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. It’s 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. It’s 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 I'm 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 it’s a game of observation most of all. Paying attention to where people are, who they’re with, what accent they have, making sure you look all around, being careful to pick up on every mention of someone’s name.
It’s 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 what’s 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 don’t interact with the characters. There’s 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 “justice at sea”). The background to what’s going on should be mysterious but I never felt quite satisfied with how it was set up. Of course it’s 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 you’re only seeing flashes of them at particular moments. It’s perhaps a problem that can’t be solved within the format of the game, without incongruously jamming in extra information or scenes.
Tips
I don’t want to stop people figuring things out how to approach the game by themselves, but these are a few things that I wish I’d thought of when starting the game. The first two are to help keep track of what you’re doing, the last is something that can potentially screw you over a bit if you don’t do it.
-
Write down fates you’ve tried which aren’t correct: when you verify three fates, you know that every other fate you’ve put in is wrong.
-
Write down your guesses at matching names and faces: you’ll usually have a mix of people you’re certain of (but don’t know the fate of) and those you’re not sure of, so it helps to know the difference.
-
Use fates you’re certain of strategically: if you’ve got three fates you’re sure of, fill in two and then test out one you’re unsure of.
Conclusion
Return of the Obra Dinn is a highly praised game so you probably don’t 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 doesn’t 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.