Torchwood Online Game: Mission 1

A while back, I wrote about the in-character e-mails that were part of the Torchwood online game. Tonight I tackled the first mission, which requires the player (a "freelance operative") to identify the last person who saw a genetics professor named Conrad Fischer before he went missing.

SPOILERS

It's a pretty simple little game, a lot like the Lost adventure they had before season four (though without the puzzles, so far). The game starts with a video clip on the Dark Talk website. Dark Talk is a (fictional, of course) radio show that reports on strange and supernatural occurrences in Cardiff. Callers into the show include PC Andy ridiculing the idea of monsters in the sewers (presumably, Weevils), a guy named Howell who claims to be possessed by Elvis, a guy who saw a man-sized blowfish driving a convertible before Torchwood showed up, and, most importantly, Conrad Fischer, who claims he's seen "them" and that "they have a plan" he has to warn people about--but then the line goes dead. After the show, there's a commercial for the Venus Clinic, a cosmetics surgery (I looked at the site and didn't find anything strange . . . yet.).

The available documents include:

1) An affidavit filed by Fischer's son, who was supposed to meet his father for a beer. The son says his father had mentioned meeting a new woman recently. PC Andy is listed as the investigating officer.

2) An e-mail from Ianto to the Welsh Broadcasting Authority, stating that Torchwood occasionally finds Dark Talk useful and that it shouldn't be shut down.

3) An e-mail from Ianto to you, the freelance operative, saying that they've tracked down the dating agency that Fischer used: Singles SOS. The website has several profiles, including ones for Fischer and a woman named Natalie--the last person to see Fischer before he disappeared.

4) A short video clip from Tosh, suggesting that you check out Conrad Fischer's blog and remember that during your investigation, you can use Torchwood's CCTV scanner (to get footage from cameras all over Cardiff).

Fischer's blog contains posts about his background (divorced from wife Alison, son in a rock band), his nickname of "Sparkle" (because he has such a dry personality), his meeting a "life coach" named Brinsley, his skepticism of everything on the show Dark Talk (including what we know to be Weevils, faeries, the cannibals from Countrycide, and the sex alien from Day One), his joining of the Singles SOS dating service, and his last post where he talks about plans to meet his son.

Perhaps the most important thing on the blog is the links page--all of the links are to real (i.e., non-game related) websites, except for the last one, which is for New Eden, a Cardiff-based bio-tech research company which is apparently working on some sort of synthetic genetic material activated by ultra-sonic sound which (theoretically) will allow people a sort of immortality because their organs will never fail. The company is run by a Dr. John Winters, who is presumably related to the head of the Venus Clinic (Dr. Laura Winters).

So we'll see what happens in Mission 2, but my guess is that Fischer stumbled on to something not-quite-human while consulting for New Eden . . .