@One Doomed Spacemarine During which he poisoned and stole from a beggar, stole multiple things and used them however he pleased, got an innocent old man in trouble with the library, and stabbed his own love interest. Oh, he saved the world, but aside from that, everyone he met is worse off for it. Save for those that are dead, depending on how you look at it.

halligan is the royal psychopomp and only does the detective stuff as a side job, it's why he knew what happened to diana.

@liamzakhaev Obsessed with this notion

Probably put another arrest warrant for Charles.

I’unno, I get the impression that he might be taking it VERY well.

I don't think he was being mind controlled, he seemed entirely unconcerned, which is more his usual self.

@Padmanabhan Vaidyanathan I'm convinced he knew it was human flesh and was trying to scam them but the food caused mind control

@Marley feels like it.

@Padmanabhan Vaidyanathan i think he was also playing along to not be killed or smth

@Padmanabhan Vaidyanathan I like to think he wasn’t being mind controlled, he just was happy to have friends.
Friends that he can mooch off for pizza money later.

I guess he's actually quite terrifying when you're in a state of mind to regard him completely straight and serious.

It's weird where they draw the line with technicality. If you think about it serstans oath is broken pretty much the moment he makes it because Melanie is breathing, the cells in her body are moving and replicating, basically something is happening to her all the time.
I think the best option for serstan was to promise that nothing will happen to her *once he let's her go* and then kill her while still touching her.

Imagine how weird it would‘ve been, if Halligans plan failed:
*stab*
„Wtf!!! Why did you stab me?!“
„relax…I tried something, but it didn’t work“

I was really hoping Halligan would say "any clues as to his whereabouts?" when told the chief was looking for a "detective Halligan" who works in his department.

I love the operatic music in the background during that scene...it absolutely nails the tone.

his suffering is so human, you want to believe the best in your fellow man, but deep down you know they’re animals.

For real. The chief sounds like an asshole antagonistic character but by a few hours into the game it becomes clear he's just *utterly tired* of Halligan's nonsense.

@Ultimate Eye you kinda get that vibe from most of the people in the office. At first you think they’re just a bunch of a-holes, then you realize they’ve got every reason to hate Halligan

Lol true

Same happens to me when I watch the System Shock 2 video

You know, now that you mention it, that is insanely true-to-life. It has to be one of the most subtle and congruent pieces of story-telling logic I have seen in a video game supporting character. It explains an awful lot, like her fairly low-key reaction to being smacked around. The only way that an intelligent, brave, accomplished, attractive woman like Melanie would have any romantic involvement with an inherently untrustworthy, somewhat hapless, selfish and self-serving, amoral, slovenly, chad like Hallagan is that she comes from a background of abuse. With that one detail of her past we can understand that she must have grown up in an abusive environment, which affected her development in such a way that she cannot distinguish warning signs in a man who expresses interest in her. For Melanie, abuse and love have been entangled in the chaos of her early upbringing resulting in what will be a string of bad choices in relationships as an adult. Being slapped around by Hallagan, who then says it wasn’t his fault, probably strikes a chord deep in her limbic brain, manifesting as an unconscious attraction, a feeling of familiarity as if they were “meant to be together.” Annnd then he stabs her in the abdomen.

Dam bro

With all of the things that the game tried and failed to get right I wasn't expecting the tragic cycle of abuse to be one of the things they succeeded in getting across.

@ColdHawk strong projection bro

I like to think of his not deflecting this time when she confronts him about his obsession with pizza and office untidiness (compared to how defensive he got when his other co-worker brought it up) as a small hint of his growth.

Saaame

It's the better pronunciation anyway...

I... yeah, me too. Is this a drood curse?

It’s gotten to the point that everybody I know calls it pitzah.
It’s spreading.

That's how you say it in Italian too, so you're actually just saying pizza in the most authentic manner possible.

It’s like when your cat brings you a dead rat. Halligan is like that but he thinks the dead rat is key evidence in a murder investigation

@Balding Sasquatch
And that's not even the stupidest thing he did on his visit. He was apparently suffering from alcohol withdrawal as he took a swig of medical alcohol!

To be fair, Halligan can explain the grass was burnt only under the bones and Chris' explanation is that the bones got hot in the sun. Between that, recommending a close friend who is currently out of the country, and giving him medical alcohol, Chris is about as good a forensic expert as Halligan is a detective

@ManOutofTime913 Though that last one felt like he was actually trying to get Halligan killed (judging by him suddenly starting to laugh creepily during that scene)

This sounds like an Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode where the gang tries to be detectives.

@D Matthews Yeah, that'd be apt lol.

I saw a comment that said you could actually see MoD as a deconstruction of adventure games in a way. Like you said, Halligan acts like a typical protagonist and everyone calls him out being because of it. The hilarity of the hobo and the druids both calling the police on him is especially great.

@D Matthews He also seems like he could be a parody of Fox Mulder. Like Mulder, he's a criminal investigator who's alienated his colleagues due to his fringe beliefs and weird behaviour, sent to investigate a bizarre serial killer who turns out to be supernatural.
...Except Halligan is usually wrong about his cases having paranormal elements, unlike Mulder, who's almost always right (because The X-Files would be very boring if every weird serial killer they were sent after turned out to be a regular human,) and despite actually solving this case in an impressively short amount of time if you think about it (the game only seems to take place over the course of about a week,) no amount of maverick detective work in the world can overcome the terrible reputation he's picked up thanks to his constant bullshit.

Do adventure game protagonists routinely go around drugging people?

@ApplesPapples no, but they’ll typically do some dubious or questionable stuff to get what they need or bypass obstacles and then forget about it just as fast. What makes TMoD stand out is that people actually notice the stuff the protagonist does and reacts pretty realistically

also they kinda solve my problem with the unrealistic aspect of the convoluted ploys your average adventure game protagonist will devise to get stuff they could simply buy somewhere... by establishing him as a broke man lmao

Dude Celtic myths take metal to a whole new meaning. The Irish hero Cu Chulainn tied himself to a rock with his one intestines so he could fight after being cut open...
And the queen Macha beat a horse in a foot race while pregnant, gave birth to twins, and then cursed the men of Ireland to feel labor pains...
And another queen was killed by cheese...
They're so bonkers...

Do you think Halligan is not a real? I know at last one person in real life, that very similar.

​@ASTARTES sort of. im imagining if an adventure game protagonist fell through a worm hole and had to exist in the real world.

I would sincerely LOVE for you to elaborate.

​@The One and Only Michael McCormick here here!

Hey, he didn't murder him!

@Dungeon Master do you think Brent really cared if the hobo lived?

@Kipras of course not.

Finally some realism in video games. Designers take note!

To be fair, Halligan is completely broke