A "Scientific Analysis" of Return of the Obra Dinn
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8 ай бұрынThis video assumes you have already discovered the fate of the Obra Dinn for yourself. If this is not the case, then please refrain from watching until you have played Return of the Obra Dinn. It's not a particularly long game, and if you enjoy clever investigations then it will be well worth your time.
I played through the game again recently, but I was surprised to find that a lot of my questions didn't have good answers online. I set about to do my own thorough investigation, and this video is the unintended result. I am really quite shocked at how little of what I mention appears in most other people's discussions of the game. Or, perhaps I'm just looking into it all too much. Either way, the fact that the game holds up under this level of scrutiny is truly wonderful. Thank you, Lucas Pope!
The game's so good that Henry Evans had to use his magical pocketwatch to erase his memory so he could play it all through again as if it were his first time.
Apologies about the video quality - encoding doesn't much like 1-bit graphics. Such is the true curse of the Obra Dinn.
@jerri1918 5 ай бұрын
I believe Henry waited until the Obra Dinn sunk to give you the bargain, because the formosan chest is still in the lazarette. and as the cause of most of the tragedy aboard the ship, he didnt want the insurance inspector to know where it is until it became inaccessible
@abramaskren2344 4 ай бұрын
That makes a lot of sense
@lifeunderthestarstv 2 ай бұрын
... an empty chest remains in the lazerette, they take the last mermaid and shell and toss it back in exchange to return the obra dinn back to england. the inspector can actually see a shell glowing far in the distance whilst doing his work / playing through the game. nice theory, but it doesnt fit
@will88TFs4Life 2 ай бұрын
@@lifeunderthestarstvthe person is talking about one year later when you get the monkey paw
@bugjams Ай бұрын
@@lifeunderthestarstv Didn't Henry evacuate right after doing the monkey paw trick? He probably couldn't know for sure if they would release the mermaid and toss the shell(s?) back after he did so. Even if he did, it was still a failsafe plan to let the Obra Dinn sink entirely before revealing the truth about the shells. There could've been more shells on board, after all. it seems the shells in general add quite a bit of confusion to the series of events, to say the least. But "making sure the Obra Dinn sinks" seems like a good enough excuse for why Henry didn't reveal the Bargain until later.
@---9519 19 күн бұрын
@lifeunderthestarstv the chest would still have the quicksilver... poison... fire liquid inside it, which would kill the inspector which is something evens probably wouldn't want.
@umbrellashotgunman 10 күн бұрын
As an actual Chinese speaker, I have another potential theory for why everyone assumed Hok-Seng Lau confessed; Li Hong did mistranslate his statement, but got away with it because none of the other Chinese topmen can actually understand Lau very well either. Because as it turns out, the topmen and the Formosan passengers don't actually speak quite the same language; the Formosans speak exclusively in Hokkien, while Huang Li's only Chinese dialogue has him speaking in a mish-mash of Mandarin and Hokkien in a manner which seems meant to imply that he's not actually very fluent in the latter (with his poor translation of Chioh Tan's warning about the shells and mermaids probably being at least as attributable to his struggles understanding Hokkien as much to his troubles speaking English). Funnily enough, Li Hong's Hokkien doesn't necessarily seem to be particularly good either (hence why Lim and Sia don't seem particularly concerned in The Calling Part 1 with him overhearing them), but if he was still considered the best at it out of all the crew, that could have still given him some room for mischief that even the other Chinese crewmen might not have been able to catch.
@petrakat 3 күн бұрын
That makes sense! I was wondering what language everyone was speaking the whole time because I speak a little bit of Mandarin and could at least tell the Formosans weren't speaking it. My theory for Hok Seng Lau's "self-confession" was just that Nichols said he beat the truth out of Lau and trussed him up for execution when he was still unconscious. As the second mate the captain would have believed him, and by the time the other Formosans found out what was going on the execution was too far underway for them to do anything. (Hence Sia holding back Lim -- he doesn't want to make a scene.) My other theory is that most of the Chinese topmen don't speak English at all, which would have helped people get away with mischief. Actually in my notes I was meticulously writing down who spoke what languages, because I was certain there was going to be some puzzle where you had to keep track of who was bilingual ... oh well.
@nnelg8139 6 ай бұрын
Omid Ghul falls off the starboard side of the ship, but in the previous memory he's on the port side looking outwards. I'm pretty certain he got thrown by the kraken.
@JHamron 16 күн бұрын
I had always just assumed that the lightning strike was a really unfortunate coincidence lmao
@Toksyuryel 7 күн бұрын
My read on it is that the monsters brought the storm with them, but the lightning strike actually hitting that guy was pure chance. Surely if they had the power to control that they'd have used the lighting to kill a lot more people.
@teamcyeborg 2 ай бұрын
Honestly, now I wanna play through an Obra Dinn style game that takes place in Pompeii. Imagine the inspector going through, uncovering ash and scenes of life in the moments before eruption
@Pibola64 9 күн бұрын
Sounds pretty interesting, like everything still gets covered in the ash, but the more you explore, the more you realize that odd events happened in the city (or at least a part of it) and the volcano eruption may not have been that natural after all
@matthewmozingo3625 6 ай бұрын
I actually have a theory about why Timothy’s body took so long to be discovered. I went into more detail on reddit, but it boils down to, he landed in the water and was dragged along for most of the voyage. The first mate either didn’t notice or couldn’t see the rope until after the doom, and the leg didn’t get hoisted up to where it is now until sometime between escape and the end.
@matthewmozingo3625 6 ай бұрын
Lol, you basically said the exact same thing, in the next 5 seconds of the video.
