Return of the Obra Dinn [Spoilers]

[Cikomyr2]

I just bought and finished this game in about 24 hours. I think it was worth the money, even paid at full price.

The unraveling of the overall tale was absolutely fantastic. However, once I've re-studied the entire story, I have to admin the whole is less than the sum of its parts. The story was more engaging taken piece by piece rather than a whole narrative. Which is fine, considering you aren't meant to explroe the story as a big narrative thing.

Also, I think the game should maybe have allowed us to rate motivations of murders better? After all, "killing a passenger in an execution because the Captain ordered you to" shouldn't be worthy of a fine. or "Killed a fellow crewmember in self-defense", or even "accidentally killed a crewmember with a lose bullet".


Overall, it's a great game that values observational details and contextualization of clues given to you. It's about trying to make sense of a ship's life and death, through the display of massive interactive 3d still pictures. I hope we get more games like that. Maybe even in VR, as the "exploring a still moment in life" is a great gimmick for a detective game.


Remi

[Eldan]

Personally, I absolutely loved it, even if, as you said, the story doesn't quite up in the end, and especially the Bargain at the end felt like a bit of a letdown, since it didn't actually tell you anything new. I was hoping it would show some secret motivation or background, but didn't.

[Cikomyr2]

Personally, I absolutely loved it, even if, as you said, the story doesn't quite up in the end, and especially the Bargain at the end felt like a bit of a letdown, since it didn't actually tell you anything new. I was hoping it would show some secret motivation or background, but didn't.

Apparently, the whole thing about "Quicksilver" was seen by some as a reference to Ancient Chinese emperor considering it a valuable treasure and the secret of immortality while it was in fact toxic.

So the entire "treasures" fought over by the crew was just a poison pill.

Agreed, it's a tad weak.


Oh! One thing I wished we could have done is "take out X as possibility". Like, I identified the young man stabbed who is sobbing in the First Mate's arms as a Midshipman. However, I didn't knew which one. In his dialogue, however, he mentioned "tell Pete's mom I did my best".

Well, goddamn it. Could I take a note somewhere then that this young man isn't Peter Milroy?!

Like, I could have tagged the four chinese topmen to be "one of these four". I was pretty sure the guy translating chinese wasn't one of the Russian topman.

The game should have had more option to allow us to track clues and deductions.

In fact, I wouldn't mind a game just like Obra Dinn, but make it ever more grander, where you can ID clues. **** like "There's bullet holes in this wall. In this memory, we can see the bullet going out with X trajectory, etc..." Do a whole "Crime Scene Recreation" game like that. It'd be great.

[Squark]

In fact, I wouldn't mind a game just like Obra Dinn, but make it ever more grander, where you can ID clues. **** like "There's bullet holes in this wall. In this memory, we can see the bullet going out with X trajectory, etc..." Do a whole "Crime Scene Recreation" game like that. It'd be great.

The Arkham games dabbled with this, but didn't let you draw your own conclusions. I think I saw mention that a recent Call of Cthulu game fleshed it out a bit more, but I don't remember the name, and it was pretty buggy according to the review-lite.

[Cespenar]

At the risk of sounding like an algorithm, if you liked Obra Dinn, I'd heartily recommend Unheard. It's not pretty long, and has none of the "upgrades" that you mentioned, but it's one of the rare detective games which lets the player actually do their own deductions without any hand holding.

It's pretty weird, when you think about it, that how rare those sorts of games have ended up being.

[Cikomyr2]

At the risk of sounding like an algorithm, if you liked Obra Dinn, I'd heartily recommend Unheard. It's not pretty long, and has none of the "upgrades" that you mentioned, but it's one of the rare detective games which lets the player actually do their own deductions without any hand holding.

It's pretty weird, when you think about it, that how rare those sorts of games have ended up being.

I was looking for the next brain-picker game, than you so much for your recommendation.

Steam had already recommended it. Zero Punctuation wasn't really praising of the game, do you mind maybe telling me if he was off in his review?

[Cespenar]

I was looking for the next brain-picker game, than you so much for your recommendation.

Steam had already recommended it. Zero Punctuation wasn't really praising of the game, do you mind maybe telling me if he was off in his review?

Yahtzee's problems with it are:

1) He's Yahtzee, so he's gonna dunk it even if he kinda likes it.

2) He's comparing it directly to Obra Dinn, a game which comes once in a blue moon in terms of quality as well as concept anyway.

As long as you go into it not expecting Obra Dinn, Unheard is pretty damn enjoyable.

[LaZodiac]

As a fun little easter egg, and if you feel bad about getting the people who AREN'T murderers fined for doing justified murders; you can blame every death on the captain and the game takes it as valid since hey, it's his damn fault this all happened in the first place.

[Eldan]

As a fun little easter egg, and if you feel bad about getting the people who AREN'T murderers fined for doing justified murders; you can blame every death on the captain and the game takes it as valid since hey, it's his damn fault this all happened in the first place.

Is it the captain's fault? He could have handled some situations better, but basically,

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it seemed to be going pretty well until the mate murdered several people, stole the treasure and got the various sea monsters to attack the ship.

[LaZodiac]

Is it the captain's fault? He could have handled some situations better, but basically,

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it seemed to be going pretty well until the mate murdered several people, stole the treasure and got the various sea monsters to attack the ship.

Admittedly I don't remember all the story beats, but as the Captain of the Obra Din it was his duty to see to the survival of his crew and passengers. So it follows.

I wanna make it clear that I'm mostly just goofin around, but that this is a totally viable end point for the game as well.

[factotum]

I don't really agree, personally. Sure, the Captain takes ultimate responsibility for what happens on his ship, but when the major issue is caused by someone totally disregarding said Captain's orders I'm really not sure that's where the buck must stop.

[Cikomyr2]

Since the Captain had his estate forfeited because of suicide *anyway*, putting everything on him won't make his estate's situation better or worse

[Eurus]

I loved that Easter egg, that you can just put every death on the captain and the game accepts it. Reminds you that you're working for an insurance company.