Duck Detective: The Secret Salami is Utterly Horrific and I Don't Know What's Wrong With You
Top level, Duck Detective is a Case of the Golden Idol style puzzle game about looking around an environment, gathering key words through examination, then using those words to fill in blanks in a story passage. It's a great mechanic that ensures you understand and get invested in a game's story, while making you feel clever for having "figured it out" yourself.
While squarely landing in the "good" category of this style of game, it's less that satisfying feeling of discovery and comprehension that works in Duck Detective, and more everything else surrounding that idea that lifts it up to being a jolly old fun time.
A decent chunk of the time the detective-ing works well, however there's definitely times (particularly towards the back half of the 2-3 hour game) where the passages you are putting together feel a bit... loose. It's a great case in showing how this type of game is incredibly difficult to create, and that there's a lot of finesse in threading the needle between being too vague and giving too much away when it comes to building these types of puzzles.
Thankfully Duck Detective excels in every other area, from gorgeous presentation and animation, to impeccable, theatrical voice work, to an ultimately satisfying story that unravels from a stolen lunch into a clever, interweaving office drama involving heinous acts of salami related shenanigans. If the basic gist of the game sounds good to you, go check it out.
Alright, with all that out of the way, I simply need to discuss two important - and also very spoiler heavy - points that I do not understand why NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT. So buckle up.
1. Y'all Are Fricken Narcs.
At the end of the game, once the mystery is finally revealed and the three culprits have been identified, you have the choice of who should be sent to prison.
Sophie facilitated the crimes happening and helped keep them covered up, so she is far from innocent. However, she was coerced into this path by those in more powerful positions, and was not actively involved in the smuggling of the goods. She should be free to go.
Boris is the grunt doing the smuggling under the bosses orders. He's clearly the patsy in this scheme, with his doofus-ness being used against him to cart illegal goods over the border. But did Boris benefit from these crimes in any way? No! No kickbacks, no incentives, nothing. He was a victim as much as he was a perpetrator of the crime. Set him on a better path, sure. But jail? GTFO.
Manfred was the mastermind and financial beneficiary of the crimes. If anything, he is the one most deserving of consequences for his actions. BUT. Manfred, I argue, was pushed to this life of crime because of the system. Budget cuts were strangling the business, screwing over not just him and his ability to provide for his family, but also that of his employees. If anything, his crime was not sharing the profits with the rest of the team.
And of all the crimes he could commit, what was he guilty of? Illegally importing delicious, premium salami, from the affluent neighborhood of town, into a place where the succulent meat is "banned" from sale. The question we should be asking isn't why Manfred is breaking the law - it's why is there a law banning salami here in the first place? Why do others outside this jurisdiction get access to salami, while the locals have to suffer without? If anything, Manfred is at worst taking advantage of an unjust system of law to make ends meet, and at best being the hero we all need when it comes to salami equality. Manfred simply should pivot to tearing down such an unjust system, rather than be sent to jail for simply challenging the status quo.
Unfortunately the confines of the game do not allow for a free pass for all. As is the way in societies built to champion the oppressor, someone has to go to jail. Out of the 3, I can see why Manfred ended up with a 98% arrest rate. As against this travesty as I am, he deserves it "more" than the other 2.
But then the jaw-hit-the-floor revelation hits. Sophie's arrest rate is 64%. Boris' is 69%.
Two out of every three people send everyone to jail.
What kind of monsters are you? Where is your humanity?? Where is your compassion???
Shame. Shame on all of you.
Now, point two.
I don't care that it's totally incongruous with the arguments I made in my first point. It's a darkness staring at us RIGHT IN THE FACE and I can not move forward without discussing it.
2. The contraband being imported is Salami.
Salami. Salami. SALAMI.
Think about that for a second.
There are nine characters with agency in this story. A duck, bear, cat, sheep, giraffe, penguin, koala, crocodile and buffalo. Anthropomorphic creatures. Animals with sentience, ambitions, lives and dreams.
Where does the salami come from?
Maybe pigs are the one creature that isn't anthropomorphized. Maybe it is lab grown or vegetarian salami. I don't know. But, as a detective, your FIRST question should be not who is smuggling in this salami, but what is this entire society doing eating salami in the first place?
Is this a society that kills and eats its own people? Is there another class of thinking, breathing members of society that are bred and slain purely for the consumption of the lucky few?? Our illustrious Duck Detective's illicit joy of soft white bread feels like nothing compared to the horrors of a society that can so easily look past the very creation of SALAMI while having the gall to jail the less fortunate for daring to share in the pleasures of the upper class!
No one is talking about this, so I must raise the banner.
Justice for the pigs!
(The ones being eaten, not the police. Fuck the police.)