Line #42 VideoGame/CarmenSandiegoTreasuresOfKnowledge


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/51hjzx4gaml.jpg]]
2	''Carmen Sandiego: Treasures of Knowledge'' (a.k.a. ''Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? Treasures of Knowledge'' or simply ''Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?'') is a 2001 point-and-click [[EdutainmentGame edutainment]] adventure game released by Creator/TheLearningCompany as part of the ''Franchise/CarmenSandiego'' franchise.
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4	What starts out as a normal mission for ACME veteran Julia "Jules" Argent and the tech-savvy new recruit Shadow Hawkins turns into a large goose chase when Carmen begins stealing seemingly random artifacts, from a rare Franco-Italian edition of ''Literature/TheTravelsOfMarcoPolo'' to a wooden Maori carving, which Jules believes is leading to something much grander in scale.
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6	The game divides itself into eight missions, with the first seven focused on retrieving the stolen artifacts and the final mission focused on catching Carmen.
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8	''Treasures of Knowledge'' takes a massive departure from previous ''Carmen Sandiego'' games; no punny names, no comedic VILE henchmen, and no humorously {{Impossible Theft}}s. The game also takes the plot quite seriously, with the few humorous lines of dialogue coming from Jules and Shadow's witty banter.
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11	!!''Treasures of Knowledge'' displays the following tropes:
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13	* TheAce: Jules is not only one of ACME's top agents, she was also Carmen's former partner.
14	* ArtisticLicenseGeography
15	** Russia on the game's world map, for some reason, uses Soviet Era borders, meaning Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan are still part of Russia.
16	** Apparently the apartment Jules and Shadow visit in New York is located on Liberty Island, with the Statue of Liberty not that far from the building.
17	* AsianAndNerdy: While it isn't exactly stated where Jules hails from, she certainly gives off this vibe.
18	* BigBrotherIsWatchingYou: No matter where you travel, no matter how far ahead you think you are, Carmen and the rest of VILE have close eyes on you, something that Jules and Shadow will comment on frequently.
19	* BigEater: Shadow always appears to be hungry.
20	* BilingualBonus: There's always at least one background person in some countries that say "hello" to you in their native language when clicked on.
21	* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:As usual, Carmen gets away, but Shadow comes ''very'' close to catching her. However Carmen leaves the lost city's treasures behind so ACME can donate them to a museum.]]
22	* ChildProdigy: Carmen was one back in the day. A newspaper clipping found in a VILE henchmen's getaway car in Moscow reveals she won a quiz show at a young age and used the prize money to travel the globe.
23	* CoolBoat: The ''Golden Lion'', a yacht rented out by VILE that shows up in Cape Town's harbor and, later on, along the Amazon River.
24	* DarkerAndEdgier: While not as dark as ''[[VideoGame/CarmenSandiegoWordDetective Word Detective]]'', the game is less comedic than other entries in the series and takes the plot very seriously. [[spoiler:At one point Carmen even flirts with the idea of locking Jules and Shadow up for good, something that Jules thinks is too far even for her.]]
25	* DitzyGenius: Hawkins is certainly very smart, having graduated from the ACME academy at the top of his class. Compared to [[WomenAreWiser Jules]], though, he's woefully inexperienced. That being said, he is by no means TheLoad, as his experience with ACME's gadgets has saved the entire mission more than once.
26	* EndlessDaytime: Almost every country you visit will always be during the daytime. You could travel halfway across the world and it will still be daytime. Averted on two occasions, where both England and Canada can be visited at night.
27	* EstablishingCharacterMoment: The game proper opens with Shadow scaling a building which he then breaks into. Jules? She took the elevator. Their next defining moment comes from how they react to seeing Carmen. Shadow sees her as nothing more than an ACME traitor and is eager to have her in handcuffs. Jules brings up how she "was the best partner I ever had" and she tries to convince Carmen to go back to ACME.
28	* EvilLaugh: Carmen sports an impressive one in the opening cutscene.
29	* {{Expy}}: Shadow is one to [[WesternAnimation/WhereOnEarthIsCarmenSandiego Zack]].
30	* FallingChandelierOfDoom: Carmen employs this against Jules and Hawkins in the opening.
31	* FifteenPuzzle: A 3x3 picture variation appears on a door at Fort Jesus in Kenya where the Marco Polo book is located.
32	* GoodOlBoy: Shadow makes references to growing up on a horse ranch.
33	* GoingInCircles: One of the treasures, a fish-shaped gong, is hidden in Quebec, which is where you start that mission. {{Lampshaded}} by Shadow when he realizes Carmen did this intentionally and calls her out for it. Bonus points for the gong being hidden in an abandoned carousel factory.
34	* GuideDangIt: A lot of people who played the game as kids apparently had trouble finding the second half of the Three Rings puzzle in Mombasa. Since the clue is required to progress in the game, this left a lot of people frustrated. It doesn't help that the only advice from the Chief you can get at this point is "go and see the tour guide in Mombasa," which a lot of players most likely already did and were still stuck since the clue isn't actually at the fort. It's actually sticking out of the poster at the train station, but it's very easy to pass up since the clue is very small and blends in somewhat with the background and the only hint that it's there is Carmen mentioning in an audio message to one of her agents to "look for a way to travel to the capital," which a lot of players saw as just incidental dialogue and not an actual hint (the poster at the station advertises train travel from Mombasa to Kenya's capital, Nairobi).
