Sherlock Holmes Chapter One – Zero Punctuation

Sherlock Holmes Chapter One Zero Punctuation review Yahtzee Croshaw Frogwares open world origin story
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This week in Zero Punctuation, Yahtzee reviews Sherlock Holmes Chapter One.

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Transcript

Isn’t the public domain a wonderful thing? A certain amount of time after the original creator carks it, all IP becomes everybody’s P. Do you wish Tarzan was a West highland terrier? He can be, now! Do you want Captain Nemo to go into business selling children’s frozen dinners? Why not? He’s as much yours as Jules Verne’s, take that, you bearded paid-by-the-word French git. You may also know that fucking Disney have been lobbying for years to extend the public domain cutoff so they can keep a death grip on their copyrights, but lately it seems like they’ve been trying to create their own version of public domain, where instead of every motherfucker on earth being allowed to mess with IP as much as they want they’re instead going to hire every motherfucker on earth to direct at least one Star Wars movie. But I digress. Sherlock Holmes is a character who’s been buggered inside and out by public domain, and as many of the works imply, that’s exactly how he likes it. But no game developer has buggered him with greater enthusiasm than Frogwares, churning out Holmes adventure games for decades. Not without ambition, it seems, but when they did finally leave the paddling pool of the adventure game niche to dive into the shark-infested sewage treatment plant of open worlds, how strange that they chose to do The Sinking City first, a Lovecraft adaptation.


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Author
Yahtzee Croshaw
Yahtzee is the Escapist’s longest standing talent, having been writing and producing its award winning flagship series, Zero Punctuation, since 2007. Before that he had a smattering of writing credits on various sites and print magazines, and has almost two decades of experience in game journalism as well as a lifelong interest in video games as an artistic medium, especially narrative-focused. He also has a foot in solo game development - he was a big figure in the indie adventure game scene in the early 2000s - and writes novels. He has six novels published at time of writing with a seventh on the way, all in the genres of comedic sci-fi and urban fantasy. He was born in the UK, emigrated to Australia in 2003, and emigrated again to California in 2016, where he lives with his wife and daughters. His hobbies include walking the dog and emigrating to places.