Agatha Christie: Murder on the Orient Express (2023 video game)

Agatha Christie: Murder on the Orient Express is a video/computer game developed by Microids and released on 19 October 2023 on multiple gaming platforms and on Steam. The game is set in 2023 and is designed to be a "faithful, but augmented" adaptation of the original story. It features a new character Joanna Locke who helps Poirot solve the case. The game play also promises plot twists for the benefit of those who know the original plot well.

Plot differences[]

(may contain spoilers)

Even though the game takes place the same year it was released in, Poirot's personality and crime solving skills remain the same, but he uses a mobile phone to take pictures of clues and exchange calls and files with Joanna Locke, the other playable character in the game. An American detective, Locke reveals that she had been following Cassetti since 2019, and boarded the Orient Express to arrest him for kidnapping and killing Daisy Armstrong and prove Susanne Moreau's innocence. But before Locke could make her move, her cabin-mate, Hildegarde Schmidt, and the conductor, Pierre Michel, drugged her with sleeping pills to stop her from witnessing the plot against Cassetti, before placing the uniform with a missing button in her suitcase. After she has recovered, Locke and Poirot become partners, exchanging clues regarding the murder and the Armstrong case. Though she does not participate in choosing the solution Poirot comes up with, Locke agrees with the false one, believing that the Armstrongs' and Susanne's loved ones had already suffered enough.

But the day after Poirot thinks he has solved the crime, Dr Constantine reveals that he has discovered on Cassetti's body a thirteenth stab wound hidden among the original twelve yet made with a different kind of blade. This revelation means that Cassetti had already been murdered prior to Linda Arden and her allies' planned revenge, and kickstarts Poirot and Joanna Locke's new mission of hunting down the true killer.

Gathering new clues, Poirot and Locke discover that Cassetti had planned to meet with an Iraqi man named Aziz Wadi in Venice. When the Orient Express stops in the Italian city, Poirot and Locke start their investigation, coming upon the thirteenth killer standing over Wadi's body. Though Locke gives chase, the perpetrator disappears among the costumed revelers. Still, Poirot and Locke uncover evidence that Wadi had been providing Cassetti with false identities, and depositing the ransom money from the Armstrong case at an illegal Swiss bank that allows its clients to deposit and withdraw anonymously.

When the Orient Express makes her next stop in Switzerland, Poirot and Locke separately find more clues to enter the bank and gain access to Cassetti's safety deposit box. When they reunite, Poirot and Locke successfully inspect what Cassetti had been storing in the bank. It turns out that Cassetti was a serial killer, and that he collected his victims' personal items as sick trophies, including Susanne's reading glasses. For every murder he committed, Cassetti disguised himself by using a different alias and undergoing plastic surgery to avoid being identified by his victims' loved ones and the authorities. And whenever he got arrested, Cassetti escaped by using his connections to the most corrupt individuals.

Poirot and Locke then return to the Orient Express for her last destination in Paris. On board, the two detectives gather the others in one car and expose the real killer of Cassetti: Freja Nielsen, the train's pastry chef. Freja reveals that her father, Noah Nielsen, was Cassetti's accomplice in the murder of Daisy Armstrong and who dated Susanne as part of the plot. But after receiving the ransom money, Cassetti also killed Nielsen in an act of betrayal.

After Freja confesses to killing both Cassetti and Wadi to avenge her father's death, she jumps out of the moving train, apparently to her own demise.

In the epilogue, Poirot interacts with the other characters as they disembark the Orient Express and part ways. Before returning home to the United States, Locke hugs Poirot goodbye and promises to always remember their time together.

In a post-credits scene, Poirot is in his lounge, reading a letter from Freja, who claims to have survived, still making desserts and believing that Cassetti and Wadi got what they deserved. Though Poirot vows that he could also solve this puzzle, it is unknown whether or not it is Freja herself who had written the letter.