In fairness, the Chinese sailors are notoriously difficult to identify. When you figure out what the game intends you to do instead of just guessing, you'll be shaking your head.

@@MKVProcrastinator I know but I am more referring to how far the burden of proof he needed fell.

@@MKVProcrastinator idk, I didn't guess the chinese until I actually found the clue myself in-game. I don't think it's that tough to find, especially if you use the bookmark system.

@@rwpexpert Once he got comfortable with the fact that the game would confirm whether his guesses were right, he started doing a lot more guesswork combined with deductive reasoning. Would've taken a lot longer without that mechanic.

"They called him Charlie, but there's only Charleses in the crew manifest...maybe it's a term of endearment?"

goddammit Nichols this is all his fault

That's where the demo ended, and hoo boy did that set the bar.

yeah it literally says "evidence is rarely conclusive" and he still waited forever to confirm that the guy who opened the door after someone said "captain open the door" was the captain.

To be fair Captain can mean two things there's the rank of Captain and the position of Captain. If you're in command of a ship you are it's Captain regardless of your rank because in this case Captain means "the guy in charge of the ship" So say all the command crew died and a low ranking Ensign was left in charge he'd technically be addressed as Captain despite his rank only being Ensign. So technically that guy could've have been an officer who took over when the Captain died hence why they included his wife to make sure it was clear who his was.

@@CommisarHood I highly doubt Womble knew that distinction (nor did I, cool fact).

@@CommisarHood That, and I (and possibly Womble too) wouldn't have put it past the game to pull some twist like "This guy's the Captain at the end of the journey. But he's not who's listed as Captain on the manifest that was made when the ship first started because of mutiny-related shenanigans."

@@CommisarHood Sailors rarely, if ever, address their comrades by actual rank. Such that the Wikipedia article barely mentions actual ranks en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Navy_ranks,_rates,_and_uniforms_of_the_18th_and_19th_centuries

I guess thats the 3rd mermaid that guided the ship home

​@@quasur57Took her 5 years to guide the ship home. Talk about dedication.

​@@deqalbwhen it could've just used waves to do it.

@@kvm6 Probably did. Could have followed the trade winds across the Atlantic and then let it drift up the Gulf Stream.

@@pretzelbomb6105 while that is very likely what happened it shouldn't take years like it did for Obra Dinn to show up.

The entire tutorial sequence is amazing. Starts with a literal bang, winds down to a somber moment of suicide and then SLAMS you over the head with an entire goddamn kraken. But yeah, that first one is _special._ "You bastards may take / exactly what I give you" is a perfect one-liner.

Bless him, he tried

Poor Paul he did everything right only to be killed moments before escaping.

Late, but the only thing he definitely did do was dump the shells, and it's implied he did that before the Bargain, since his steward comments that he didn't get rid of them all. He didn't get the surviving mermaid freed, that was the 3rd mate's dying instruction, and I don't think he arranged the passengers leaving, though he did yell at the topman not to stop them

@@jordanfry5138 Whose idea it was is somewhat ambiguous, but I think there's good evidence that both actions were ordered by Witterel. So first, any other officer making the call, either to free a captive or to give the last rowboat to the civilians, would be mutiny, and we see a bit later how Witterel responds to mutiny. One of these actions, the loading of the rowboat, was necessarily carried out in full view of Witterel without any pushback. At the very least, we can say with confidence that Witterel was aware of that action before it was carried out, and that, while it is possible that one of the other officers approached him and suggested this course of action, Witterel ultimately would have ordered it be done. This is further supported by the timeline. We know that the last few chapters of Bargain take place just before/during the first few chapters of Escape. In particular, Bargain 5 takes place just before Escape 1. Moss finds Evans down by the lazarette, and urges him to come up urgently, and we then see them loading the rowboat in Escape 2. We see Hoscut leaving his room in Escape 1, which indicates that he was probably getting some sleep while either Witterel or Perrott was the officer on duty. In Escape 2, we see that Witterel was on deck while Moss and the civilians were loading the rowboat; he would have necessarily seen them taking this action. It's also important to note that both Perrott and Moss are aware that Witterel threw the shells overboard, but Hoscut is explicitly not, and while it's unclear whether Davies knew, Wiater certainly didn't. That is, Perrott's knowledge of the fate of the shells seems to be unique, which implies that Witterel spoke with him on the matter. It's possible that Davies knew as well, whereas Hoscut had not yet been told because he was asleep at the time. This supports, but does not prove, that it was Witterel's idea to have Perrott free the remaining mermaid; it does at least heavily suggest that the two had a conversation on the subject, which ended with Witterel either giving Perrott such instructions or giving him permission to do with the mermaid as he saw fit. And when Perrott goes to free the mermaid and is subsequently spiked, he exclaims, "Stop! Wait! We're to set you free!" That phrasing, while not definitive, would normally be read as both Perrott and Moss being there on someone else's order. The only people with the authority to order Perrott to do anything are the captain and Hoscut, and as we see later at the start of Escape, Hoscut was asleep as this was going down. Given this phrasing, it strongly suggests that Witterel told Perrott to free the mermaid. Thus, between various things suggesting Witterel signed off on freeing the mermaid, and was literally watching two stewards load the rowboat ondeck, I feel relatively confident in reading these as things that Witterel ordered.