@randomsandwichian 12 күн бұрын
Wow and ew, imagine having a partially rotten leg (if he was that far down that the body is in the water, I imagine some feeding frenzy would be present, on top of advance decomposition) hanging outside your window would be one hell of a surprise.
@Littlepup93 3 ай бұрын
My favorite head canon is that Hoscut was having explosive diarrhea during the kraken attack and just sat there like "I can either sit here and die, or I can go up there, shit myself in front of the whole crew and then die."
@aidendavid1123 7 ай бұрын
The attention to detail really shows how Goated Lucas Pope is when it comes to video games.
@QuiescentCookie 6 ай бұрын
The hammocks are numbered is how the inspector knows who's in the scenes. The sleeping people all sleep in their own hammocks and they move when less people need to be slept to upper decks and they stop using lower decks for sleeping. It enables you to differentiate a few.
@SpidzWT 8 ай бұрын
This was a really interesting video that definitely got me thinking differently about a lot of the events I never dived too deeply into. Well edited, lovely pacing, thanks for making this!
@The-Limited-Fun 8 ай бұрын
Thank you very much!
@redpin6 7 ай бұрын
Really interesting analysis! I ran through a bunch of the "details you missed" videos after completing the game but I still hadn't seen anyone bring up most of the small details or connections you talked about.
@futonrevolution7671 6 ай бұрын
I assumed that despair was the captain's primary motivation, during the final mutiny. His wife's dead, his steward's melted, and the ship's dead in the water with shredded sails, a mast that would fall off if you looked at it too hard, no helmsman, and nowhere near enough crew to operate it. Not even the goat would be able to save them from a slow wasting death. (Plus, Duncan had stolen his license and registration, so he can't risk getting pulled over by the police for unsafe sailing.) He can barely even lift his head, when mumbling his order to let the women and children (and doctor) take the last lifeboat. Nearly everything is still the doctor's fault, though. All he had to do was use the watch on Nunzio, and the only deaths past that point would probably have been Peters taking revenge on the Dane... and the goat.
@Rory626 6 ай бұрын
Brilliant analysis 🎉
@bugjams 6 ай бұрын
The thing about him using the watch on Nunzio is, who would've believed him? His only evidence being a magical pocketwatch and his own word, against the 2nd Mate of the ship. He probably feared if he squeaked, he'd be executed too, and would them have no reliable way to get the pocket watch to someone who could solve the mystery. True, it does paint his character in a bit of a darker light, as someone who's willing to let people die for the greater good, but he's not completely to blame. It's still Nichols.
@futonrevolution7671 6 ай бұрын
@@bugjams The problem with arguments that magic is unheard of in the world of Obra Dinn is our protagonist. They comment twice on the ferryman being annoying, but have no reaction to the magical stopwatch and are immediately able to operate it without any instruction. The insurance company accepts that they have to pay out, based purely on evidence gathered by clairvoyance, and a book that verifies the truth of what's written in it. There's no evidence of wizards in pointy hats being stationed on ships to summon the wind, but no one questions it, when people talk about curses. The captain and 3rd mate are able to speak to the mermaids with the 3rd mate even being able to give very complicated instructions with the mermaid being able to understand English to such a degree that they take advantage of the loophole that he never specified a time frame, the way that people talk about the shells varies (possibly by education level), and Dahl's the only one to react like a Lovecraft character, when confronted by monsters (and, even then, he knows what quicksilver is, which is the name used by alchemists and voodoo sorcerers).
@bugjams 5 ай бұрын
@@futonrevolution7671 Hmm... good argument. I still think he could've had his reasons for keeping quiet - if word got out he had a magical pocket watch, anyone who wanted to kill anyone else would realize they would be unable to get away uncaught... that is, unless they killed Evans first. Not being able to know the intents of everyone else on-board, Evans probably came to this conclusion: "If they find out I have a pocket watch that shows how people died, someone might kill me. Either because they plan to murder someone else, making me an obstacle to their plans, or simply because the watch is a valuable artifact." Knowing what Nichols did, he would also be making himself a target as his next victim, something he probably wanted to avoid. He also didn't have the foresight to know nearly everyone on the boat was going to die, and that exposing Nichols may have stopped some of it. By the time shit hit the fan, declaring he had the watch wouldn't have done any good, anyways. So, was his decision to keep the watch a secret selfish? Perhaps. But ultimately, understandable. And as far as the Inspector is concerned, it's a good thing he held onto it.
@Supahdenning 5 ай бұрын
@@futonrevolution7671 >he knows what quicksilver is, which is the name used by alchemists and voodoo sorcerers Today maybe, but was it at the time? Mercury is still simply called Quecksilber in German.
@mattbriddell9246 6 ай бұрын
A masterful video. I've played Obra Dinn 5 or 6 times myself and watched over a dozen other people's playthroughs and yet I still found some new details in your video that I had never seen before. Plus, the short short version of how every died was hilarious 😅
@marcl.611 6 ай бұрын
7:54 Fun fact, you can see in a screenshot in the devlog that the chapter was originally called The Calling Shell, it likely got changed to be less obvious/spoilery.
@ProjectThunderclaw 6 ай бұрын
There's not a lot of hard evidence that the Formosans stole the shell from the mermaid, but the narrative implication is very strong. If we set aside the lens of investigating this as if it were a real event and instead consider it as a story written by an author, it's clear that giving two mermaids shells and having a third mermaid who doesn't have a shell but is doggedly pursuing one is the kind of detail you don't include unless you want the player to come to the conclusion that that shell belongs to that mermaids. If you wanted to imply that the shell mystically calls to mermaids or is just a broadly valuable object the mermaids want, either all of them or none of them would have shells.
