Sissel, the protagonist in Ghost Trick, is dead, but thanks to a talking lamp he learns how to control his ghost powers. These abilities allow Sissel to talk to recently deceased spirits and rewind time to change the outcome of events.
[Spoiler alert! These impressions of Ghost Trick outline one of the game’s puzzles and most of its solution.]
These powers are all good things for a dog named Missile. The pup is shot by a hitman who barges in while his owner is preoccupied. Missile isn’t surprised about his fate or turning back time, like other Ghost Trick characters. He just accepts the concept while the clock rewinds saying that as a dog there are lots of things that he doesn’t understand.
Sissel, however, needs to understand how to stop Missile from being shot. Ghost Trick lets players view the last four minutes of Missile’s life before playing with the chain of events. I even got a hint from the game to pay attention to the headphones, which drowned out the sound of Missile’s barking.
That was where I wanted to go, but Sissel was far from the headphones. Not that far if he could walk, but as a ghost, Sissel can only possess objects. He can jump from one object to the next using the “Ghost” command, but his range is short. The “Trick” command makes Sissel open doors and move carts, it changes depending on the object he’s possessing. “Should I possess the headphones?”, I thought. I guided his ghastly form from the moving cart to the donuts, phone, and finally an umbrella.
Ghost Trick’s events occur in real time and in the demo there wasn’t any way to speed up the clock. So, I waited shuffling from object to object for a way to change fate. A trick put Kamilla and Missile on a new path, but Missile wasn’t saved yet. I still had to get them to avoid the hitman.
I rolled over to the other side of the room by using “Trick” on the cart. There were new objects to play with here like Christmas lights and a Santa mobile. The mobile spins and takes Sissel’s spirit with it allowing him to move to other places if you can stop the mobile at the right moment. It’s a bit like timing a jump from one platform to the next, except you’re hitting the “Ghost” button instead of jumping.
Something on that side was a red herring and something else saved Missile’s life. A Capcom rep said the puzzle had multiple solutions, so maybe there’s another “trick” to discover.