That's not all, the quicksilver deaths can ALSO be marked as electrocution. For my playthrough, I actually marked one as burned and one as electrocuted and it counted

Anyone thrown overboard by the kraken can also validly be put down as drowned or devoured.

There's one guy getting shot by the cannon, and iirc you can either say the beast killed him or blame it on the gunner who lit the fuse as having 'shot' him

I love how Lucas Pope not only thought of these possibilities ss not to annoy the player, but spent two years of dev time on localization to make sure that it was still possible in every language in the game. Thats way harder than you think, not every language has the same syntaxes, word order, distinction between words, or even the same ability to simply swap out words. You cant just translate each word in the list. Like in English we have struck, clubbed, and crushed, German might have only one word for all of those that is context dependent. Or maybe English has suislide, but French has distinct words for by hanging, gun, and knife. These are not accurate examples, but they are representative of the challenges he had to solve to make it work in every language.

@@rorystockley5969 and if you blame the guy the poor man gets fined in the report

Tbf, when you first start the game, you don't know what rules its going by. You don't know if the characters all have different costumes or if there's gonna be some identity theft schenanagans

i mean they are the two most prominent members of the little mutineering group that gets arranged (henry brennan being the one to actually aim at the bodyguard during the execution is good characterization of him, guy will perform immense violence)

I'm glad the story was told in an interactive form instead, love these dead weirdoes

Charles Miner the real badass, he's so hard to track down because where it's usually easy to see what someone's doing and work out their job, or they're the centre of the scene, he's just in the background doing everything all the time. His entry in the insurance report is the saddest as he gets fined for killing someone even though it was collateral for helping finish off a crab!

@@hem9483 Yeah, when I solved it, I actually didn't notice that Brennan was the exact one who shot the guy, I just guessed any of them would work and I just wanted to help Brennan's kill count get higher

Can't forget my boy Omid Gul him being tossed overboard is so sadly anticlimactic for what a badass he is the whole ride. Sees eldritch deep sea crab cavalry and goes "i bet i can kill these with a scimitar"

The only time he does it is when he's talking directly to the patient or within earshot of them. Probably to reassure them and keep them calm while he works. When he's talking about the sick man who is passed out on the bed, he says he isn't sure if he'll live.

This was also a time when just about any serious medical procedure was 40% likely to kill you sooner or later. Germ theory wasn't a thing.

To be fair, the Helmsman took a whole ass spear to the leg during 'Murder' and lived long enough to die in the Kraken attack, so Evans must have at least a little at some point

@@mayz7753 I actually had the helmsman as killed by spear because of that, until I later realised he was one of the doom disappearances.

I find it interesting that Dr Evans doesn't react too badly when his mate (James Wallace) got his head pinched off by that crab rider

There is also a full glossary in the back of the journal to explain many common terms, like the difference between a topman and a seaman. I know Womble already knew these things, but it just goes to show how extra Lucas Pope went when making this masterpiece.

That happens more often than you might think in existential horror games, like those inspired by Lovecraft.

I know it‘s not a horror game and there are also no jumpscares or anything, but the game makes me feel eerie. Can‘t put a finger on it why tho

There's a different game (not primarily horror, more a mystery game) which does something similar to this. To avoid spoilers, the game's name is "Gur Sbetbggra Pvgl" in ROT13.