@ProjectThunderclaw 6 ай бұрын
For the same reason, I really don't buy the idea that the cook was talking about the mermaid's lobster shell. In real life that would be a plausible misunderstanding, but this is a carefully crafted mystery story. The game is actually really careful to mever be that mbiguous - it never uses "mate" to mean "friend", never has anyone who speaks a language other than English and their native language, never has a moment where someone mistakes one person for another person, etc. It's meticulously set up such that any reasonable deduction, which in real life could easily be wrong, is always right. No red herrings. Therefore, I feel like we can trust that when Thomas Sefton says "shell", it means the same thing that "shell" means in every other instance. Besides, it makes sense that the captain would notice and take away the shells AFTER they already got one crew member killed.
@The-Limited-Fun 6 ай бұрын
100% agree. I think there's a big implication that the Formosans stole the shell from the mermaid. And yeah, I think almost certainly Sefton's "shell" line was intended to refer to a glowing shell. However, it's worth noting that by this point, the mermaids have been taken up in a net, then transferred to another net and carried downstairs, Chioh Tan has warned them about a dangerous shell, and two people on the main deck have died as a result of the mermaids. Additionally, we never see the shells on the mermaids in chapter 5, despite them being pretty obvious in previous chapters. There's a lot to imply that the shells have already been taken. But in my opinion, I think Pope simply didn't pay too much attention to the exact whereabouts of the shells - after all, it's not crucial to solving the game or really understanding the overall story. In fact, if you skip to the end of the development timelapse on his "dukope1" channel, you can see that he only went back and added the shells in chapters 3 and 4 after the initial release of the game. There are posts online of people who played the original version who were really confused as to what was in the chest and what the shells were. All we really get is occasional vague references to "the shells" for the rest of the game anyway. So, I think originally the "mermaids having shells" was going to be a nebulous idea that you just had to trust, or else the shells just weren't as high a priority as the rest of the mystery solving. I tried to stay away from viewing things in terms of "what Pope intended" when making this video though, as in reality most of the functionality of the shells, the book and the pocket watch is best explained by "that's what Pope needed it to be to make a proper mystery game". The shells are a macguffin to create conflict between the crew later on, the book is a fancy UI for submitting your deductions, and the watch needs to open doors and work on bodies in memories and work on severed body parts because otherwise you wouldn't have a game at all. Nonetheless, I still think it's interesting to consider all these things as being "real", and see what fun explanations you can come up with anyway. And there's clearly been a lot of effort to provide reasons for most of these mechanics in-game in my opinion - but some things, like the shells, were intended to be left vague. But yeah, I think that the captain taking the shells after Sefton's death makes sense. I'm just not sure that any precise explanation of the shells was intended. I could be wrong though - it would be interesting to know what the original intentions were.
@ProjectThunderclaw 6 ай бұрын
@OneLimitedFun oh, that's really interesting. I was just thinking that the extra shells may have been a late addition just based on how they're sort of awkwardly floating on the mermaids' backs in a very video game-y fashion and then just disappear in later scenes, both of which feel incongruous with how gritty and well-planned the rest of the game is. Guess they were! And yes, I agree that this is the sort of game that really lends itself to this kind of "forensic" analysis. In most cases I think people miss the forest for the trees because they're too eager to apply that very literal lens (don't get me started on Balrog wings), but Obra Dinn is literally designed to be experienced that way. As a result, there really are a lot of real clues and fun details, and very few of these moments where you have to be like "uuh I think the author just fucked up tbh". You pointed out some really good ones in the initial segment, I really enjoyed that.
@jbeast33sconniepyro 6 ай бұрын
With that interpretation, unless I’m wrong, this makes the mermaids roughly equal to the Obra Dinn by the end of it. Their quest for retrieving the shell lead them to a lot of pain and suffering, and lead to two of their deaths (as well as the crab walkers). Ultimately, the Obra Dinn got back to England, and the Mermaids got their shells back, but at too high a cost. Probably why the game ends with a “monkey’s paw”. Both sides’ greed came at a severe price, and by the time they fixed it, they were worst off than where they started.
@bugjams 6 ай бұрын
@@jbeast33sconniepyro I wouldn't say the Mermaids are as bad as the crew, after all - crew stole _their_ item first. They were merely trying to get back what was theirs. We also can't be sure how crucial the shells are to the mermaids. But, I'd wager that if they were merely valuable trinkets, they wouldn't go through all this trouble to get them back. They also seem to be weaker when separated from the shells. If the shells are somehow necessary for their health and survival (in my first playthrough, my headcanon was that they contained - or were - mermaid eggs), then you certainly can't blame the mermaids for what they did. I think it's a bit unfair to call _their_ side "greedy" when they were the ones stolen from in the first place - that would be like saying nobody should try to get back anything stolen, ever, because it's equally as wrong, which is... well, silly.
