Black Mirror III: Final Fear – A Game Guide

You can now return to the police station and ask Inspector Spooner for a look at your file (via the “Police file” topic). The flattery Jones proposed is not an option, and that’s a big “no.” Did you expect something different? Constable Zak might help were Darren allowed to actually talk to him but Darren can’t with the inspector in attendance. So your next task is making Spooner go away for a while.

Odds & ends: After the chat with Jones, you can also ask Spooner and Dr. Winterbottom about “Castle fire” and the doctor about the additional sub-topics “Vision” and “Therapy session.” (She’ll suggest hypnotherapy, which will be the foundation of your sessions with her for the rest of the  game.)

Not difficult. After your phone call, the cafe two doors to the right of the station is open for business. Enter and look at the pastries in the display case to note that the donuts are missing and then talk to cashier Denise about them. It turns out she’s saving them for the “nice inspector.”

Perhaps you could make the donuts harder to get at. 

Order a coffee. Evidently Denise hand-picks the beans before she grinds them, for this process takes about 40 seconds. While she is thus distracted, enter the back room through the “employees only” door to the right, take the donuts from the lowest shelf and put them in the freezer below the window.

And maybe you could also make the freezer difficult to open. The first time Darren opens it, he’ll light on an idea: Wet the damaged seal and, once closed, the freezer will effectively lock itself shut. 

There’s some water in a mop pail just to the left. What you lack is something with which to apply it. Just wander by the Three Kegs Inn and confiscate the sponge hanging from the menu to the left of the door. Use it on the pail (or on the river hotspot just below the inaccessible right-hand bridge in the village square) and then on the open freezer and you’re golden. Leave the storage room, sit through a brief cut-scene — this makes clear there’s something going on between these two (Denise worries a certain “Edward” might appear) — and Spooner is now occupied. Not entirely with the freezer, I would venture.  

Odds & ends: You can also try to use the sponge (wet or dry) on the menu board outside the Three Kegs Inn. (Hence it’s lingering interactivity.) And, having taken the donuts from the shelf, you can replace them and try to use them on the wash bucket.

– Edward’s the fellow approaching the cafe when Darren leaves. If you return to the cafe, you’ll find Denise and Spooner  nowhere to be found and Edward on-station. Talk to him. He seems to have an inkling that Denise might be fooling around. And if you look first at the photos behind the counter or to the right of the storage-room door, he’ll have an additional “Photos” topic.

Fix the Copier

You can now return to the cop shop and strike a deal with solitary Constable Zak via the “Police file” topic: You’ll repair the copy machine and he’ll copy your file.

The repair may seem complicated at a glance, but it’s actually quite simple and logical. You want to manipulate the orange wires to direct power through the copier and turn on six lights in the close-up display: two in the controls (for the black and green buttons) and all four in the inner circuitry. 

1) For starters, drag the four blown (i.e. exposed) wires off to the side. They have no place in the puzzle.

2) See where the power cord comes in from the right? We need to connect the internal end of this same line to the rest of the copier circuitry. 

The best candidate for this task is the vertical wire coming down from the #3 button at the top left of the display. (This button doesn’t need to be lighted, so you’re not breaking something you’ll need to fix later.) 

Right-click on the wire twice to rotate it to a horizontal position, drag it over to this new spot and use it to connect the interior end of the power line to the rightmost of the three wires leading up to the black power button. 

Now you can turn the machine on with the black button. A pale green light should come on beside that button (accompanied by a thrumming sound) as should a white light in the lower right corner of the central circuit board. (This has already been connected to the on/off switch by two diagonal orange wires leading down and to the left.)

3) Where do you go from here? See the diagrams on the board in the lower left-hand corner? This shows that the wires bridging the gap to the central circuit board are currently in the #3 setup. 

#3 supports the leftmost (“-“) button in the controls, which needs to be off, and so doesn’t help us at all. We want the #1 setup, which lights the green button. Hence, you’ll need to move up by one slot the lower of the two horizontal wires bridging the gap between the circuit board and the diagram piece to its left. 