​@@drojf Wtf did you just type

​@@Cotac_Rastic Shhh, he's speaking the language of the gods.

Even Abigail sometimes gets missed because of the Kraken.. somehow

On my first run through the other day (Finished it before I even found this VoD) and I was WRACKING MY BRAIN ON HOW COULD THE BOOK SAY HE WAS EASY (I get that he at least had to be a mate but at the point I was at 3 of the 4 were still up in the air) took my about 6 hours in until after by chance marking him as Martin I went back to Abigail's Memory to confirm something else and FINALLY heard her call him Martin. I nearly slapped myself for missing that the first time.

I didn't do get the achivement for putting in axed, I put that he ate everyone XD

@@madeofmandrake1748 Same. Also the letter you get at the end is fantastic if you submit the book with no correct fates, it's mostly the same except that rather than being happy that you solved what happened for everyone, Dr Evans was so disappointed you fucked up so badly that he just fucking died.

Since captains in this era were considered responsible for the actions and safety of their crews, that's _technically_ an accurate assessment (though a very unhelpful one).

@@yetanother9127 the description for the achievement in question is, in fact, "Loosely true, in the eyes of Company and Crown."

​@@willmiles7978 that's not just for "no fates solved;" I got it when I submitted it about half-full if I remember correctly. It was very funny but also I was like "I did a lot of work already wdym he was so disappointed that he died?!"

True!! I was certain he was American till I figured out his identity

I dunno why, but the fact that the Frenchman wasn’t declared identifiable in the game as soon as you see him in French maritime garb, but Maba is considered immediately identifiable by his tattoos kinda always strikes me as odd.

I first thought he was Russian, because they had (have?) a similar striped shirt.

@@Amalgam03 I mean I had no idea what 18th century French maritime garb looked like before interacting with the Obra Dinn fandom lol

@@Amalgam03 I miss identified him as the Scottish because I though those were Celtic tatoos... Maba was the last one I identified

Soviet is a total Gifted and it shows

"but IS he the captain" was annoying, but fair. even tho he was told that clear answers are rare

@@slandracon3853 This is the thing that gets me, though. Any notion of strict scientific rigor should go out the window (or jump off the plank, in this case) the minute the game _explictly states_ "You will not have perfect information and will need to make guesses".

​​​@@pedroscoponi4905 I wouldn't say "the minute." Tutorials in games like this don't always just flip a switch in your brain. It's just a bit of human variation that he takes time to think that way. It's also perfectly valid if a person just kinda skims over a line of the tutorial and forgets it after it leaves short-term memory; that kind of thing happens.

@@pedroscoponi4905 but why? im sure if he had to make a decision right then and there hed have done it, but he was correctly assuming he had time to go back and figure it out with more information

Are there any ways to know them? There were plenty of low rank folk I thought game was just set to accept your first guess because there's just nothing else you can use.

@@gJonii For the most part, you can deduce them via their shoes, as they're initially identified via hammock tags.

@@gJonii You can beat the game with 0 guessing, but it's usually very subtle (like their shoes or the wedding ring for the 2 women passengers)

But then "Verdammt, what language is that?"

and his extensive knowledge of 1800s seafaring

thats how the brits are. they will make fun of each other for the TOWN they came from.

...there were both "freed slaves" and "free men" among the black populations of America at that time...

@@nadrewod999 Oh I'm sure there were. I'm just saying that even though the carpenter's mate wasn't racist and the Carpenter was a free man, it's still interesting because the world they live in wouldn't be as accepting. I suppose that could be why they're on an english ship, because on a ship everyone's equal under the captain, and an american one would have the odd bigot aboard.

​@@madeofmandrake1748 bold of you to assume nobody was racist and no bigots were aboard the Obra Dinn

​@@madeofmandrake1748 Its a ship poulated by rooineks, i doubt there wouldn't be racism. America just has small man sydrome trying to be as snooty as their ancestors.

