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.
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.
@@petrakat At least one of the Chinese topmen are eating with one of the seamen, so at least he had to be conversational, i'd assume if you work and eat together you'd have some conversation. Also possible that the mistranslation was intentional, afterall the Chinese topman was convinced by Nichols to take the treasure and hostages with him.
@@yaizudamashii if you pay close attention there's actually one specific English seaman who is seen hanging out with the Chinese topman a lot and he even sleeps in one of the bunks next to them so it's possible that guy could speak Chinese instead of them speaking English
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.
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
... 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
@@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.
@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.
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."
@Phoenix-cg3hq it was something mentioned in the video, that the toliet area was closed off during the kraken attack and Hoscut was conspicuously missing during that whole sequence.
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!
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
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
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.
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.
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.
My guess was that the monsters were just opportunists they had been following the ship for a while to save the mermaids and waited for a good opportunity to strike with the lightning strike causing chaos allowing for an effective suprise attack
I interpreted the lightning as the "signal" beginning the attack by the crab creatures. Sort of like how an old military might begin their charge with the blowing of a horn
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.
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.
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 😅
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.
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.
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.
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.
@@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).
@@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.
@@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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
@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.
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.
@@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.
A couple of other thoughts about the pocketwatch and the memories that weren't mentioned and could play a role: - First, there's the box itself, which is confusingly described as "too heavy", despite only containing a pocketwatch and book that the character easily carries around for the rest of the game. I think you could assume the box itself has a function in the memory storage, and the pocketwatch is more of as access device. Indeed, it seems like the book and watch only take up a small portion of the top of the box. - Second, the set (box, book, and watch) may have functions and abilities that the inspector isn't aware of. Perhaps this is how Evans is aware of the locations of the deaths and is therefore able to "provide the basic outline". It's purely speculation (and even then only trying to justify what can be simply explained as "gameplay mechanics"), but maybe Evans had a way to "see" the completed or partial deck map before the memories were fully explored with the watch. An alternate theory about the bargain is that Evans had confided in Martin about the nature of the pocketwatch and the necessity of having the Obra Dinn physically present to figure out what happened. This is reinforced by Martin being assisted by Paul Moss and Davey James, who are closely aligned with the escapees. I believe that Martin likely understood the Obra Dinn was to be abandoned following the catastrophic loss of men and damage to the ship during Soldiers and Doom. Notably, he doesn't ask the mermaid to spare or save the crew. He specifically says, "the ship, the Obra Dinn..."
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?
A guess regarding Brennan's hammock - he's been following Hoscutt around for the last bit before they both died, so maybe he got "upgraded" to the steward's quarters after Paul got "killed, sword, Leonid Volkov".
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!
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
that’s plausible, some commenters have provided other theories which i also find interesting: someone said it could be that Lao felt partially responsible for Pasqua’s death in the sense that if he had managed to best Nichols in a fight, no murder would’ve taken place: put simply he blames his own ineptitude in performing his duty as guard. another commenter said it was actually Li Hong’s fault for mistranslating the confession (could either be because the formosans speak hokkien, while Li Hong mandarin, or maybe he simply wasn’t fluent enough in english). figured it was worth sharing in case you were interested :)
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.
"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)
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
I always took it as the watch bringing you back to the exact moment that a wound was truly fatal. Ei when the crewmate’s neck was slit there was no way to save him, but when the other crewmate was impaled by the spikes the wound was held closed until he was pried off the wall.
I like your idea. The moment they *realised* it was fatal and internally knew they were to die, which in the case of being shot through a wall is instant. That, or Evans himself "edited down" the memories in the watch like one might edit a video, to best capture the moment that was most important for understanding the timeline, including the preceding dialogue!
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.
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 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.
i believe it took so long because the sails were utterly shredded, removing the main easy source of propulsion. Perhaps one mermaid alone wasn't strong enough to really influence the ship except in painfully slow progress, leading to the need to use existing ocean currents, physical pushing, or convince others of her kind to help her. You wouldn't get the kraken to move it home, it'd be more likely to accidentally sink it, and it's possible that they only have a vague control over weather and little ability to safely motivate the ship to move without risking sinking it.
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."
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
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
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.