4) One last step. See the horizontal wire connected at its left end to the node below the #1 button and at its right to the uppermost of the wires coming down from the black switch? Drag it down and to the left to link the nodes beneath the #3 and #2 buttons. 

Here’s how the wiring should look in the end:

Press the green button. There’s a beep, the machine begins to warm up and the view shifts back to the police station. “That should do it,” says Darren. Talk to the constable about “Photocopier” to report your success. 

Odds & ends: Once on his own, Zak can also brief you on the status of the investigation. As Mr. Jones suggested on the phone, it does look as though the police aren’t trying very hard. (They’ve made little more than pro-forma attempts to verify Darren’s story.) 

– Darren can try to use diary pages, walking map and the menu board (see the next section) on the broken copier.

Blocking an Address

Now, the constable is not just going to just give Darren the file. He intends to send it to Darren’s solicitor  — as per Darren’s duplicitous request. And you can tell from Darren’s response that he is already thinking ahead: He’s planning to intercept the envelope before it gets into the mail.

How? Leave the station and have a look at the mailbox just outside. It’s an informal small-town setup — arranged in such a way that Darren could simply place an item on top of the bag to prevent the envelope from slipping down inside. 

The menu board on the table in front of the old pretzel stand across the way, for instance.  

Once this is placed in the box, you’ve only to wait a few seconds for the constable to drop off the envelope. Then you can claim it, open the envelope in inventory with a right-click and read it with another.

The file gives Darren two new tasks — see the Murray and Victoria headings below — and then is automatically combined with the remains of the destroyed BM2 diary to become a new one. 

The new tasks can be performed in either order, but it’s more efficient to visit Murray first, as an item acquired at the hotel can be used immediately after you leave the castle.

Odds & ends: If you collect the menu board earlier — you can pick it up as soon as you leave the police station — you can try to use it on Spooner.

– You may want to look at the police file yourself rather than just accepting Darren’s summary. It’s back at the beginning of the diary and it includes a lot of interesting minutiae. You’ll learn that grocer Abaya (full name: Abaya Abhineeta Goyal) reported Miss Valley missing (which goes far to explain why she’s freaked out by Darren’s appearance in her shop); that Constable Zak’s last name is “Hitchins” and pub operator Tom’s and brother Bobby’s is “Ackland”; that Angelina henchman Louis must have lured Miss Valley out to the lighthouse where she was killed (he’s not identified, but BM2 grads will understand he’s the only person Tom could have seen with Miss Valley); that the police case against Darren is unbelievably sketchy; and that Darren appears to have lied to police. He claims in the interview transcript that he wasn’t in the castle on the evening of the fire. In BM2, he escapes the fire just before the endgame. (It also supplies an incorrect cause of death for castle maid Sally. She was scalded, not burned.) 

“Let Murray Know What I Think”

Hotel proprietor Murray told police he had not seen Darren at the Gordon’s Palace hotel the night of Miss Valley’s murder. But he did see him: Murray chucked Darren out for stinking up the place by opening the sewer access in Angelina’s room. Why did he lie?

Cross the bridge to Dr. Winterbottom’s side of the river and head right to reach the hotel. Enter the building and Darren automatically gets into it with Murray. 

The result? No real satisfaction, but more stuff: a Polaroid camera, a room key and a Samuel Gordon backpack containing a Samuel Gordon cigarette lighter, a bloody plastic knife and a plastic Soul Key.  

Some of this is just junk, but the lighter and camera will come in handy on a semi-regular basis for the rest of the game. And, right now, the camera is part of a proposed quid pro quo: Darren is to take a snapshot of himself, posed as the Black Mirror Slasher, in exchange for Murray’s correcting his erroneous statement to the authorities. (In most jurisdictions, this would be known as “witness tampering.”)

Odds & ends: The camera functions differently here than in BM2. In the earlier game, it could be used on certain locations to unlock concept art in the “Extras” menu — a la the ubiquitous raven in BM3. Here, its use in that fashion unlocks just one mini-game in Chapter III. It is used more generally to take a handful of pictures that either push the story forward (as in the case with the shot Murray has requested) or that have a role in solving puzzles. 

