Post by WickedCrustacean on Dec 26, 2023 17:01:22 GMT -5
Return of the Obra Dinn is an amazing video game based around observation and deduction to uncover the true story behind a mysterious and tragic ocean voyage in early 19th century. It was developed by Lucas Pope, the guy who was behind another well-known independent gem, Papers, Please in 2013. Obra Dinn came out in 2018 to unanimous acclaim and praise, winning many awards along the way.
At the center of the game is the titular ship, the Obra Dinn, a large English trading vessel built in 1796 to sail around the world on long mercantile voyages. In 1802, it sailed off for China, but then a few months later, missed its scheduled rendezvous in Africa, and was declared missing at sea. Fast forward 5 years, and in 1807, the ship floats into a British harbor, with no one aboard save for a few skeletons. The East India Company, which owns the ship, sends an insurance investigator aboard, to try to figure out what happened to the 60 people onboard when the ship left Britain. You play that insurance investigator.
At the beginning of the game, a boat brings you to the Obra Dinn, and you climb aboard. Walking along the empty main deck, and seeing a bleached skeleton near the captain's quarters, it's difficult not to feel immersed in the moment, and to wonder what exactly did happen aboard this seemingly cursed ship. This atmosphere is helped by the game's unique graphics and excellent music and sound effects. The graphics are a type of cell-shaded single-color scheme that I haven't really seen before, and while simplistic in some ways, they are very atmospheric and a perfect fit for a game such as this. The music is outstanding, with occasional violin/classical crescendos in powerful scenes, and more low-key pieces of the time period sprinkled throughout.
As you walk around the ship for the first time, the sailor who rowed you across calls you back to the boat, and reminds you of the suitcase he brought for you. This case contains a notebook and a compass, both of which will be your main tools for uncovering the mystery of the Obra Dinn. The notebook was sent by a man from Morocco, informing you that he wanted to tell you the story, but failing health prevented him from doing anything beyond laying out the basic outlines. These outlines are basically some initial information about the voyage, and the listing of the chapters that tell the story. He asks you to fill in the rest of the information as part of your investigation, and to send the notebook back to him, once you are done.
The initial information contains the crew list, listing each of the 60 people on board by name and their role on the ship. It also contains several sketches made by an artist onboard the ship, which also show the crew at several important moments. So basically you have the names, the roles, and the faces, but how do you match them up?
The compass is the other tool that you get, and when you approach any skeleton (or sort of spiritual remains if physical remains aren't available) on board, the compass allows you to recreate the scene of their death, with all its frozen visuals and sounds. Typically, finding some skeleton allows you to unlock a chapter, and then you can find other skeletons or remains in that chapter and recreate 2-5 key scenes comprising the entire chapter. Then you can go back and examine everything in full detail. Each chapter has its own goals, like identifying the several people that died during its events for example. But overall, you progress through the chapters (about 9 altogether), to put together the entire story of the voyage. Each death solved, each person identified, brings you closes to this goal.
In an age where most games are dumbed down to increase their sales, and players are used to following quest compasses and map markers and be told exactly what to do, The Return of the Obra Dinn is a brilliant breath of fresh air that goes in exactly the opposite direction, and asks, no, demands, that the player become an amateur Sherlock Holmes. There is no combat here, or following hints, there is only the minute observation of the plethora of available scenes, the cross referencing of them against the available data, and then the beautiful deduction at its most elegant. Some of the deductive leaps are quite challenging, but the feeling of euphoria the player gets after making them is something that is hard to obtain in most other games. Some of them come after noticing some minute detail in some scene, others after analyzing the layout of the ship, yet others after a light bulb moment following intense frustration, but not a single one seems unfair or "fake".
Aside from the extremely fascinating and elegant gameplay, and the beautiful atmosphere, the game also comes with a rather interesting story, slowly unraveled by the player. When you start, the 60 people on board are just a list of names, and a bunch of stranger faces. But by the time you are done, they are 60 individuals, each with a story to tell, a story of their personalities and actions, and in most cases, deaths. And that's also a sign of a great game.
At the center of the game is the titular ship, the Obra Dinn, a large English trading vessel built in 1796 to sail around the world on long mercantile voyages. In 1802, it sailed off for China, but then a few months later, missed its scheduled rendezvous in Africa, and was declared missing at sea. Fast forward 5 years, and in 1807, the ship floats into a British harbor, with no one aboard save for a few skeletons. The East India Company, which owns the ship, sends an insurance investigator aboard, to try to figure out what happened to the 60 people onboard when the ship left Britain. You play that insurance investigator.
At the beginning of the game, a boat brings you to the Obra Dinn, and you climb aboard. Walking along the empty main deck, and seeing a bleached skeleton near the captain's quarters, it's difficult not to feel immersed in the moment, and to wonder what exactly did happen aboard this seemingly cursed ship. This atmosphere is helped by the game's unique graphics and excellent music and sound effects. The graphics are a type of cell-shaded single-color scheme that I haven't really seen before, and while simplistic in some ways, they are very atmospheric and a perfect fit for a game such as this. The music is outstanding, with occasional violin/classical crescendos in powerful scenes, and more low-key pieces of the time period sprinkled throughout.
As you walk around the ship for the first time, the sailor who rowed you across calls you back to the boat, and reminds you of the suitcase he brought for you. This case contains a notebook and a compass, both of which will be your main tools for uncovering the mystery of the Obra Dinn. The notebook was sent by a man from Morocco, informing you that he wanted to tell you the story, but failing health prevented him from doing anything beyond laying out the basic outlines. These outlines are basically some initial information about the voyage, and the listing of the chapters that tell the story. He asks you to fill in the rest of the information as part of your investigation, and to send the notebook back to him, once you are done.
The initial information contains the crew list, listing each of the 60 people on board by name and their role on the ship. It also contains several sketches made by an artist onboard the ship, which also show the crew at several important moments. So basically you have the names, the roles, and the faces, but how do you match them up?
The compass is the other tool that you get, and when you approach any skeleton (or sort of spiritual remains if physical remains aren't available) on board, the compass allows you to recreate the scene of their death, with all its frozen visuals and sounds. Typically, finding some skeleton allows you to unlock a chapter, and then you can find other skeletons or remains in that chapter and recreate 2-5 key scenes comprising the entire chapter. Then you can go back and examine everything in full detail. Each chapter has its own goals, like identifying the several people that died during its events for example. But overall, you progress through the chapters (about 9 altogether), to put together the entire story of the voyage. Each death solved, each person identified, brings you closes to this goal.
In an age where most games are dumbed down to increase their sales, and players are used to following quest compasses and map markers and be told exactly what to do, The Return of the Obra Dinn is a brilliant breath of fresh air that goes in exactly the opposite direction, and asks, no, demands, that the player become an amateur Sherlock Holmes. There is no combat here, or following hints, there is only the minute observation of the plethora of available scenes, the cross referencing of them against the available data, and then the beautiful deduction at its most elegant. Some of the deductive leaps are quite challenging, but the feeling of euphoria the player gets after making them is something that is hard to obtain in most other games. Some of them come after noticing some minute detail in some scene, others after analyzing the layout of the ship, yet others after a light bulb moment following intense frustration, but not a single one seems unfair or "fake".
Aside from the extremely fascinating and elegant gameplay, and the beautiful atmosphere, the game also comes with a rather interesting story, slowly unraveled by the player. When you start, the 60 people on board are just a list of names, and a bunch of stranger faces. But by the time you are done, they are 60 individuals, each with a story to tell, a story of their personalities and actions, and in most cases, deaths. And that's also a sign of a great game.