History Videogame / DarkTales

* CryCute: [[spoiler:Victorine is weeping when you find her still alive in the crypt]], and it only makes her look that much more beautiful.

* NiceHat: In the bonus chapter, we get a bit of a throwaway scene in which Dupin appears to decide he likes how he looks in a top hat.

* NiceHat: Dupin wears his top hat from the main series, and Anna wears a fancy lady's hat trimmed with a peacock feather. Various hats are included among the unlockable rewards.

* DifficultySpike: The hidden object scenes will sometimes be subjected to these, such as darkening the entire scene except for where you shine your flashlight, or experiencing an extremely localized weather anomaly (see WeatherDissonance, below).

* RapunzelHair: Valentina, the mortician working on the murder victims, has braided blonde hair which falls almost to her knees.

* RapunzelHair: Valentina Loyalle has a long blonde braid, just as she did in her first appearance.

* TheReveal: Pretty much necessary to the plots of the games, since these are detective tales and the truth is often hidden by the villains. In the collector's editions, the bonus chapters usually provide an additional reveal which explains some other part of the plot that wasn't obvious or could not have been shown in the main game; the first game is the exception to this, as its bonus chapter is [[AndNowForSomethingCompletelyDifferent something else entirely]].

* {{Fainting}}: The player character's initial reaction to seeing the violent ghost in the graveyard is this.

* AdultFear: Prior to the game, Donald Carpenter lost his teenage daughter one night when she was doing nothing worse than going for a walk.

* SpotOfTea: When the game begins, the player character is seen holding a cup of tea in one hand and a newspaper in the other.
** Later, in the police station, you have to brew some ginger tea for Martha before she'll tell you anything.

* SpotOfTea: In the first hidden object scene, the player must drink a cup of tea in order to read the tea leaves.

* {{Diary}}: The first few games include one of these, maintained by (presumably) the player character; it contains personal observations, photographs, and case notes. As the series has continued, however, this feature has been dropped.

* {{Diary}}: The detectives learn some useful clues from Frederica's, complete with her [[CaptainsLog voiceover]].

* {{Diary}}: Diaries belonging to Louisa, Lilly, Morella, and Morella's husband are all important to advancing the plot and locating clues.

* {{Diary}}: After being absent from the series for the last several games, the in-game diary makes a return, serving as a repository for all of the text-based clues found during the investigation (like newspaper articles).

* CardShark: According to a remark Dupin makes late in the game, the player character is this; Dupin notes that "I remember how you always won when we played at cards." (The card game you actually play is similar to the children's game Memory.)

* StuffedIntoTheFridge: The young woman whose murder Dupin and the player are called to investigate is killed quite brutally, then strung up into a tree. [[spoiler:As the bonus chapter reveals, this is a duplicate of the way the suspect's wife was murdered fifteen years earlier; his young daughter, meanwhile, was killed in an equally brutal manner, then stuffed into a bag of flour and left to be discovered in the shed.]]

* TheDogWasTheMastermind: [[spoiler:The caretaker. He's the one who came up with the whole scheme to bury cataleptic women alive in the first place. Suspicion never falls on him in the main game at all, and it's not until the bonus chapter that he's revealed. [[FridgeBrilliance The facts that the caretaker would have been one of the first to notice that Renelle was burying his wives very quickly and quietly, that he'd buried three of them this way, and that the caretaker had never mentioned this to anyone or tipped off the police]] are all early signs that he was in on it from the beginning.]] You get more specific proof of this in the bonus chapter.

* HellIsThatNoise: [[spoiler:Victorine hears spooky noises when she's locked in the crypt; when she's freed, she tells Dupin about them. This is what leads to your SoloSequence in the bonus chapter. Although you never hear the sounds yourself, one possibility is that they were being made by the spirit of Fore's first wife, Laura. This would make sense, as Fore's death would have set her spirit free and thus she would no longer be making the noises, explaining why you don't hear them.]]

* RuleOfThree: Seen in the bonus chapter. [[spoiler:The main game implies that Victorine is Fore's second wife and victim; the vengeful ghost seen throughout the game is that of his previous bride, Louise. But the bonus chapter reveals that Victorine was actually his ''third'' wife - he also killed his first wife, Laura!]]