My idea is that since the shells are tied to a Mermaid, they are also tied to her lifespan, hence why dropping them in Magical Quicksilver messes with them. The two remaining shells were never thrown in the sea. They simply stopped being magical the second the Captain killed the Two Mermaids, and if they were in his wife's room she would have noticed them not glowing anymore, leading to her rushing out to seek her husband. And that's why the third mermaid was till alive and Shelless. The Formosan need her alive in order to do their protection spell, otherwise the shell isn't empowered anymore.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
55:35 i don’t think the captain’s mad about the mutiny squad taking the shells, my take is that he was mad because they turned on him after he had (albeit in his pov) saved their lives from the kraken. And he would have been able to explain himself if he wasn’t so overcome with grief at this point
This might be one of the few times I've seen a game analysis video on UA-cam 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.
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!
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!
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
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.
I know this game really well, actively seek out fresh eyes to play it so I can watch them figure it out, and have never seen as plausible theory as "the goat goes to Barbados" (or "Hoscut's occupying the John while Spratt goes Splat".) Bravo.
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.
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.
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.
Got a theory now. So happy to get this. I'm a real story person, and have been struggling with how this game puts puzzle solving above allowing players to access a full and satisfying story. My main gripe was --Why would the Formosans ever even HAVE these shells that are so dangerous to people, nevermind carry them near their vicious rightful owners in secret? The idea that the shells and the liquid are a protective weapon for keeping the mermaids and their allies from attacking seafarers and causing shipwrecking storm for any number of mermaid motivations mysterious to humans help make sense of everything. Satisfyingly logical. The only question is why the freed mermaid would fulfill the captain's dieing wish to return the ship and then even keep watch over it to see that she fulfilled her promise. She and her people have known nothing but violent control from humans and typically responded in kind. Why? Perhaps the mermaids have a connection to the pocket watch and magical book. Perhaps they wish humanity to understand that this conflict was primarily caused by a power play over them by humans. Perhaps the return of the shells is seen as a valuable offering of peace, and at least this one mermaid wants to operate in good faith accordingly. Am I making sense. Is this the tragedy at sea that deescalated the cold war with the magical sea monster community?
Dipping back into history, and this is just really loose suggestion is that the Kingdom of Tungning allowed Formosan royalty to start trying to recover pillaged assets (pillaged by the Dutch) this shell and "quicksilver" chest was one such treasure that was likely obtained by older ancestors of the Formosan royalty after their own run in with mermaids. The negotiations for the recovery of this treasure was likely brokered by the EIC or the Formosan Royalty purchased it back through auction and likely had the treasure (and themselves) transported back, by ship which was the most expedient form of transportation. It was a calculated risk for expediency that if everything went right, the Formosans would have been able to ward off the sea monsters, but things went wrong and this weapon becoming the sword that killed them instead of the sword that protected them (and the rest of the ship) .
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.
A possible explanation for why the Formosans were traveling with the shell at all: They didn't bring it with them on the whole round trip, they acquired it in England to bring back to Formosa. Based on the chest/weapon, I think the most likely sequence is that the shell was taken from the mermaid by someone in England, the Formosans heard news of the shell and recognized what it truly was, then they traveled to England to buy it from whoever was holding onto it and brought the chest for transport back.
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
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
another thought: the map of the voyage route was likely copied by Evans from the ship's navigation records plus a bit of dead reckoning from Evans himself. That or he himself was navigating for himself in his spare time.
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.
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.
6 місяців тому+5
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
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).
Here's my theory based on yours: the watch functions like those passive recorders that you can hit a button and save the last minute of gameplay. An individual fully dies, and that triggers a, say, 30 second timer, and then the last 2 minutes or so are stored in the watch. This function has a large area of effect, and can capture deaths from those in proximity to the watch for up to three days or so regardless of distance to the watch, explaining the last three deaths being captured. Henry Evans, upon reaching morocco, spent his time going through this raw footage with his learned knowledge of its operation and that of the book, and knowing he was not in good health, decided to make it as easy as possible for the inspector to operate. He relives every memory with his knowledge of the occult by starting with the monkey's paw as an anchor to the ship, and offsets the time shown in each freezeframe to better capture important dialogue preceeding it and ensure a single unbroken line of investigation is possible given access to the most likely bodies to be found by the inspector. Much like editing clips from raw video. This also allowed fine tuning of the position and area thus shown. Perhaps it was also a flair for the dramatic, given luring the inspector in with a very normal mutiny scene and knowing he'd likely then find abigail and get the paranormal fright of a lifetime, enough to ensure the inspector's curiousity and drive to finish the book. Or something like that, i took a ton of creative liberty writing this to explain the plotholes that came up earlier.