– The path at the right in the exterior view of the hotel can’t be used until Chapter III.

– You can also check out Darren’s nondescript hotel room — though it’s not required right now. Provided you’ve already unloaded the new backpack with a right-click, you’ll automatically dump it and the soul key here.

No, you’re not missing anything. These items have no further role in the game. I suspect the backpack was included just to provide a level of concealment for the knife and the soul key simply as a connection back to the original TBM (in which Darren’s father Samuel collected soul keys) and BM2 (in which  one of these replicas lit Darren’s way through the sewer maze). 

– The TV in Darren’s room can be turned on.

– Talk to Murray again after the initial exchange to establish 1) what’s become of your belongings from BM2; 2) get a tip to the reopening of the museum and 3); via “Photo for Murray,” a clear hint about how he wants that shot set up. (Darren is to “swing a knife about.”)  

– You can try to use your business cards on the phone at the front desk. and try the left door to Murray’s office. (You’ll get in here in Chapter II.) 

– Once you’ve visited the hotel, you can return to the cafe and scare off Dorothy a second time and talk to would-be busboy Bobby about her via the “Old woman” topic. (She’s evidently something of an eccentric.)  Via “Tom,” he’ll also let on that his brother has it in for you — anticipating an encounter at the end of Chapter III. 

“Visit Victoria and See How She’s Doing”

The other task is looking in on great-grandmother Victoria, the only survivor of the castle fire. In Willow Creek, use the “Road to woods” exit (to the left on the Dr. Winterbottom/museum side of the bridge). Just stay on the road proper until it forks and then follow the right fork to Black Mirror Castle.  

Odds & ends: A word about the intervening countryside.

En route to the castle, you’ll pass three side roads. Map or no map, two can’t be explored yet. The “unmade road” extending left from the fork outside the castle gates goes live later in this chapter and the left “path” at the “Crossing in the woods” east of the village opens up in Chapter III.

However, one side path is open to you — the “gravel path” leading right at that same crossing. This leads to the lighthouse and, via a click on the ruins faintly visible just left of the top of the tree, to the ruins of the Academy. 

It’s a logical stop — the closest you can get for now to the site of the BM2 endgame that presumably holds potentially exculpatory evidence  — but, being that an impassable rubble pile now blocks the Academy entrance from BM2, you can’t do anything meaningful here beyond scaring off a couple of additional ravens. (These are covered in the “Portal, Portal …” section in Chapter III.) 

However, if you do pay a visit to the Academy, you will get credit for having visited when it briefly becomes a significant location in Chapter III. 

(Along this route, you’ll also find two more side paths — both no-goes for now. The one with the barbed wire opens up in Chapter II and the “beaten track” just beyond it in Chapter III and then is extended is Chapter IV.)  

– Once you’ve reached the crossing, you can return to Murray and ask about “White Wood.” He’ll mention local legends of ghosts in the forest — foreshadowing of an event later in the chapter. 

– At the fork just short of the castle, a hard-to-see raven can be found in the upper right corner of the screen (harder to see because, when you move the mouse to click on it, it is obscured by the “diary” icon).. Click on it on unlock picture #19 — a conceptual shot  of an artist’s studio that does not appear in the game. No clue where this might have fit in. The paintings on display are abstracts that don’t attach themselves to any known BM character past or present. 

– Outside the castle gate, you’ll find some garbage on the ground below the mailbox. Left-click on it and, after his return to the police station, you’ll be able to ask Spooner about “Young people.” 

You’ll find the side gate has been repaired and fitted with an intercom since your visits in BM2. Left-click on the latter and you’ll be admitted and jump straight to a meeting with Victoria’s nurse, Sister Antolini, under the portico. After a brief chat, she’ll usher you inside and you’ll stop outside Victoria’s bedroom where you can put (or not put) a couple of questions.  (The main thrust is that Victoria isn’t talking and you’ll figure that out quickly enough on your own.) 