35	* IShallTauntYou: During one mission, when Shadow notices an audio message device planted somewhere, it's revealed to just be Carmen Sandiego chastising him for being easily distracted by such widgets, leaving him angry.
36	* IKnowYoureInThereSomewhereFight: Or talk, really. Jules desperately wants Carmen to turn herself in and see the error of her ways [[spoiler:and tries to tell her this when confronted in the lost city's treasure room.]]
37	* InconsistentSpelling: This game spells Carmen's middle name as "Isabela". The [[AllThereInTheManual manual]] for ''Secret of the Stolen Drums'' spells it as "Isabella".
38	* JumpScare: A relatively minor one happens in Antarctica when a VILE henchmen peers his head through the window of a research facility. You really ''are'' being watched.
39	* LimitedAnimation: There are only a small handful of animations for both Jules and Shadow. And they only sort-of try to lip sync.
40	* LimitedWardrobe: Jules and Shadow always wear the same clothing no matter where they travel. Yes, even Antarctica. [[ExposedToTheElements That skimpy jacket ain't gonna protect you from below-zero temperatures, Jules.]] The same can be said for Shadow. Even in hot climates like Australia, Egypt, and Jordan, he's still wearing that heavy vest.
41	* MyGreatestFailure: One of Jules' journal notes reveals she thinks it was her fault that Carmen left ACME to found VILE in the first place.
42	* MythologyGag:
43	** The leitmotifs mentioned below are lifted directly from the 1996 version of ''World''.
44	** A two-fer regarding ''Series/WhereInTheWorldIsCarmenSandiego'':
45	*** The Chief is once again an African-American woman.
46	*** Carmen's backstory regarding winning a game show as a kid hearkens back to the franchise's past as a game show.
47	* NoodleIncident: We're never explicitly told what exactly happened between Carmen and Jules that led Carmen to quit ACME, but whatever it was, Jules is still kicking herself for letting it happen and her fellow ACME agents won't let her forget it either.
48	* OnceDoneNeverForgotten: Whatever caused Carmen to leave ACME is still something that hangs in Jules' mind and the other ACME agents won't let her live it down.
49	* ProperlyParanoid: Professor Lonsdale, a retired professor residing in Greece that helps Jules and Shadow translate messages written in dead alphabets. When he is first brought up, the Chief and Jules reveal he never uses his phone as he believes it is bugged by VILE agents. Later on, during the final mission, he tells the duo in a letter he's thinking of fleeing the country to somewhere safer.
50	* RealMenWearPink: A VILE henchmen in Thailand requests a CD of Tchaikovsky's ''Nutcracker'' in exchange for a clue needed to find the Maori mask Carmen steals in the second mission.
51	* RedHerring: Each mission will have at least one country you can visit that has no relevance to the mission at hand. Jules and Shadow will always point this out when they land, usually along the lines of "Are you sure this is the right place?" or "Doesn't look like there's any VILE activity here."
52	* RedOniBlueOni: Shadow's Red to Jules' Blue.
53	* RegionalRiff: Used, often quite beautifully, whenever Hawkins and Argent arrive in a new country.
54	* RiddleForTheAges: Carmen’s ultimate goal in the end as lampshaded by Jules and Shadow. Did she want the Treasures of Knowledge all to herself or was she secretly leading Jules and Hawkins to it so ACME could donate it to a museum?
55	* RunningGag:
56	** Whenever the two stumble upon a restaurant in the country they're in, expect Shadow to complain about the lack of hamburgers on the menu.
57	** Carmen also has a nasty habit of hijacking Jules and Shadow's phone conversations with the Chief.
58	* ScrewThisImOutOfHere: The owner of a pub near Warwick Castle got so spooked by flashing lights coming from an impossible room in the castle that he moved to New York, taking a poem with him that Jules and Shadow need to find a stolen artifact.
59	* ShoutOut: When heading to Egypt for the fifth case, Jules mentions that Egypt was ruled by pharaohs. Hawkins makes a joke about "[[Creator/FarrahFawcett Pharaoh Fawcett]]", even connecting it to ''Series/CharliesAngels''.
60	* SigilSpam: Each artifact Carmen steals has a strange wheel symbol on it. In the middle of the wheel is a small indent where a jewel used to be. A few missions in, this symbol suddenly begins appearing ''everywhere'', from stained glass windows to gold medallions. [[spoiler: Turns out the symbol is part of the lost city, with each space in the wheel corresponding to each artifact that Carmen steals in order to find it.]]
61	* TakeYourTime: Unlike previous games in the franchise, this game isn't timed and jumping back and forth between countries has no negative consequences.
62	* ToiletHumor: Not in the story itself, but one of the gadgets Shadow starts with is a translator, which teaches players how to say certain phrases in different languages. One of these is "Where is the bathroom?" which younger players will find amusing.
63	* TrademarkFavoriteFood: Shadow sure loves his hamburgers.
64	* TheUnreveal: We never learn who exactly the mysterious explorer is. The few things we learn about him is that he has since passed away, and that his initials are V.J.G.
65	* WhereDoesHeGetAllThoseWonderfulToys: Throughout the game, ACME field agents, seen and unseen, will give the two various gadgets including a scanner, a grapple launcher, and a phone call interceptor.

Context VideoGame / CarmenSandiegoTreasuresOfKnowledge