@UseZapCannon 3 ай бұрын
One of my biggest frustrations about Obra Dinn is how many memories only seem to contain _exactly_ as many people as they need to, and no more. A lot of really kinetic scenes that should feature half the crew only have a half-dozen or so people in them, and some of the most important people aboard only show up in 2 or 3 memories total The cook wouldn't have had to say "hey everyone, I'm the cook, what's say we grill up this fish and make a meal out of it, because I'm the cook and all?" in one of his _only appearances_ if we'd seen him more casually doing cook stuff in the background over the course of several chapters
@Woodledude 2 ай бұрын
I think that would have been a really nice set of details and rounded out the deduction to make it smoother and more natural, I completely agree. However, I respect the scope control from a game design perspective - This is an indie game made by one person. Pope was already doing some crazy, off-the-wall stuff with the totally unique graphic style and the back end to support it, and had to make something like 60 different versions of the ship, posing and choreography for every single death scene, AND make a compelling game out of the whole thing with a difficult but interesting set of mysteries to solve. I think Pope likely did as much of exactly what you're suggesting as he could stand, but playtesting may have showed that cluttering the scenes too much made the process of deduction more difficult, and may have triaged his priorities, or just not bothered in the first place out of similar fears. There are so, so many moving parts to this game already, both for the developer and for players, that I can respect the trim, lean version of the game we got. Would I go nuts over some similar game that was more detailed, more fleshed out? Absolutely. Obra Dinn is already a landmark achievement on multiple fronts, though. I think it's likely that it will - That it already has - Inspired similar games that will exceed it in every measure, and I'm very excited about the prospect.
@tarantula4197 2 ай бұрын
no. Then you would have 20 Clues you could stumble upon. How easy would that be?
@will88TFs4Life 2 ай бұрын
Its worse with the helmsman who has no memory showing him at the helm
@danjo2080 Ай бұрын
The helmsman is at the helm for the 'justice at sea' memory and illustration tho
@Sina-dv1eg Ай бұрын
That's what they do with the carpenter and his mate. They show up quite a lot, and you can deduce their identities because the door to their room is open in one memory and you can see them carpenting.
@RylixBlizzai 2 ай бұрын
in terms of the lack of specifics on what the pocket watch considers a moment of death i personally like to think it's the moment that the deceased soul would consider themselves dead some would think it's the moment they took a lethal injury and anything after that was just the death being drawn out some would go for the moment their heart stops beating, others when their brain stopped because i interpret the watch to be calling directly upon the souls of those in the memories that it's viewing in order to fuel it's recreations of the scenes and illusory corpses and things like that white trail are the ghosts of each crew member trying to either show their movements directly preceding their body winding up in the position we see, or that little hiss after fates have been correctly deduced is the watch letting those 3 souls be free again now that the purpose of calling them back has been fulfilled
@FlintlockYT 5 ай бұрын
12:12 This recap is so clever and creative. Loved it!
@Snowbird2701 8 ай бұрын
Ok, that recap you did of what happened with everyone who died made me laugh 😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣
@ReverendTed 7 ай бұрын
Agreed - this is a great analysis, but the recap section is exceptionally clever.
@oliverpaszkowski2457 6 ай бұрын
starts 12:15
@thedeathray8620 8 күн бұрын
Late to the party, but I caught the reference about the stewards in the recap. That is from Oversimplified's Henry VIII video.
@epislog178 6 ай бұрын
This finally proves my theory that chapter 8 happens in between multiple chapters.
@caked3953 5 ай бұрын
A very good video. Far more details then I notice myself in the 14h that I needed to complete it. There is one thing however with wich I don't agree: the execution. I think the explanation is very easy: Lao was attaxked in the dark and assumimg he as a guard was able to fight before he was knocked unconcious he didn't know that he didn't kill anyone, so he himself agreed with the guilt. The other guard figures this out later after the kidnap and thats why he shoots Nichols without hesitation agains orders. Noone else than the only other person that knows aboit the shell could habe attacked Lao.
@djangoarcher 23 күн бұрын
I'm willing to bet Evans had no idea that Pasqua's murder was blamed on the wrong guy. After all, he was executed after giving a self-confession, and no one (adide from the Formosans) seemed to doubt his blame. I doubt he felt the need to 'solve' anything. Also, If Walker's hammock is still up because no one was alive to take it down, why isn't Brennan's hammock up?
@INukedMyFish 6 ай бұрын
Great pacing, clear explanations, learned a lot of details I missed! I only wish I could forget everything about this game so I could play it for the first time again with a note written on the back of my hand saying "play it slowly". Please make more
@natashasaravia3137 7 ай бұрын
You enjoyed that recap. Nice detail about the goat.
@natashasaravia3137 7 ай бұрын
Feels fair to mention, Captain Robert Witterell was probably drunk at the time of The End - he's undressed himself, acts with uncharacteristic bravado, kills his first mate & brother-in-law in an impulse he regrets (in a situation he could've easily de-escalated by admitting he threw away the shells), and tanks several fatal hits to his body, as if unaware of the danger.
@mattbriddell9246 6 ай бұрын
@@natashasaravia3137based on how much liquor he had in his private storage, I'd say you're dead-on accurate with this
@prismaux5168 6 ай бұрын
Incredible video that really pleases the side of me that wants more Obra Dinn. Very keen eye for detail, and I love your reasoning as you try to explain the events of the game!
@FruitySpruce 6 ай бұрын
I hope that goat had a wonderful time in Barbados
@Gumper30 2 күн бұрын
Wow I never made the connection that the surviving mermaid is watching in the distance and summoned the storm at the end of the game. That really does tie everything together. Lucas Pope is a damn good writer.
@MegaCygnusX1 6 ай бұрын
Finished this today, and really appreciate you making this as its pointing out all the little things that passed me by. I also like your genuinely enthusiastic delivery. Subbed.
@jasonlee6062 8 күн бұрын
This is a really excellent video. I loved the puzzle aspect of Obra Dinn, but I never took the time to work out chronologically what actually happened and why. Thanks for doing the legwork.
@lukestenger2817 7 ай бұрын
Really loved this video! It made me appreciate one of my favorite games even more
@madisonheckert5415 6 ай бұрын
Great video, man! I thought i had consumed every bit of obra dinn content and analysis, but this had so much new to learn and made me laugh while presenting it. Can't wait for more videos from you!