Odds & ends: You’ll learn a bit more about the not-talking if you click on the monitor to the left of the bed. The nurse then reappears and discloses that she’s overheard Victoria pray and curse while she’s alone — and that a lot of the cursing seems to be about Darren.

– An odd line surfaces if you ask the sister about “Renovations.” She tells Darren that Victoria said she was born here and wanted to die here. 

But it’s extremely unlikely Victoria was born here. She is not a “Gordon” save by virtue of her marriage to the late William Gordon. 

– Note that the upstairs layout is wholly different than in BM2 — recentered as it is on the family rooms.  

The old lady won’t respond to any of the initial four topics, but you’ll have to work your way through them anyway to reach “Castle fire.” 

Here she finally speaks up — saying Darren sounds like a “coward,” asserting that Mordred’s ghost “rides you like a child rides a rocking horse,” blaming Darren for the deaths of castle residents in BM2 and wishing he’d just stayed in the US. 

Darren here has another “Mordred Moment” (he imagines himself smothering Victoria with a pillow), the nurse shows up and shoos him out and Darren finds myself outside the gate again.  The upshot to all this: a diary entry that ends: “Victoria doesn’t believe a word I say. If I only had some kind of evidence I could show her.” You won’t be able to do so until the end of Chapter II.

Odds & ends: Note the lingering interactivity of the standing stone (“menhir”) and mailbox outside the castle gate, the picture above Victoria’s bed and the jewel box on the table at the right. You’ll sort these issues out in chapters III and VI.

A Photo

That leaves only the picture for Murray  — for which purpose you now happen to be in just the right spot. 

Nevertheless, you may find your efforts to snap the shot are unavailing. You need one of the props Murray provided. Open the backpack in inventory with a right-click — liberating lighter, plastic knife and Soul Key — and then use the camera on the distant castle (as seen through upper part of the main gate). Darren will automatically strike a pose with the plastic knife.

Return to the hotel, talk to Murray about “Photo in front of the castle” or just drag the photo onto him and, after some back and forth, he suggests you take a nap in your room — promising that Darren’s issues with his statement will be addressed. (For some reason, Darren hangs onto the photo.)

Odds & ends: The instant-travel map temporarily stops working at this point. Try it and Darren says he’s tired and wants to lie down. Evidently the game -really- wants you in your hotel room to collect the first of what turns out to be a series of anonymous “Guardian” notes. 

But you can still travel the old-fashioned way — albeit to no useful purpose. You’ll find Denise back on duty at the cafe. Run her topics to learn she and Edward are engaged. (From the identically glassy portraits, they also appear to be twins!) And that in turn will enable you to question Edward a bit more. You’ll learn he was up for late maid Sally’s job at the castle — another bit of foreshadowing of events in Chapter IV. 

In addition, Spooner is back in the police station with a new “Murder of Miss Valley” topic and “Angelina” and “academy” sub-topics.
      
– The broken doors in the hotel hallway outside Darren’s room foreshadow the appearance of a toolbox here in Chapter II. 

– The folks sitting in and wandering through the lounge down the hall from Darren’s room include the German tourists and background characters from Biddeford in BM2! The fellow reading the paper is the one who was sitting by the sea in the exterior shot of the post office/souvenir shop. (You’ll also note that the hotel layout here doesn’t quite gibe with the one in BM2.) 

Anyway, On to the Note

Use the double doors at the left and double-click (or use the room key) on the first door on the left. After automatically dumping the backpack and soul key, Darren can pick up the note someone’s shoved under the door. 

This anonymous letter purports to be from someone believing in Darren’s innocence and reports that “you’ll find the first lead at your father’s grave.” 

This is the first of five such notes. The last three can be disregarded entirely. (You don’t even need to pick them up unless you’re determined to unlock all the “extras” pictures.) ) But this one and its successor in Chapter II lead Darren into new territory and you’ll need to seek them out and then follow-up on their contents.