** Remember all those messages you had to decipher? They were the instructions on how to find the treasure. [=LeGrand=] is never shown as ever having actually figured out what these messages mean; yet once you reach the tree with the skull on it at the end of the game, he suddenly knows exactly where the treasure is buried. Only somewhat justified in that he's been researching Captain Kidd for years; he still couldn't have figured out where the treasure was without interpreting those messages, which in the original story took [=LeGrand=] months.

* ShownTheirWork: It might seem a little strange in ''The Tell-Tale Heart'' that the mortician working on the case is a woman, but this is actually completely accurate to the 19th century. The murder victims in the case are women, and Victorian social mores dictated that ''only'' a female mortician would be allowed to work on the bodies of women or children, as it would be improper for a man to examine the naked body of a woman he doesn't know.

* InfantImmortality: While Madame L'Espanaye was being murdered, Eric L'Espanaye escaped being killed by hiding under the stairs. The murderer did go down the stairs but didn't see him, luckily.

** [[spoiler:Jacques Morro]] also has a sweet little daughter who loves him very much. [[spoiler: It makes him being the BiggerBad in the bonus chapter all the more unsettling.]]

* EvilSoundsDeep: The BiggerBad, in addition to having [[spoiler:eyes looking off in various directions]], ''talks to you''. The voice is deep and unsettling.

** The truth is that [[spoiler:this is what the BigBad and the BiggerBad are trying to achieve - Brian ''hasn't'' come back, but they're planning to bring him by using the life force of the jurors and witness who convicted him.]]

* BigBad[=/=]BiggerBad: This is a perpetual twist. At first it seems like [[spoiler:the man in the hooded coat]] is the BigBad, and then it would appear that it's really [[spoiler:Valentina Loyalle]]. But they're actually just CoDragons to [[spoiler:Brian's identical twin brother Lucas.]]

* BiggerBad: You'll usually only learn about them if you play the bonus chapters of the collector's editions, but several of the games have TheManBehindTheMan pulling the strings in one way or another.
** In ''The Black Cat'', [[spoiler:the Davies' mansion was previously owned by a famous illusionist. A rival magician, with whom he had a well-known feud going, sent him a painting as a reconciliation gift. The painting actually had a terrible dark spell on it which drove the illusionist mad, and later drove Mark Davies to murder his wife.]]
** In ''The Premature Burial'', [[spoiler:the cemetery's CrustyCaretaker is revealed to be the one who persuaded Renelle Fore to murder his wives.]]
** In ''Masque of the Red Death'', it turns out that [[spoiler: Jacques Morro is playing both Prospero and the Red Masque for chumps so he can become the new Mayor of Lumineaux.]]
** In ''House of Usher'', the real villain is [[spoiler:the very stone from which the titular house was constructed!]]
** In ''The Pit and the Pendulum'', [[spoiler:Zula and Jacob - your allies in the main game - are revealed in the bonus chapter to have been playing the BigBad, you, ''and'' Dupin for suckers the entire time.]]
** In ''Speaking With the Dead'', the first two suspected villains turn out to be [[spoiler:[[TheDragon Co-Dragons]] to Brian Marsh's identical twin brother]]. In this case, the truth is revealed in the main game rather than the bonus chapter.

* DemotedToExtra: Jacques, Marie's husband in-game. In the original story, he was suspecting of murdering his fiancée Marie, so a discussion of his movements and alibis is central to the analysis of Marie's death. Here his letter only prompts the investigation, and after explaining a game mechanic, he departs and never shows up again in the main game. In the bonus chapter, he's briefly shown speaking to Dupin, but their conversation is not revealed and is quickly interrupted.

* GreenEyedMonster: In the bonus chapter. [[spoiler:It's eventually revealed that before meeting Frederica, Wilhelm was engaged to another noblewoman, but broke off the betrothal because of his newfound love. Yasmin, his ex-fiancée, is still in love with Wilhelm and trying to kill Frederica in order to get him back.]]