@@quantumblur_3145 While thats true the UK had banned slavery and took out a massive loan (not paid back till 2009) to free all slaves in the empire and the crew itself seemed very diverse (most likely because its the East India trading company) so to really be racist in a crew with what 11-12 different nationalities all on one ship would not be as likely as lets say a military's ship where the entire crew would be from their own county. (Its also a bad idea to make be a dick to the guy who could repair your stuff if it breaks)

Wolff the Gunner and seaman George Shirley can be marked as exploded or shot by a beast, but if instead you say they were shot with a cannon by Abraham Akbar who lit the fuse, then Akbar's estate gets fined instead of being awarded exceptional duties.

How was I supposed to know all the Chinese Topmen were wearing different socks

@@jamesgreen6106 Well by looking at their socks of course. Another small detail I find quite cool are the two women who escape. In the passenger list, one is called Ms and one Mrs, and only one can be seen wearing a wedding ring. That's how you figure out who's who...

​@@sitemoth Unfortunately the stylization works against that kind of thing, it's hard to read those small details when everything is distorted.

Unless you don't know culture significance and regionalisation of body tattoos

​@@WyvernWolfe if you're referring to Maba, you can identify him by process of elimination once you have the rest of the topmen figured out.

That's because back then suicide was illegal.

There's no judgements beyond "killing bad" I think

I mean, the insurance claims are dumb (if you write that the guy who fired the cannon the kraken grabbed killed the two guys who got blown up, it accepts it and then fines his estate) but I'm really not crying over captain asshole losing his money after he murdered two captive mermaids and also had a bodyguard executed for a crime he didn't commit. Plus, dude's wife died and he presumably didn't have kids, so the money may have just gone to the crown anyway.

@@jordanfry5138murdered the mermaids that were actively causing the death of his crew and leading an execution because he was tricked. Did you not watch the video?

@@wajmgirl Dude, I played the game. The mermaids aren't innocent and the captain got tricked, sure, but the reality is that, dumb though keeping it was, the royalty had the shell under control. It was only the greed of the shitty mate that caused the disaster in the first place, and if the captain had used his brain rather than believing an officer he could presumably have seen the fact that the bodyguard got injured and therefore probably didn't surprise a guy and stab him in the gut. And anyway, if the captain doesn't keep the mermaids and the shells after the traitors come back, the storm never comes, because there's nothing to draw them. By keeping those even after the first disaster, he's fully responsible for the kraken's arrival

That honestly was my one negative of an otherwise great game, you're like putting people down for where they stand in a scene and what they say all of a sudden we're looking at number tags and shoes.

I remember someone with a female avatar mentioning that she honed on that detail because of foot fetish...

​@@MasterVanoi I kinda liked that. The way you solve the puzzles changes as the game goes on. Sometimes you hear someone say something in an unusual accent, sometimes they're in a bunk with a number on it. It makes sure you're not just doing the same thing over and over.

@@weneedaladder8384 honestly wouldn't have had that much issue with it if it wasn't just all shoved at the end, like it was gently sprinkled throughout the game.

Honestly I felt really clever when I thought to try using their shoes. I usually have trouble with puzzle games but this one I had a blast with.

ayo dont forget winston, the most gigachad person on the ship

​@@unoriginal_5and Martin

excuse me, BOTH intrigued and yelling at THE sleuthing skills???

It's not even that he's completely wrong, it would be more accurate to say that he started out not willing to make reasonable inferences based on the information immediately available (not immediately locking in the Captain, the First Mate, and Abigail, since you lack info to identify the other two attackers until later), making guesses later that are slightly off the mark, not going back to double-check his early work when later guesses get verified, and then using those early inaccurate assumptions to guess several things down the line, causing a lot of slow and painful backtracking later on.

@@nadrewod999 His issue was him overthinking and believing the game was trying to deceive him from the get go, when the game really isn't trying to deceive you at any point. It can be a little obtuse with its hints, but it never does outright deception to trick you into thinking someone isn't who they're saying they are.

@@nmeister007 *but it never does outright deception to trick you into thinking someone isn't who they're saying they are.* "Where is my frenchman"

@@vincentlelong3106 "Where is my Frenchman?" > Mate in question is French > He's the only Frenchman onboard > Is wearing a French Mariner's shirt at all times > Is frequently standing beside the Bosun or accompanying him > Can be seen directing Seamen around at one point, which is the Bosun's job and would be his job as the Bosun's Mate if the Bosun isn't around > Is last seen stabbing a tentacle that's ripping off the Bosun's arm Again, the game's very honest in the information it gives you. It's Womble's fault for convincing himself the game was out to fool him when it every tooltip is trying to help.