You may recall the graveyard at the Warmhill church from the original TBM. But Darren doesn’t — you controlled his father, Samuel, in that first game — and hence can’t travel there until 1) someone locates Warmhill for you and 2) you find it on the walking map. If you haven’t already collected the map from Abaya at the little grocery store, Dr. Winterbottom (now at the cafe) will nudge you in this direction.   

You can ask Murray, Spooner or Dr. Winterbottom about “graveyard” and be pointed  to the church.  Head for the castle. At the fork just short of the gates, head left. (If you can’t, first open your new map and then try again.) Darren enters a section of woods with a “beaten track” leading off into the forest at its left end. (You won’t be able to use this path until the Warmhill segment is complete.) The exit to the church is at the far end.

Odds & ends: There’s a lot of empty real-estate in this unusual scrolling screen — the others are the lobby of the Gordon’s Palace and the castle cellar — and nothing much to do. Darren can identify the stream below the central bridge and speculate about “undead ghouls” roaming the thicket to the right. But that’s the end of it until you complete the day’s business at the church.   

Warmhill

This should look familiar. Warmhill was an important location in the original TBM and, in BM2, a picture of the church was used in the sliding-block puzzle that unlocked a roll-top desk.

Enter the church and talk to gravedigger Mark, who is sleeping in the confessional over to the left. Via the topic “Samuel’s grave,” he’ll refer you to Father Frederick, who, much as in the original TBM, is away and due back the next day. 

Odds & ends: Scare away the raven just right of the small cross at the near end of the church roof to unlock picture #7. 

– If you first examine the fresh grave at the far right in the front view of the church, and then ask Mark about it, he can give you a hint at a likely location for Samuel’s grave: one of the anonymous graves in the foreground of the graveyard proper. However, you can’t act on the information at this time. (This also changes the fresh grave’s description.)

In addition, via “White Wood,” Mark expands slightly on what you may have heard earlier from Murray about local legends — including a reference to “Mordred’s voracious hellhounds” and not inconceivably the same traps you’ll come across in Chapter III– and, via “Church,” reference the collapse of Marcus Gordon’s crypt beneath the church (which likewise comes into play in Chapter III).  

– Note that Miss Valley’s grave to the left of the church door does not lose its interactivity after you’ve elicited a description. That’s because the description will change in Chapter II.

– You can  also explore the dilapidated graveyard to the left of the church. (The vicarage’s rough-and-ready front yard is locked up for now. You’ll get in there in Chapter II.) Visit the graveyard at night, after leaving the church, and you can scare away the raven atop the left pillar at the rear — unlocking picture #6.

Devil Dogs 

You won’t be able to use your map to get back to the hotel. 

And, yeah, that’s a bad sign.

Head back toward the castle. Just short of the entrance to the “beaten track,” Darren gets an inkling of something out in the woods. Just past the path, this inkling gets more specific: the hell hounds of local legend. And as Darren approaches the right end of the logs on the near side of the main path, the same savage face that often precedes a “Mordred Moment” flashes onscreen and Darren is confronted front and back by giant black dogs. 

Are these hounds (like the earlier “Mordred moments”) just figments of Darren’s imagination? Hard to say — a later scene will give you reason to wonder —  but they can kill him. There’s no scaring them away or fighting them off. As Madame Zora suggested if you consulted her oracle earlier, the key is distance. You have about 15 seconds to run. Use the “beaten path” (just left of Darren’s location) that leads away into the forest. Our boy will automatically hole up in a little shack at its end and hold the door shut until the hounds give up the pursuit.

Odds & ends: Or what the heck, just let the hell hounds kill Darren. This unlocks video #7 — the first of the four optional video sequences — and gives the hounds a name: “Barghests.” (You can read more about barghests at (among other places): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barghest.)

– This sequence and another at the end of Chapter IV may give pause to folks who played the original TBM. Do you remember the animal-like first-person view of the creature climbing the castle tower in the intro of that first game?Was it one of these dogs? 

