"Nice name, isn't it?"
Kyle Hyde is the main character of Hotel Dusk, Room 215 and it's sequel The Last Window. (Spoilers ahead. I have not completed Last Window so I will only talk up to the point I completed) Both were DS games released by the now defunct company Cing. The games are animated via water color backgrounds and rotoscoped characters. The gameplay is very similar to Ace Attorney. There is a lot of reading, deducing, and a good amount of problem solving. However, while Ace Attorney takes place in a particularly zany court of law in the future, Kyle Hyde lives in a noirish 1970's Los Angeles. (The eponymous "Hotel Dusk" is a roadside Hotel.)
Kyle Hyde is a retired New York Police Detective. Several years ago, his partner, a man named Bradley, began to do some undercover work against a criminal organization called Nile. Bradley beings to act weird and Kyle finds out that Bradley is actually a dirty cop. Kyle chases Bradley down to the docks and then shoots him when Bradley wouldn't surrender. Bradley fell into the water and disappeared. Kyle was fired from the force and got a job working at Red Crown Delivery Services. It's a door to door salesman job with a side business of finding things that may not want to be found. It's not specifically illegal, but it's not promoted in their fliers either.
Years go by, and Kyle finds himself at Hotel Dusk. In one of those coincidences that only work in pieces of media, every single person in the Hotel has something to do with at least one other person. Some of those people deal with Bradley, others do not.
In the course of one night at Hotel Dusk, Kyle finally manages to find out what happened to Bradley. Nile had found out Bradley was an undercover cop and kidnapped his sister. If he didn't do what they said, then his sister would die. They killed her anyway. However, Bradley survived being shot at by Kyle and made his way around the US and eventually lures Kyle to Hotel Dusk in order for him to solve pretty much everything.
Which he does. In the space of one night, he reunites families, solves almost everything with Bradley (All Kyle knew when he entered was that Bradley was dirty, not why or what happened after) takes care of little girls who can't talk, and solves the mystery of an old painter that isn't really that old.
Then we get to Last Window. While Kyle has stopped searching for Bradley, he is in a complete funk. A forgotten job leads to Kyle yelling at his boss and Kyle being fired. He mopes, distrusts his neighbors, finds out his apartment is being sold in the upcoming weeks and someone personally gives him an order for something to find. Oh, and someone is snooping into his past.
Also, in the process of doing this, I realized exactly how much I forgot about Hotel Dusk.
What do we know about Kyle?
1) He needs a reason. Once Kyle lost his reason for living (searching for Bradley) he turned into a laze about. He was much more focused in Hotel Dusk then Last Window. When he has no reason to do anything, he falls apart. He just simply doesn't know what to do with himself.
2) He's clever. The puzzles he solves are an extension of the player themselves. And make no mistake, the puzzles can get tricky. And Kyle solves them. He also solves the plot focused puzzles. The ones about Bradley, Mila, his mysterious neighbors, all of them. He was also a detective before that. He knows how to solve problems.
3) He actually does care about the people around him. While he may not seem like the ideal candidate, he IS the person who solved several other people's problems and reunited families. Then there are the side incidents. He made a Christmas Tree for Melissa and Mila in Hotel Dusk. He got Helen and Martin to meet up (While not family, they did share a past) and he got Melissa's father to actually connect with her. And that's not mentioning him reuniting Dunner and his daughter.
Kyle Hyde is one of my favorite protagonists. Unfortunately, I can not do him justice. He can be a huge jerk, but underneath that facade is a very frustrated and very caring detective.