* YouKeepUsingThatWord: The game can't seem to decide whether the town's name is Goldstown or Goldstone.
** Some more in the bonus chapter:
*** Alan's diary seems to confuse the Crows League with the Raven Society of the previous game.
*** The player character, at the banker's house, makes a remark about how "I'll have to figure out how to walk across this broken ladder." The 'ladder' in question is an elegantly carpeted ''staircase''.

* DemotedToExtra: Jacques, Marie's husband in-game. In the original story, he was suspecting of murdering his fiancée Marie, so a discussion of his movements and alibis is central to the analysis of Marie's death. Here his letter only prompts the investigation, and after explaining a game mechanic, he departs and never shows up again in the main game. In the bonus chapter, he's briefly shown speaking to Dupin, but their conversation is not revealed and is quickly interrupted.

* GreenEyedMonster: In the bonus chapter. [[spoiler:It's eventually revealed that before meeting Frederica, Wilhelm was engaged to another noblewoman, but broke off the betrothal because of his newfound love. Yasmin, his ex-fiancée, is still in love with Wilhelm and trying to kill Frederica in order to get him back.]]

* AdaptationExpansion[=/=]PragmaticAdaptation: It varies from one game to the next how much is changed, but each of the stories featured are altered in some way by the developers to make them playable. The original game in the series pretty much follows the plot of Poe's story, with only a few small changes to the story. From the second game onward, larger changes have been made to the stories to make them longer and more detailed. Averted with ''Speaking With the Dead'', which does not seem to actually be based on a work of Poe's (although the ContentWarning at the beginning says that it is).

* TheOnlyOneITrust: The White Crow addresses one of her followers this way. [[spoiler:Eventually she realizes he's the ReverseMole.]]

* ReverseMole:
** Lenore reveals that Alan is this to the Crows League - he serves as their secretary, but it's all just an inside job so he can compile evidence about their crimes, including multiple murders. When you get to talk to him, he explains that the only reason he even joined in the first place was for Lenore's sake, so he could show her what they really are and persuade her to leave.
** There's another one in the group who helps the detectives infiltrate the ceremony at which Alan is to be killed. [[spoiler:It's the sheriff, who is then RewardedAsATraitorDeserves by the White Crow.]]

* OffModel: For a few seconds, as the carriage is taking [[spoiler:Jeffrey and Martha]] to the police station, [[spoiler:Albert]] can still be seen in the storm drain where you found him.

* WhereAreTheyNowEpilogue: After the final puzzle is completed, a series of {{spinning newspaper}}s (complete with voiceover narration) reveals the fates of the four major [=NPCs=]. The bonus chapter does the same thing, minus the voiceover.

* DullSurprise: No matter what happens in the game, Anna never expresses very much emotion in her speech unless she's being a DamselInDistress.

* NoSympathy: The player character is guilty of this in the bonus chapter. After [[spoiler:the banker's suicide, if you click on the body, you're treated to this observation: "He caused problems and shot himself! That's very manly!"]]

* WhereAreTheyNowEpilogue: After the final puzzle is completed, a series of newspapers (complete with voiceover narration) reveals the fates of the four major [=NPCs=]. The bonus chapter does the same thing, minus the voiceover.

** In ''The Black Cat'', Sarah Davies' ghost and that of her cat, Pluto, continue to manifest around the Davies estate throughout the main game, leadng Dupin and the player toward important clues. [[spoiler:Continued sightings of the apparitions in the bonus game is a signal that all is not yet right, culminating in the trapped spirits [[GoIntoTheLight passing on to the afterlife]] once the cursed painting is destroyed]].
** ''The Premature Burial'' features the vengeful ghost of [[spoiler:Louise, one of the women Renelle Fore married and then buried alive to get his hands on her fortune]]. Unlike most ghosts in the series, this one is ''very'' proactive in the pursuit of revenge, hindering the detectives at several points rather than helping them and eventually [[spoiler:outright killing her former husband]].

** In ''Ligeia,'' the ghost of the title character appears about halfway through the game and [[spoiler:possesses Rowena]]. However, she immediately makes it clear that she's only doing this in order to ensure her killer is brought to justice, and later provides invaluable assistance in making the capture. After this, she [[spoiler:releases Rowena, leaving her coompletely unharmed]].