And, in retrospect, I have to add that this scene lacks a reason-for-being. At the end of Chapter IV, you’ll learn these giant dogs are allied with Mordred. Given  Mordred’s plan (revealed in Chapter VI) the last thing the dead sorcerer would want is to kill off Darren.  

– Note that the dogs become “wild boars” in the walkthrough that accompanies the US release.  

The Shack

Now Darren can’t open the door. Depending which description you believe, it’s either barred or jammed. In any case, you must find another potential exit, a means to open it and bang said means into working order.

Exit: The obvious one would seem to be the door in back. But that’s just a shed for storing lumber and offers no escape or supplies. 

However, you’ll notice that the floorboards on the near side of that door seem to call attention to themselves. Perhaps Darren could find a way through?

Odds & ends: Note the lingering interactivity of the door, window and entrance to the woodshed. This just means you can try to use the chainsaw or file on the rear wall on them. (You can also try the file and lighter on the floorboards.)

Tool: The only visible tool is the file hanging on the rear wall. It comes into play in Chapter II. Right now, you need a saw.

As you would imagine, it’s in the padlocked trunk beside the door. There is a key, but it won’t become visible until you turn on the lights, so use your authentic Samuel Gordon lighter on the oil lamp at the head of the bed. 

A couple of things happen — one obvious, one not. You’ll hear what sounds like a rap at the door and, when Darren automatically looks out the window, you’ll see the ghostly form of a woman not dissimilar to Darren’s late twin sister Angelina moving through the trees. You’ll learn more about this “White Lady” in Chapter II.

Odds & ends: Alternate cut-scene trigger: Without first lighting the lantern, just look out the window. 

– Darren can also claim that  file. But it’s not strictly necessary. If Darren doesn’t take it, he’ll find a replacement on-site when the time comes. (The cigarettes in Chapter II work in a similar fashion.)

The other: A new hotspot has appeared — a “Peculiar shadow” on the wall behind the lamp. Left-click on the shadow and then on the oil lamp to find its source: a key. Use this on the padlock on the trunk beside the door. 

And there’s Darren potentially exculpatory evidence: the costume of an Order member with a scrap of a note in the pocket that Darren interprets as a request to conceal the organization’s existence. (You’ll find an explanation for this concealment in Chapter III and  longer version of the note in Chapter IV.)  Also, a corkscrew, a folding ruler … and a chainsaw. 

Alas, a chainsaw not yet ready for prime time. It needs:

Fuel: There’s a bottle of gas on the shelf on the rear wall. Use this on the chainsaw to fill it up. 

A gas-tank cap: Use the rake just left of the shredder on the bed to retrieve a box marked “Ralph.” 

Apparently this is where the former Ashburry asylum inmate took refuge after the events of BM2. (If you’ve already visited the Academy ruins, you’ve noticed that Ralph’s corrugated-metal shelter has been closed up with debris.) Open the box in inventory with a right-click to extract Ralph’s doll/imaginary friend Mr. Bubby, a luminous happy-face sticker (the first of three) and a cork. Use the cork on the chainsaw.

Odds & ends: There’s something dead inside the shredder. 

This is an artifact from the original TBM and seems to have been included as an oblique kind of foreshadowing. In that game, bloody one moment and pristine the next, the shredder seemed connected to the murder of castle gardener Henry Stanton, whose blood-drained corpse was found in a fountain. (The fountain doesn’t appear in BM3, but references to Stanton turn up in chapters II and III.)      

Proof of concept: For the want of a better word. 

Try a corked and fueled saw on the floorboards and Darren still insists on first knowing what’s beneath — i.e. that the proposed exit is actually an exit. The ruler will do here. It reveals that this part of the structure seems to be on stilts.

Then try the chainsaw. Success! Drop through the hole — Darren automatically dumps the saw on his way out, but it becomes a tacit reference point late in the game — and he’ll surface in front of the shack, notice that the departed hounds did not leave any tracks and, after a “Mordred Moment” flash, promptly collapse. (When you don’t have an exit strategy, have your protagonist faint.)