@petrakat 3 күн бұрын
I JUST realized that at the very beginning, "lest we break it down and take more than those shells" refers to the magic shells. For five years I thought they were referring to bullets, like cannon shells. I interpreted it as "you'll have to kill us to stop us."
@lordofdrakknor 7 ай бұрын
Absolutely stunning video. I spent around 8 - 10 hours playing the game but probably over 20 hours watching detailed investigation videos like this. The game was definitely created by a genius. It's truly like no other story
@Raspberrygoop 10 күн бұрын
One of the best videos I've seen on KZfaq and absolutely required viewing for anyone who loved Obra Dinn. Thanks for making this!
@lysotroph 6 ай бұрын
Wow what an awesome video! And so recent too!! When I first clicked, I thought this would've been from 2019 but it's only a month old? This game is timeless, really really well done!
@witchywoman2008 Ай бұрын
I’m not even 5 mins in and I already love this video. This is the kind of attention to detail I love. Thank you for documenting it!
@zeez145 6 ай бұрын
Dude this video is excellent, I hope your next video is as good as this one.
@legionfanboy8551 5 ай бұрын
Thank you for making this video, it really helped me understand what was happening, otherwise it would've been stuck in my head for at least a year, I'm still going to think about it a lot but for a better reason.
@JoesGuy 4 ай бұрын
Perhaps the most thorough video on this game. Excellent stuff.
@captainwolfbane3707 6 ай бұрын
I think it's also possible Hok-Seng Lau really did confess to Nunzio's murder. Hok-Seng Lau was, on that night, supposed to be guarding the chest. His failiure to do so is what led to Nichols' murdering Nunzio. Even though it was indirect, and Hok-Seng Lau certainly hadn't intended to get someone killed, he may have felt like it was on him anyway. That combined with the factors you point out in your analysis related to why accusing Nichols may have been a bad idea present, for me at least, a believable way for Hok-Seng Lau to have confessed and meant it.
@Danerboots 6 ай бұрын
Actually the translator lied or couldnt tell that he denied it
2 ай бұрын
Also "forgive me I've failed". could very well be construed as a confession through bad translation and a rushed trial
@JaneXemylixa 3 күн бұрын
"The Captain asks if Hok-Seng committed the murder; Hong, interpreting, asks Hok-Seng if the murder was his fault. Of course the murder was Hok-Seng’s fault; he is a guard, and he was there, and he did not prevent it. So he tells them so." - "Fifty-Seven Close Shaves Aboard the Obra Dinn" by Mithrigil (fantastic fanfic)
@JoannaFalkowska 2 ай бұрын
Such a wonderful video, I loved it. It seems you're talented at this form. I don't know if you plan to upload any similar analyses in the future, but if you do, keep up the good work.
@MrBoko1234 19 күн бұрын
Lovely video, thank you for puttin in the effort to put it together ! :)
@NeO_Obsidian 7 ай бұрын
Very well made video, I enjoyed it a lot! ❤
@parodysam 4 ай бұрын
You look at the shoes and socks in the hammocks then look for people with matching shoes and socks.
@Paper_Brain 4 ай бұрын
I always just assumed the shells were golden and shiny, hence why that bastard Nichols thought they were worth stealing, and eventually brought more back while implying he had some sort of valuables with him on his return. I assumed this was also why Dahl bothered trying to pull it back out, but Witteral and the others didn’t give a damn; by then, they had a lot more to worry about than riches.
@nikkoa.3639 7 ай бұрын
This is the exact type of video I've been wanting for when I finished the game a few months ago. Thank you for making this! Edit: It seemed you were the same too! Seriously, what an amazing video. Cheers mate
@Rusminin 2 күн бұрын
I like this theory, in part because I see the main theme of Obra Dinn (which makes the game more valuable to me than a simple mystery game) as miscommunication. If there was a curse, it was Tower of Babel curse, not only through different languages, but through different agendas, kept silent about. The Formosans kept silent about their cargo, the Captain kept silent about his decisions or actions, even if they put the ship in peril; even the good doctor's merry "You've had worse" to a soon-to-be-fresh corpse - the game is a brilliant tapestry of lies, omissions and misunderstandings.
@oreov12 15 күн бұрын
On your comment about what the player assumes happened with the bargain chapter: My own biggest red herring ended up being that goat. When i saw a Kraken attack being looked on by a goat, followed by a forbidden chapter called Bargain, i was CONVINCED the goat was actually Satan. The goat watching the execution solidified it more.
@bigstupidgrin 6 ай бұрын
I've played the game twice and never realized that the surgeon is the one to give you the book.
@somekinnn 6 ай бұрын
Love the video, but I disagree with your arguments against Hok-Seng Lau's confession being tampered Firstly, whilst Huang Lee is present during the execution, it's only at the point where Lau is already tied up and masked, so we don't know if he was available to translate at all before that point. I think Nichols's position could have reasonably led him to keep the other Chinese crewmembers busy in order to ensure Li Hong did the translation. Secondly, I think it makes perfect sense that none of the Formosans other than Miss Lim are actively protesting even if they believe Hok-Seng Lau's innocence. They're 3, foreign members against 50-ish by that point, and even if they hypothetically managed to convince the 3 other Chinese (not Li Hong) and George Shirley, which I'd say is the furthest they could reasonably convince others without further evidence, that would still leave them extremely outnumbered. That, along with the nature of the supposed murder of a European national by a Formosan would probably lead to a strong scandal either way if they even tried defending it, let alone succeeded. As nobles of the country, they have good incentive to not escalate the situation further giving the extreme unlikelihood that it would work, even if they believed Hok-Seng Lau was innocent. (In hindsight, you essentially made this point too, but I think they would have still done this even if the translation was faulty and they didn't expect this. I think enough time could have reasonably passed between the 'confession' and the execution for them to have calmed down given that they had good reason to try to calm down fast.) Thirdly, Nichols's position implies both that he has a very varied presence on the ship and has been there for a long time. Along with that, his behaviour shows him to be for the most part, an opportunist who's willing to take advantage of a situation in a pinch, and I believe it would be weird if he didn't try to prepare something in advance to help him with achieving that whenever he wanted. I don't think it's unreasonable for him to actively learn the members of the crew over time and figure out who the weakest links are, especially with his position. In that sense, I think it's completely reasonable for Li Hong and some of the other mutineers to have been "prepared" ahead of time, potentially long before, as lackeys for any plan Nichols would come up with, and they simply happened to be used for the shell theft plan. I do believe your "confession to avoid scandal" idea is equally valid, but I believe both that and the fake translation are options with about equal probability.