@@nmeister007 I never said there are no clues to identify him, I just implied that this line was very misleading. It happen at the begining of the game, so early that, if I'm not mistaken, you haven't yet completed a chapter that have crew members dying "offscreen" (aka you don't find their corpse) so you're not aware this is even a thing in the game at that point. Of all the info you listed, at the moment you hear that line you only know the first 3, and you don't consider the third one to be a decisive argument (because, again, this is the begining of the game and you expect more direct clues like name dropping). So the only things you are sure are: he is the bosun's mate, he is french, and he got ripped by the kraken. And there is only one crew member you've seen dying like this Idk if this is intentionally misleading or just a coincidence, but I've seen a lot of players tagging Maba as the frenchman after this dialogue.

If they have the watch, the how come they executed that Formosan guard for a murder he didn't commit? Can't they just check the victims' last memory?

@@remliqa Good question actually. Maybe he didn't bother checking since Signor Nichols seemed reputable? EDIT: Also, since Li Hong lied and said Hok-Seng Lau confessed to the murder, maybe Henry just didn't feel the need to look into his death, since the murderer allegedly just owned up to it

@@remliqa I thought the watch is a one-of-a-kind artifact, and that WE have it.

​@@pirig-gal It is a one of a kind artifact, that Evans gives us at the start of the game, but he already had it while he was on the obra dinn, the case which contains the watch can be seen in several scene I believe. And Evans also knew how to use it, considering he killed the monkey to give us access to the lazarrette

@@ll-rh4kn I see. That makes sense. Although it's not necessarily known to the crew, maybe Evans decided to keep it a secret?

There are some dumb changes to the book tho

imma be so real dawg, you and Soviet would be some terrible detectives like it fr took him a full 6 hours to get 9 guesses

No, his conclusions were about as precise as a watch that was trodden on

Were these womble cuts approved by womble himself?

Even if you're not familiar with the tattooing traditions of New Guinea, it's still pretty easy to eliminate the vast majority of the crew. Like he's clearly NOT English or Chinese or Indian or whatever. In fact, he's the only person who looks remotely like he does, so he's probably the only crewmember from whereever he's from. There are plenty of one-off nationalities, but most of them are European and that's clearly not him, which only leave Maba and Hamadou. If you're completely unfamiliar with the nations in question I suppose you could be forgiven for thinking he's from Sierra Leone, but otherwise it's not a tremendously risky guess at that point.

@@ProjectThunderclaw - No but you say it, it's a guess. Perhaps not "risky" but it's still fully a guess, while this is the first person the game unblurs to tutorial you on the fact that _this person should NOT be a guess anymore._ Abigail would've been a much more obvious pick for that tutorial. When you know that she's married to the captain and has a brother on board, and she's one of only three women and has the last names Witterel Hoscut, the same as the captain and another officer. That's 100% clear. But she's not unblurred.

you don't need any of that. you look at the nationalities and pick the guy from new guinea since he is the obvious tribal from a "backwards" culture that might put massive torso tattoos on display.

@@TheMrVengeance no. the tutorial using him was perfectly fine, because it forced you to try and look more deeply and profile him properly.

@scout360pyroz - You're making my point, the whole idea behind the face unblurring is that you DON'T need to do more digging and profiling. It's supposed to be the sign that you're done with that. And there are multiple better targets to tutorial that on earlier on, Abigail for instance. Also take your racist logic elsewhere.

20??? Like, three. I got most everyone except the Chinese guys and never knew about the hammocks until after I beat the game.

@@ZippydaSquirl All the Indians except Syed, the Peters brothers, all the Russians except Volkov, and the topman with the anchor tattoo come to mind

@@UseZapCannon damn it, now you’re making me second guess myself. It’s been years, but my gut tells me I only struggled with the Chinese guys… maybe I did some name swapping on the Peters brothers? Surely not TWENTY people, though. I wonder if there’s a guide or wiki that details how many hints are available per person.

​@@ZippydaSquirlit is absolutely not 20

ancient empirical rule of thumb????? buddy that sort of thing NEVER went away, even in the 1st world countries. and it is used for exactly the same purposes.