C.A.W Agents

Crow Agent Watch
Appears in:	Murder on the Owl Express Award Ceremony The Birdhouse The Finale The Arctic Cruise
Species:	Crows
Role:	Stealth Enemies
Voice actor:	Ty Konzak
Manual Info:	These guys won’t give me a break! All they do is keep asking me questions and hoot at me! Bad detectives.

C.A.W Agents are anthropomorphic crows who are part of an organization called C.A.W: The Crow Agent Watch. They appear primarily in Murder on the Owl Express, where Hat Kid must sneak past them in order to gather evidence on the murder.

Description

Appearance

C.A.W Agents are most distinguished by their monochrome color palette and large gray overcoats and fedoras, making their overall appearance similar to that of a stereotypical detective.

Their features are tall and thin, giving a very slender and menacing appearance overall in contrast to the more vibrant and saturated landscapes they are placed into.

Personality

To help contrast their menacing tone and design, the personality of a majority of the C.A.W Agents presents a very oblivious and simpleminded nature when talking to Hat Kid.

Speaking to any non-hostile Agent will typically lead the player to be questioned on things relevant and irrelevant to the narrative of the game or the story of Murder on the Owl Express, including names to characters that participate later in the Act to internet passwords and usernames.

What makes their guise so easy to see through is their non-covert methods for getting information out of suspects, often making set-ups that often ask the player directly to their answers without any provocation. To further cement this, C.A.W Agents do not take the hint when their position or disguise is compromised, often continuing to act as if their manipulation fooled the player.

Role

NPCs

C.A.W Agents are very talkative in their prominent Act, Murder on the Owl Express, serving to set up the dialogue for later on in the Act when Hat Kid's aunt, pet's pet and most embarrassing body part are utilized in direct and indirect ways to make the Act more personalized. Of these however, only Pet's Pet is the only required answer to continue the Act, with the other two needed to be discussed by C.A.W Agents that move towards the player to interact. If these two Agents are avoided, Hat Kid's aunt defaults to "Auntie" and their most embarrassing body part defaults to "butt".

Outside of the Act, several Agents are seen waiting in the queue line-up outside Mustache Girl's castle where they can be interacted with or heard speaking on their own to the player as they pass by. One last question is asked by an Agent in the right staircase asking which crime Hat Kid allegedly committed. Past the gates, several more are found in the hallways of the castle itself, while being happy that they had not committed the crime that the player entered in response. Furthermore, a C.A.W agent is seen telling Mustache Girl to get lost with the other major characters.

Within the Arctic Cruise, the C.A.W Agents can be found in multiple areas, most notably within the Casino and Lounge. In the act Ship Shape and it's Death Wish Cruisin' for a Bruisin', asking Hat Kid to pass secret letters between multiple other C.A.W Agents, for which the C.A.W Agents will thank Hat Kid.

Enemies

Though not like typical enemies that can be damaged and defeated, C.A.W Agents are often utilized as mobile Cameras like those found in Dead Bird Studio and functionally very similar to other seeking birds such as the Express Owls and Moon Penguins. In such a state, C.A.W Agents move in fixed patterns and have a cone of light to indicate where they can see, with the player taking damage and being sent to the caboose if they are caught in the vision cone of an agent for too long.

What separates themselves from the other birds is their tendency to work as a team in securing areas and searching for clues, often pairing up with two or three other Agents per room in order to keep it on lockdown from any intruder willing to disrupt the scene of investigation.

Different to their mobile variants, there are instances where four agents sit down at a table and share gossip or jokes to one another. These tables can serve as purely decorative, as with the cafeteria before the discovery of the murder victim or in the Alpine Skyline Purple Time Rift. Their main purpose however is to serve as a stationary vision center, where the active Agents will spot the player if they try to pass one of the sides that do not have any agents. This will be represented as large rectangles of visual detection, often used to coat a long hallway with some coverage. It is possible to easily overcome them by jumping to the balcony above, walking over to the other side of the room, and then dropping down in front of the door.

To counteract the larger and more threatening area of detection, jokes and gossip will cause the agents to laugh extensively, allowing for their vision to be disrupted and the blockade to cease momentarily. After a brief moment, the visual barricade goes back into place. The length of the joke does not impact how long the crows take to return back to laughter, making it a periodic system. The active form is found in the Cafeteria after the murder victim is found, the Boiler room and a single instance in the basement of The Award Ceremony.

Trivia

• They are based on G-Men from Psychonauts.
• Unused text and voice files indicate that some CAW agents were to appear on Hat Kid's ship at one point. Lines exist for them questioning how the Mafia Boss is alive, what the time pieces are, and how to get into Hat Kid's vault. The text files have since been removed.
  • The voice line questioning the "secret of the Time Pieces" was used in the trailer for Murder on the Owl Express.
  • The voice lines have since been used in a mod on the PC version of the game, called “Playable CAW Agents”
• On Murder on the Owl Express, if the normally unavoidable C.A.W Agent (the one that asks the player what would be the name of their pet's pet) is avoided using the developer console or hacks, the pet's default name will be DOGGO.
• Running past the C.A.W Agent that follows you to ask your Uncle's Sister's maiden name will result in it defaulting to AUNTIE.
• Running past the C.A.W Agent that follows you to ask what body part you are ashamed of will result in it defaulting to BUTT.
• A group of crows is most commonly known as a "murder" of crows.