2 ай бұрын
My theory is that the Chinese translations are always quite imperfect -- I imagine Hok-Seng Lau saying something like "I'm sorry I did not protect the treasure, forgive me" and it being twisted and misunderstood in translation
@umbrellashotgunman 10 күн бұрын
Also, it's worth noting that the Formosans speak entirely in Hokkien, while Huang Lee is shown speaking a mish-mash of Mandarin and Hokkien which seems meant to imply he's not actually all that fluent in the latter. It's quite possible that Li Hong was already considered the "go-to" topman for translating Hokkien, with the other Chinese crewmen's fluency ranging from "poor" to "non-existent" (though Li's own Hokkien fluency might also be somewhat shaky, given that Lim and Sia don't seem particularly concerned with him overhearing them in The Calling Part 1). EDIT: Also, given that the Formosans seem to have largely kept to themselves on the ship, they might not even be aware that Li Hong had any Hokkien fluency to begin with (after all, I think Chinese sailors working on British ships during this period would have been most likely to speak Cantonese; indeed, one of the game's few historical semi-mistakes is that a Chinese sailor in an EIC ship would have likely known little, if, any Mandarin, since Chinese migrants during that period overwhelmingly came from the non-Mandarin-speaking south).
@mekelius 13 күн бұрын
My headcanon is that the mermaids have some long-standing beef with the formosans, and they are on some kind of quest for the shell to use against them. Why the shell was in europe, i have no clue.
@woomyrogue 14 күн бұрын
One theory I’ve seen thrown around before is that Fillip Dahl, being Swedish in origin, was familiar with the Kraken and the crabs (theorized to be Draugr or something akin) as they originated in Scandinavian folklore. He may also have known about the mermaids or something similar, hence his exclamation that they’re cursed. This could help explain why he wanted access to the Lazarette and understood that the mermaids were behind the attacks onboard. The Captain may also have heard of these things from Fillip over the course of being his steward for 20 years, aiding his motivation to threaten the mermaids into calling off the Kraken. Anyways, wonderful video! I always love people’s insights into the deeper layers of this game. Really liked the pacing and jokes, especially the hyper recap of everyone’s demise.
@98081 6 ай бұрын
This is a great analysis, bravo!
@willinthepark856 13 күн бұрын
This is a *great* video. Thanks a bunch! I hope you keep making more like this. Peggle was great too.
@kaygirl10101 5 ай бұрын
7:53 I believe chapter 4 is called "The Calling" because the shell either call out to others to possess it (Like Nichols and the crew at the end) or call the mermaids to it once it's close to the water like the Formosans say. Edit: Wrote this early in the vid, and you touch on those answers. My bad.
@ChimeratAlpha 5 ай бұрын
Interesting. You're recap about 14 minutes in say no one fell from the rigging. I have that for a few people. You likely had them as drowned, or fell overboard, but they fell from the rigging...overboard. Do love the lightning round recap though. XD
@fieldgehog 5 ай бұрын
thank you for this detailed video!!
@MakoWoman 3 ай бұрын
Excellent video dude!
@veradistheeggcat229 8 күн бұрын
The other two shells were probably chucked and not brought up with the mermaids because they were assumed to be just regular shells. I don't know if the captain even knew of the shells' existence let alone their importance. And if the glow is an aura and not visual then they were probably too faint to notice unless you focused on them.
@strangeanimations2518 5 ай бұрын
Such a great video!
@Michaelonyoutub 21 күн бұрын
The liquid in the top of the chest is probably something like NaK, which is a mix of sodium metal and potassium metal that is liquid at room temperature, but it catches fire when it comes into contact with moisture. Sticking your hands into it would be a quick way to lose your hands. It would also be useful against the mermaids as they are so wet, that they probably wouldn't even be able to survive it for a second to even retrieve a shell from the chest. This might even explain how the liquid can weaken the mermaids, because if you assume the shells are magical and have some connection to mermaids, with its power concentrated in the deepest area within them which can't be reach by a person's fingers, then liquid metal could navigate the narrow passages of the shell and reach that area, and a reactive substance like NaK could interact/interfere with it, which then has an effect on any mermaids nearby through its connection.
@doublespoonco 8 күн бұрын
I always thought it was mercury (ie quicksilver as it is referred to in the epilogue)
@Michaelonyoutub 8 күн бұрын
@@doublespoonco Just because it is referred to as looking like quicksilver, doesn't mean it is, these people are not experts so they would probably refer to any liquid metal as quicksilver. The liquid metal does not act like quicksilver at all, seeming to set people on fire when touched, so if we are looking for a non magical explanation, then something like NaK would fit much better since it is a liquid metal that is know for catching things on fire.