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!
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
My personal theory on the other two shells: the shells' value is directly tied to their glow. with the third shell in the chest now being the most valuable and the other two being rendered inert, they were kept with the mermaids and tossed in the lazarette while the third remained secure in its chest. After the live mermaid is thrown out, the other two are also dumped by the captain, seeing no value in them as the most lustrous one is gone.
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.
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
the idea that the pocket watch has to be nearby during a death to show it cant be right, because in the ending, its explicitly tated that use continue to use the watch on other ventures, and if the watch has to be nearby during a death, it would be completely useless in any case that didnt happen a rocks throw away from your house.
I bought this game and found it interesting but couldn't play it because it literally kind of hurts to look at. Guess this video is as good a way as any to experience it :)
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.
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.
@@petrakat At least one of the Chinese topmen are eating with one of the seamen, so at least he had to be conversational, i'd assume if you work and eat together you'd have some conversation. Also possible that the mistranslation was intentional, afterall the Chinese topman was convinced by Nichols to take the treasure and hostages with him.
@@yaizudamashii if you pay close attention there's actually one specific English seaman who is seen hanging out with the Chinese topman a lot and he even sleeps in one of the bunks next to them so it's possible that guy could speak Chinese instead of them speaking English
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.
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
That makes a lot of sense
... 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
@@lifeunderthestarstvthe person is talking about one year later when you get the monkey paw
@@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.
@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.
The attention to detail really shows how Goated Lucas Pope is when it comes to video games.
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."
wdym
@Phoenix-cg3hq it was something mentioned in the video, that the toliet area was closed off during the kraken attack and Hoscut was conspicuously missing during that whole sequence.
@@Littlepup93 I'd rather shit myself in peace rather than shit myself in front of my mates, too
@@old_faithful7888seconded
OCH CAPTAIN AM SHETTIN ME LIFE AWAY
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!
Thank you very much!
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
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
The Forgotten City at times feels very similar to what you're describing.
Yeah I was gonna say Forgotten City is what you’re looking for
@@ganryusasaki I love that game so much. I need more stuff like Obra Dinn and Forgotten City.
Second The Forgotten City. Don't look up anything about it just play it.
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.
Lol, you basically said the exact same thing, in the next 5 seconds of the video.
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.
I had always just assumed that the lightning strike was a really unfortunate coincidence lmao
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.
The bodies of the topmen were the only thing conductive on the mast, hence the lightning striking Li if I remember correctly.
My guess was that the monsters were just opportunists they had been following the ship for a while to save the mermaids and waited for a good opportunity to strike with the lightning strike causing chaos allowing for an effective suprise attack
To be fair it wouldn’t be the only unfortunate coincidence, given what happened with that stray bullet during the crab attack
I interpreted the lightning as the "signal" beginning the attack by the crab creatures. Sort of like how an old military might begin their charge with the blowing of a horn
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.
I actually used the hammocks to figure out a crew member's identity a few times.
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.
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 😅
12:12 This recap is so clever and creative. Loved it!
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.
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.
great catch
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.
Brilliant analysis 🎉
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.
@@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).
@@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.
@@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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
@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.
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.
@@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.
You look at the shoes and socks in the hammocks then look for people with matching shoes and socks.
A couple of other thoughts about the pocketwatch and the memories that weren't mentioned and could play a role:
- First, there's the box itself, which is confusingly described as "too heavy", despite only containing a pocketwatch and book that the character easily carries around for the rest of the game. I think you could assume the box itself has a function in the memory storage, and the pocketwatch is more of as access device. Indeed, it seems like the book and watch only take up a small portion of the top of the box.
- Second, the set (box, book, and watch) may have functions and abilities that the inspector isn't aware of. Perhaps this is how Evans is aware of the locations of the deaths and is therefore able to "provide the basic outline". It's purely speculation (and even then only trying to justify what can be simply explained as "gameplay mechanics"), but maybe Evans had a way to "see" the completed or partial deck map before the memories were fully explored with the watch.
