It was just time to see the smartphone in Hercule Poirot’s hands.
Agatha Christie was the most famous detective ever, a modern man, fixated on contemporary interests and the architectural modernism of the 1930s, who explained why David Suchet’s Poirot loved the face of his house at Whitehaven Mansions.. Poirot and the 1960s I was amazed at how the world was moving on without him But which smartphone is a bold step for a traditional and iconic character between two World Wars – I really have a million questions already. Does Poirot have good data hygiene? Or would it randomly accept AirDrop? What kind of apps does he use? Does he have overdramatic thoughts about a machine he trusts to exercise his famous gray cells? Does he take his phone to the bathroom?
Agatha Christie – Murder on the Orient Express, Microids’ new take on the classic story, set in December 2023, is one of the few Poirot adaptations planned today. The play follows the same plot as the novel: Poirot is in Istanbul, where he receives an urgent message calling him back to London; he meets his old friend Bouc, who offers him a spot on the sleeper train requested by the legendary Parisian titular. A body is discovered en route, and Poirot is quickly recruited to solve the murder.
This version of Poirot is a large, yassified, aquiline nose who cuts a very different figure from the canonically small figure whose head was the first detective.exactly the shape of an egg. Much the same narcissist prodigy that Christie saw the audience as solving a uniquely discrete, end-of-the-war era full of technological change and economic upheaval. The gameplay borrows from the other two Microids Poirot games, which were developed by a third-party studio, Blazing Griffin. In Orient Express, Poirot finds clues, interviews suspects, completes environmental puzzles and keeps a “mind map” of the problems that the “workshop” solves. The worksheets are simple deduction exercises such as guessing the results of events or pairs of clues. With enough evidence, Poirot can confront and accuse the suspects.
Image: Microids via Polygon
The overall detective game seems incongruously incongruous with the sly detective character, especially compared to the problem-solving and detective mechanics in Ranunculus’ The head of Sherlock Holmeswhich are more serious and pleasant. Here, frequent “good job!” To see the covers add some levity to the line when Poirot’s character likes to laugh and pat himself on the back, but getting constant praise for choosing the most obvious answers in a rudimentary workshop quickly wears thin. I was wondering if there was a serious segment where Poirot was watching the passengers on the left – or the right – if there was some kind of rolling picture. His understanding of intuition and the process of deduction, though clearly mistaken for an external reason, but the stark disconnect between the inner workings just astounds Poirot, and his outward image as a know-it-all. If this is an intentional cheek to show how basic Poirot’s deductions really are, the joke doesn’t make the ground.
The problem is real Agatha Christie – Murder on the Orient Express how he creates the two vital pillars of Christie’s mystery: Poirot and the very interwar period in which he lives. Historically, modernizing Poirot has not succeeded because it excludes his social character and transforms him into a time block detective who no longer resonates with the world he inhabits; Kenneth Branagh’s films are guilty of doing this in their intention to make Poirot smart. There’s a big A review of London’s analysis of books of Christie’s Poirot a formula which quotes a literary critic Edmund Wilson: “You run to the question you have devised to see; and you cannot be interested in the characters, because they can never allow their existence even in two-dimensional planes, but they can always be imagined in such a way that they can appear either certain or sinister, from which side, at any given moment. is the incurable suspicion of the reader.’
What the reader – or in this case the player – comes to mind, Poirot does as a formal reference to the world’s sense of flux: a post-WWI Belgian refugee in England, acutely aware of living among raging xenophobes in Europe; He who arranges the circumstances for what he wills. In Christie’s books and the long-running ITV series, Poirot constantly uses his appearance — pretending not to understand English idioms, playing up his eccentricities — to gain the upper hand. At once the greatest detective in the world, and an unwelcome stranger in London. Microides retains the edge of this personality, which makes his best shine through some spectacular voice acting, but the character’s impact as an anemic 21st-century interloper feels sad, and at no point is he treated to the classic Poirot side of the eye when someone speaks to him as a stranger.
Images: Microids via Polygon
Christie’s formula requires Poirot to be a little weirdo. It’s so relentless that its creator comes up with bullshit to reveal the ugly, rotten truth: people do horrible things, sometimes for no reason. But he often hinders others; he is hurtful and unlikeable because what it took to expose the murder in a culture that is obsessed with keeping up appearances. The last part of the game – a new addition to the core story of The Express – finally sends Poirot out into the world with Locke at his side. When you switch between the two characters, Poirot generally feels passive and sanitized, and Locke simply isn’t compelling enough to fill the shoes of either the protégé or the protagonist. The effect is to walk oddly through the remaining terminals on the train journey, with a bit of “not all middle easterners are bad” narrating shoe among themselves.
The problem is not bringing Poirot into 2023, but the developers’ failure to understand how and why Poirot was so powerfully effective in his environment. Why would modernize such a purposefully constrained, claustrophobic setting not yet take advantage of the period of change? If anything, choosing to adapt a less closed story would have provided stronger opportunities to play with Poirot’s relationship with the modern world, instead trying to fit it all into the station where the train would actually leave. Microids makes some direct narrative substitutions, like replacing the only big war with the Iraq War, but you can’t just Mad Libs the war into a completely different context without considering how this affects characterization. A successful modern Poirot must be a completely different person – someone who can put on the necessary outsider parts, with the ability to put aside comfort and order in the name of justice, but above all someone whose identity is actively in conversation with the present matter, and is exploited for moral reasons.
Declining a perfectly good apple to expose its juice, the overwhelming core of the worm is characteristic of Poirot – a thinly veiled analogy for picking apart the layers of lies in a murder investigation. This version Massacre on the Orient Express good works of fiction fans who want to spend a few days retracing the famous steps in every familiar train; there are just enough differences to keep the mystery fresh, especially if you haven’t read or watched it Orient Express while accommodating The train environments are elegantly designed with an eye to retaining every detail of the real Orient Express, right down to the immersive cabin, and the voice acting is wonderfully expressive. It is arguably more defensive than its two predecessors, even if it sometimes mocks your intelligence. But it will also remind you that Poirot, as a special and unique type of hero, does not work if you pick him out of the circumstances that help define him and his role in history.
The game manages to answer one of my questions, though: Hercule Poirot doesn’t charge his phone at night, and this, mon ami, could be the biggest crime of all time.
Agatha Christie – Murder on the Orient Express Released Oct. 19 on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. The game is listed on PC using a pre-release download code provided by Microids. Vox Media has affiliated companies. These editorials do not influence the content, Voice Media may earn commissions for products acquired through affiliate links. You can find information about Polygon’s ethics policies here.