Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse - Part 1

This one is more of an introduction than anything. The early scene shows a flashback to the Spanish civil war, and the painting La Maledicció, around which much of the game revolves. George seems to have given up on the bail bonds business and is now working for an insurance firm. His company has insured the exhibition and the game doesn't mess around with getting Nico Collard straight into it either. This is based in Paris and we're in an Art Gallery, at which La Maledicció has just arrived. The opening scene shows a man in a motorcycle helmet with an English accent entering, waving a gun and stealing it. Henri the gallery owner tries to intervene and is killed and thus the game starts. There is quite the motley crew in the gallery. Nico seems to have gone to chase the shooter, so other than the dead gallery owner, we also have Father Simeon, a Dominican priest, and Hector Laine, an odious art critic we previously met in Broken Sword 2 at the Glease Gallery. Laine faints at the shooting so first thing to do is look around. The gallery is full of expensive art and the alarms on every other painting seem to work fine, but didn't go off when La Maledicció was lifted - unlike previous games, George actually does have a direct stake in this one, since his firm is on the line to pay out for the theft. Simeon appears to have turned up because he believes the painting is evil, and though he comes across as compassionate enough, he speaks in theological terms. You wake Laine up with some pizza and the first puzzle seems to be scaring or blackmailing him into giving you the door code to the office so you can have a look at the CCTV footage. One thing I never truly understood with the game is that, throughout, George has the option to call his boss, Mr Rickenbacker. I think you can go through the game without ever calling him, and if you do, it just gives little extra bits of dialogue. I wondered if he was meant to be like an (angry, grumpy) hint system, but I was really never sure. Nice addition, for sure, I just wondered if there was a real point to it.