Poirot’s genius eludes the new Murder on the Orient Express game

polygon.com:

To see a smartphone nestled in Hercule Poirot’s well-manicured hands was only a matter of time.

Agatha Christie’s most famous detective has always been a modern man, fixated on modern conveniences and the architectural modernism of the 1930s that explained why David Suchet’s Poirot was so enamored with the facade of his home at Whitehaven Mansions. Poirot also spent the 1960s bewildered by how the world was moving on without him. But a smartphone is a bold step for a character so traditionally and thematically rooted between the two World Wars — really, I already have a million questions. Does Poirot have good data hygiene? Would he accept a random AirDrop? What kind of apps does he use? Does he have overdramatic thoughts about relying on a machine to exercise his famous little gray cells? Does he bring his phone to the bathroom?

Agatha Christie — Murder on the Orient Express, Microids’ new playable take on the classic story, unfolds in December 2023, one of very few Poirot adaptations set in the present day. The game follows the same plot as the novel: Poirot is in Istanbul, where he receives an urgent message calling him back to London; he meets his old friend Bouc, who offers him a spot on the legendary titular sleeper train headed for Paris. A body is discovered during the journey, and Poirot is quickly enlisted to solve the murder.

This version of Poirot is a tall yassified gent with an aquiline nose, who cuts a very different figure from the canonically small, prim detective whose head was “exactly the shape of an egg.” He’s mostly the same oddball narcissist that Christie’s audience saw as a uniquely discreet problem-solver at the end of an interwar period full of technological change and socioeconomic upheaval.