@justusP9101 Ай бұрын
Good video! I enjoyd it a lot
@snakycarnival9119 4 ай бұрын
I always thought that the watch tracked when the persons death was unavoidable
@MIC2077 12 күн бұрын
amazing analysis truly amazing
@zazander732 5 ай бұрын
Great video, well worth the effort. Grtaz.
@07BigBlue 3 ай бұрын
Thoroughly enjoyed this video
@necrotoaster94 3 ай бұрын
Excellent video!
@jasonlee6062 8 күн бұрын
That recap starting at 12:05 is wonderful.
@chronictato1232 6 ай бұрын
This was such an amazing video, I can’t exclaim that enough. Who would’ve thought the goat wouldn’t like fish 🤦♀️
@randomsandwichian 12 күн бұрын
I have an idea as to how the scenes of each death are recorded, and especially tied to the watch; the monkey is an ever present observer up til the last death (as a ghost). That's what ties the monkey paw, the ship, the watch and the book together. Alive, the Dr had it all around the ship, until he shot it to make the monkey paw that binds it to the watch, which is the biggest gimmick of the game. The later chapters you fill in is basically tied to after you receive the paw, which might be the monkey's ghost haunting the ship right up to the captain's death.
@amypearse4166 25 күн бұрын
My assumption about the locations of the bodies being written in the book was that the inspector was filling it out as they found the bodies, not that Evans had already marked where they were. Just as Evans wants the inspector to fill out the fates, he probably left the locations to be written down by the inspector too - it’s just that the game does that for you automatically
@mattgc 3 ай бұрын
This whole video is excellent
@randomcloverr 3 ай бұрын
I really loved this analysis! While many of these details may be unnecessary to fully enjoy the game, I always appreciate when such meticulous world and narrative design is able to be showcased through more rigorous examinations like these. On part of your discussion, there is something I wanted to add. While your overall theory about the shells is very well supported by in-game evidence, I personally feel the overall narrative implies the shells hold some significant monetary value that justifies the risk involved in obtaining and transporting them, and the box is just a specialized vessel designed for this task. The game also seems to be indicating that the shells serve some sort of crucial spiritual/biological significance to the mermaids and this is both why they are following the ship to get it back and how the caustic liquid affecting the shell could incapacitate them. In my opinion, the shells' exact function or use to either the mermaids or the formosan royalty is left intentionally obtuse as part of a larger design choice. Throughout the whole game, the player's perspective is subject to narrative and mechanical restrictions that leave the complete truth always somewhat nebulous, and I think some of the lore/plot details are largely designed in the same way.
@trustytrest 10 күн бұрын
This might be one of the few times I've seen a game analysis video on KZfaq actually be an analysis and not just a playthrough with commentary. You know the type, where you hear "Then we walk forward" a hundred times since they're just narrating every action on screen.
@Kinzokugia Ай бұрын
I feel like if a person is at the point where they are dismembering animals for special powers from the watch, that person would have already become so mentally gone that the leap to using human parts or whole humans would be insignificant
@Kinzokugia Ай бұрын
Also, the question that bothers me most: Why were 2 passengers that survived fined for abandoning ship and dereliction? They're not crew. Two that survived were crew, but Emily and Jane were not.
@StepperBox 6 күн бұрын
2:12 so what you're saying is: the goat may have lived!
@kevintyrrell7409 Ай бұрын
About half of this is really observant (e.g. Dahl's arm being melted) and the other half of this teeters on fan fiction. Lucas Pope for example may have just had Memento Mori use chapter/scene for player convenience. That wouldn't give the go-ahead that Evans can manipulate the watch in some way or that the watch auto-organizes events. Lucas created a game with depth but he didn't think of everything to that degree. For example when I press TAB on a body, it auto sends me to the correct page. Is Evan's book magical? Of course not, it's just the game being convenient for the player.
@The-Limited-Fun Ай бұрын
Yeah, part of me thinks it would have been better to make it clear that half the things I talk about were almost certainly not intended by Pope. For example, I'm almost certain that exactly where the shells are in each scene is not something he originally considered, and a lot of them were missing in the original release. It's the same thing for the pocketwatch, the locked doors, and the dead bodies - they had to be like that so the game would work. Similarly, I'm sure the pocketwatch hands were added for player convenience. Maybe he briefly considered making it show the actual time of death but realised it would be a lot of work to make the timings of chapters like "The Doom" consistent and decided that displaying the chapter and scene was more helpful instead. Still, it's clearly a physical detail about the game world, so why not try to interpret it as such? For most games, I think this kind of analysis wouldn't hold up, but part of what makes Obra Dinn so interesting is that a lot of these things clearly have been given thought and do still hold up under scrutiny. And for a game about analysing small details, it seems like a fair thing to do! I guess it comes down to whether or not it's valid to interpret stories beyond authorial intent. I tend to find it quite interesting, although I can appreciate if you'd prefer to only consider the game as Pope intended us to. It is slightly amusing though to spend ages trying to explain weird details that Lucas Pope probably included by accident or out of convenience, only for some other commenters to interpret my explanations as proof of Pope's genius! :)
@bingusbongus9807 2 күн бұрын
i thought that the shell grows brightly because it was cut off from the mermaids so it could "store" its energy, with the shells kinda being like a reactor that fuels the other shells and the mermaids, with the shell no longer being drained the power built up and after long enough the shine will go back to normal as it reaches the steady state once again i also found it super weird that you cant say that the second person to die from illness was poisoned, i originally thought this since the surgeon says "i JUST gave him laudanum" and then he immediately dies implying he overdosed him also i felt like the shell does send people a little mad based on how much they interact with it and how close they are, but more mad in a way gold sends people, they seem to just get this idea after a while that the shells are super valuable and the more they spend around it the more valuable they think they are and that the madness is more just greed triggered by the shells
@MrFaranox 7 ай бұрын
The goat!
