Found this review elsewhere (credits at the end). First time I hear about it, curious to see what people think
I expect most people have heard of Return of the Obra Dinn. Itâs a 2018 Game where you are investigating the fate of the crew of the ship Obra Dinn, and its perhaps even more mysterious return. Your task is to discover what became of each crew member (and passenger), with the aid of a watch that lets you return to the point of their death and a ledger that confirms correct fates in sets of three. Itâs probably one of the best known and regarded indie games of recent years.
I started the game years ago, got stuck, and gave up. Last week I went back and started a new game, and completed it fairly quickly. As far as I know Obra Dinn is the only game where you play as an insurance investigator, which makes me regret never completing a Chartered Insurance Institute qualification as that might have given me an advantage.
To keep from going on too long Iâm just going to talk a tiny bit about the gameplay, then focus on the atmosphere & story, before giving a few tips that I hope might help new players avoid frustration.
Gameplay
Return of the Obra Dinn is partly a game of deduction. But I think itâs a game of observation most of all. Paying attention to where people are, who theyâre with, what accent they have, making sure you look all around, being careful to pick up on every mention of someoneâs name.
Itâs meant to be possible to complete the game without guessing at all, but I expect only a vanishingly small number of people manage this. How much to guess is really up to you. I generally held off unless I had 1 in 2 odds or was particularly struggling. (I was more flexible with the notoriously difficult Chinese topmen.)
Atmosphere & story
To me Return of the Obra Dinn is a triumph of atmosphere and empathy. The stark presentation, the design of the scenes, the vivid voice acting, the need to pay attention to whatâs around you. There are few, if any, games that have made me feel for the characters so much; the crew cracking as the voyage goes from bad to worse.
There are scenes that stay vividly in my mind: on a walkway around the edge of a deck, peering in through narrow viewports to a scene of terror and violence; perched on the rigging as a lightning strike cracks the sky; two characters sitting in shock by the bloody body of another in the mess, one holding his head in his hands.
I wonder if this is helped by the fact that you donât interact with the characters. Thereâs never a reason to think of them instrumentally, as a means to a gameplay end, and they will never react (or fail to react) to you in ways that seem odd or limited.
What feels less successful is the overall story and characterisation. The story never seemed to fully come together. It mostly followed logically enough from an initial incident, but there were a couple of things that seemed to come out of left-field (eg. the background to âjustice at seaâ). The background to whatâs going on should be mysterious but I never felt quite satisfied with how it was set up. Of course itâs always possible I missed some important details.
If anything I think the limited characterisation matters to me more than the story. It was hard to get a read on the characters and how their feelings and knowledge changed over the course of the story. I would have loved to get a better idea of the relationships between the officers, why some groups formed, exactly what motivated some actions, even why some people were on the ship at all. This would add depth to the scenes and tie them together better.
That kind of detail is always going to be difficult when you have 60 odd people to investigate, and youâre only seeing flashes of them at particular moments. Itâs perhaps a problem that canât be solved within the format of the game, without incongruously jamming in extra information or scenes.
Tips
I donât want to stop people figuring things out how to approach the game by themselves, but these are a few things that I wish Iâd thought of when starting the game. The first two are to help keep track of what youâre doing, the last is something that can potentially screw you over a bit if you donât do it.
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Write down fates youâve tried which arenât correct: when you verify three fates, you know that every other fate youâve put in is wrong.
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Write down your guesses at matching names and faces: youâll usually have a mix of people youâre certain of (but donât know the fate of) and those youâre not sure of, so it helps to know the difference.
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Use fates youâre certain of strategically: if youâve got three fates youâre sure of, fill in two and then test out one youâre unsure of.
Conclusion
Return of the Obra Dinn is a highly praised game so you probably donât need me to recommend it. What I will say is that it worked for me. I got caught up in the atmosphere of the game, which doesnât happen easily, and the deduction in the game struck that tricky balance between challenging without being frustrating (well, second time round).
Also the music gets stuck in my head really badly.
IMO the best indie game currently on the market overall, and definitely the by-far leading in puzzle/logic games.
Such an amazing experience. The underlying pacing is so genius, where the game snowballs. Slowly at first, then faster and faster and faster as you finish.
Also, that scene with that music is just amazing when it kicks in, and really threw me for a loop when it happened. âThe fuck?!â
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