Review – The Posthumous Investigation

Mulatto, born in Morro do Livramento in Rio de Janeiro, without ever having set foot in college, Machado de Assis rose with his talent to become one of the greatest writers of all time. Not just Brazilian, but the world. His work and it was past time to break the barrier for the gaming media. It’s Machado de Assis knocking down the door of this media with a very well-placed kick.

The national developer takes on the challenge of transporting the so-called “Machadoverso” into an investigative adventure. The classic “Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas” provides the backbone of this narrative, but the game also uses characters and elements brought from other works by Machado de Assis, to the surprise and delight of long-time readers. The end result is enchanting, although it can become tiring after a while, unlike the eternal works on which it is based.

We kill time, time buries us

The Posthumous Investigation puts the player in the role of a private detective in Rio de Janeiro in the 1930s. This is the first external element taken by the developer and regurgitated with a flavor completely our own. Even though Machado de Assis is the guiding thread and the source of inspiration, Mother Gaia practices a cultural anthropophagy that would not hurt the Modernist Movement or Tropicalism.

In this way, we have typical characteristics of North American cinema noir and pulp literature, such as a protagonist wearing a trench coat (in the Rio heat, a clashing outfit that is explicitly mentioned by one of the NPCs), a good selection of femme fatales (including the bearer of the most famous look in national literature), graphics in black and white and shades of gray and, obviously, a crime. The player’s role is to investigate the murder of Brás Cubas and discover the culprit.

From this initial premise, The Posthumous Investigation adds a second layer unusual in Brazilian works: science fiction. Our protagonist is trapped in a time loop very similar to the one experienced by Bill Murray in the film “The Groundhog Day”. The detective has only one day to solve this mystery, because when the clock strikes midnight, time goes back and he wakes up again at nine o’clock in the morning in his office. Carried objects are lost, events are undone, characters resume their tasks and repeat their routines. The only thing that is carried in this fantastic realism roguelike is information, clues that the detective gathers.

So, Mother Gaia brings together cinema noir, time travel and Machado de Assis in one experience. It’s a bold combination that could have failed in less competent hands. Meanwhile, The Posthumous Investigation delivers a unique and extremely creative title.

To the worm that first gnawed at the cold flesh of my corpse

Despite all its mechanical insights, The Posthumous Investigation’s greatest asset is its characters. The developer knew how to work with respect and precision on the abundant human fauna created by Machado de Assis. Its types, its desires, its defects are the ingredients that made Machado’s prose so universal and perennial. The author had a rarely equaled ability to evaluate the social fabric and the human figure. These are characters that flirt with the caricature, but do not lose their anchor with reality.

Mother Gaia then manages to combine characters and situations from different books to compose a Rio panorama full of intrigue and hidden motives. These are characters that were not originally thought of as members of a shared universe, this post-modern construction that has become a plague in cinema, but that, deep down, they always were. Machado de Assis wanted to show the hypocrisy, conflicts, contradictions and fears of a society that surrounded him. In this way, yes, Brás Cubas and Doctor Bacamarte always belonged to the same environment, even if they never crossed paths in words. In The Posthumous Investigation, this meeting finally happens and it feels quite natural.

Making the marriage between classic Brazilian literature and electronic games is not an unprecedented feat. I had already presented something similar to us many years before, to give an example with which I had personal contact. However, what The Posthumous Investigation achieves is a level of polish and sophistication that would have made Machado de Assis himself proud.

The graphics are impeccable and in keeping with what is expected from the adventure tradition. There are fantastic illustrations that take us back to the 1930s. The incidental music also helps with immersion and the positive feeling of watching a six o’clock soap opera is constant. “Chocolate with Pepper” sends love. However, everything is at home, after all, the serial is also a typically Brazilian language.

This last chapter is all negatives in The Posthumous Investigation

Paraphrasing the master, I ask myself: “why long, if beautiful? Why beautiful, if long?”. Unfortunately, The Posthumous Investigation ends up proving tiring. Mother Gaia may have sinned by excess. In the end, there are 14 suspects in the death of Brás Cubas and eliminating evidence one after the other takes time.

The time loop structure itself induces a repetitiveness that is inevitable. One of the game’s great charms sets a trap that will make the player return to the same places several times, to investigate new details or interrogate the same people with new questions. Even though the developer added some shortcuts and actions that don’t need to be repeated, I noticed many more that could be included to ease progress.

The further you advance in the plot, unlocking new locations, you also unlock new possibilities for comparing facts between characters, which exponentially expands the need to be attentive to this investigation. Not that The Posthumous Investigation is a difficult game (and there’s even an optional hint system built in). However, after multiple returns, the amount of simultaneous information in the player’s head can increase the feeling of fatigue. It’s definitely not a title to be solved in very long sessions.

The Posthumous Investigation achieves excellence, even with its (few) flaws. May it be a facilitator for more people to learn about Machado de Assis’ texts and for other games to explore the fruitful horizons of our literature.