@Scar7ace 6 ай бұрын
Good video keep it up!
@shrimpbear2544 8 күн бұрын
I wonder if time stays still in the present when you're using the watch, or if it flows as normal and you just appear as daydreaming standing still when being inside a memory. If it's the former, Henry Evens might have been able to use the watch on Nicoles, Beng and Lim's bodies before they were thrown over board, perhaps before the stabbing of John's leg, or after John's death. He would then know what happened out in the sea and named the chapter The Calling
@shushupyounaughtyminx4832 6 ай бұрын
Lovely analysis of an underanalysed game. It has massive appreciation but not a lot of close inspection - I suppose because it's such a "Don't let a new player know anything" game.
@ThriftyFangirl 6 ай бұрын
"Didn't bring a gun or knife to a 'gun and knife' fight had me in stitches
@engilaru 6 ай бұрын
Surprised to not see any notes on the theory that the two crab riders are the two Russians who got pulled overboard in The Calling.
@ClaireChavannes 7 ай бұрын
54:46 I personally thought that some events happened on board, and that there was an awful lot of collateral damages
@simontingle6739 6 ай бұрын
This was an amazing amazing video!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@ICountFrom0 6 ай бұрын
"poor life choices" ... I mean, I can't disagree....
@beterbomen 5 ай бұрын
I have another version of that theory about Li Hong: that he decided to translate incorrectly on his own, in order to save Nichols and have him owe him. Li Hong may have then later talked to Nichols and convinced him to run off with the shell. In other words, Li Hong was the mastermind, not Nichols.
@nukedukem3d Ай бұрын
my best guess for what it looks like for other people is that you just...dissapear, or fade out, because the ferry man says: "you in there somewhere" and the last death you view is murder part 1, on the MAIN DECK right next to the ladder off the boat, in which surely, he would see you.
@ecksdee1889 6 ай бұрын
After playing this game, I was amazed at the intertwining storylines and overarching plot, but I didn't even know about all the attention to detail and speculation around the real story of the game, I just took it all at face value and didn't consider looking deeper. Henry Evans would be ashamed of me, wonderful video!
@herm574 2 ай бұрын
Screw Nichols, all my homies hate second mate Nichols
@Alaric11 5 ай бұрын
Henry could tell you how the pocket watch works, but it's Nunzio. Nunzio business.
@kaygirl10101 5 ай бұрын
Goat is the hidden MVP
@sedatev7341 6 ай бұрын
How about a video that explains every single way you are meant to find a crew member's identity?
@hyunweewoo 5 ай бұрын
love it
@0SC2 6 ай бұрын
The watch would be more or less completely useless if it needed to be present for the deaths it can view. Kind of a lame way to use the game’s key item.
@karlokb6717 Ай бұрын
Very interesting analysis, although I disagree with you on some aspects of the game. I'll confine myself to one I consider important bc you're being unfair to the captaim imo. Why would the captain keep the last mermaid around as a kind of "treasure"? That doesn't make sense. She is a very dangerous prisoner who can still summon other sea creatures if he doesn't let her go. It's also pure speculation. The simplest explanation is the best. She withdrew the kraken, so he kept his implicit promise to spare her life, went up to the main deck and ordered Martin to go to the lazarette with a few men and release her with her shell. Martin as the 3rd officer is the obvious choice for this job, he oversees all operations involving the mermaids. Also, he literally says: "We are to set you free." Sounds like he is following orders.
@vernonw.970 26 күн бұрын
Good video. Also, is that a mf Doctor Who reference?
@bugjams 6 ай бұрын
_Is_ the insurance inspector's gender unknown? I thought the voice at the beginning sounded very clearly feminine (as in, a woman's voice, not something a man could do without serious training). They also technically have a name, though their cursive is very scribbly so it's hard to make out... but I'd imagine it's an actual name and not just a jumble of lines. With how much attention to detail Lucas Pope puts into his games, I'm sure he at least had an idea for what the signature reads as. P.S. In 13:35 You say Peters is the first to die, but at 7:13 you say he was alive when the Justice At Sea sketch was made. So, wouldn't that make Hok-Seng the first to die? Morely likely is that Samuel Peters died first, but was put into the sketch simply out of respect, since his death was a tragic accident.
@The-Limited-Fun 6 ай бұрын
There are two voices for the inspector, one male and one female, and the game chooses randomly between them at the start of a new game. It's possible to play through the game multiple times and always get the same voice though, so some people don't know this! The signature doesn't change based on the character's gender, hence why it's purposely squiggly. It's generally accepted that you can make out the initials A.G., but that the rest is illegible. Samuel Peters was indeed the first to die, but was still alive when the Under Way sketch was made, which is the sketch at the top. Many more people died before the Justice At Sea sketch was made later on. This was actually confirmed by Pope in a steam discussion thread called "Potential minor plot hole [spoilers]", which is a bit surprising! Thanks for the questions!
@bugjams 5 ай бұрын
@@The-Limited-Fun Oh, thanks for clearing that up. I played through 3 times and got the woman's voice each time. I also was under the assumption that all the sketches were made at roughly the same time, because they were on the same page. Thanks for the reply. :)
@bingusbongus9807 7 күн бұрын
damn all the comments of people who have finished this game make me feel stupid for never solving it, i guess ill try again and watch this video later EDIT: alright im back and i solved everything in 10 hours and 20 minutes of in game time