An alternate theory about the bargain is that Evans had confided in Martin about the nature of the pocketwatch and the necessity of having the Obra Dinn physically present to figure out what happened. This is reinforced by Martin being assisted by Paul Moss and Davey James, who are closely aligned with the escapees. I believe that Martin likely understood the Obra Dinn was to be abandoned following the catastrophic loss of men and damage to the ship during Soldiers and Doom. Notably, he doesn't ask the mermaid to spare or save the crew. He specifically says, "the ship, the Obra Dinn..."
I hope that goat had a wonderful time in Barbados
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?
A guess regarding Brennan's hammock - he's been following Hoscutt around for the last bit before they both died, so maybe he got "upgraded" to the steward's quarters after Paul got "killed, sword, Leonid Volkov".
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!
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
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.
no. Then you would have 20 Clues you could stumble upon. How easy would that be?
Its worse with the helmsman who has no memory showing him at the helm
The helmsman is at the helm for the 'justice at sea' memory and illustration tho
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.
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.
You enjoyed that recap. Nice detail about the goat.
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.
@@natashasaravia3137based on how much liquor he had in his private storage, I'd say you're dead-on accurate with this
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.
that’s plausible, some commenters have provided other theories which i also find interesting:
someone said it could be that Lao felt partially responsible for Pasqua’s death in the sense that if he had managed to best Nichols in a fight, no murder would’ve taken place: put simply he blames his own ineptitude in performing his duty as guard.
another commenter said it was actually Li Hong’s fault for mistranslating the confession (could either be because the formosans speak hokkien, while Li Hong mandarin, or maybe he simply wasn’t fluent enough in english).
figured it was worth sharing in case you were interested :)
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.
Actually the translator lied or couldnt tell that he denied it
Also "forgive me I've failed". could very well be construed as a confession through bad translation and a rushed trial
"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)
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
I always took it as the watch bringing you back to the exact moment that a wound was truly fatal.
Ei when the crewmate’s neck was slit there was no way to save him, but when the other crewmate was impaled by the spikes the wound was held closed until he was pried off the wall.
I like your idea. The moment they *realised* it was fatal and internally knew they were to die, which in the case of being shot through a wall is instant. That, or Evans himself "edited down" the memories in the watch like one might edit a video, to best capture the moment that was most important for understanding the timeline, including the preceding dialogue!
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.
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.
I always thought it was mercury (ie quicksilver as it is referred to in the epilogue)
@@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.
i believe it took so long because the sails were utterly shredded, removing the main easy source of propulsion. Perhaps one mermaid alone wasn't strong enough to really influence the ship except in painfully slow progress, leading to the need to use existing ocean currents, physical pushing, or convince others of her kind to help her. You wouldn't get the kraken to move it home, it'd be more likely to accidentally sink it, and it's possible that they only have a vague control over weather and little ability to safely motivate the ship to move without risking sinking it.
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."
Shells and cartridges didnt even exist back then, they use musket balls and cannon balls
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
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
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.
My idea is that since the shells are tied to a Mermaid, they are also tied to her lifespan, hence why dropping them in Magical Quicksilver messes with them.
The two remaining shells were never thrown in the sea. They simply stopped being magical the second the Captain killed the Two Mermaids, and if they were in his wife's room she would have noticed them not glowing anymore, leading to her rushing out to seek her husband.
And that's why the third mermaid was till alive and Shelless. The Formosan need her alive in order to do their protection spell, otherwise the shell isn't empowered anymore.
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.
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.
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.
4:48 "Don't lean your chair like that, you'll fall and break your neck"- Wallace's Mom, probably
This finally proves my theory that chapter 8 happens in between multiple chapters.
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.
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.
55:35 i don’t think the captain’s mad about the mutiny squad taking the shells, my take is that he was mad because they turned on him after he had (albeit in his pov) saved their lives from the kraken. And he would have been able to explain himself if he wasn’t so overcome with grief at this point
This might be one of the few times I've seen a game analysis video on UA-cam 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.
Not even ten minutes into it and already can tell this is the greatest Obra Dinn video I've seen. Loved the witty recap of all the deaths!
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!
Ok, that recap you did of what happened with everyone who died made me laugh 😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣
Agreed - this is a great analysis, but the recap section is exceptionally clever.
starts 12:15
Late to the party, but I caught the reference about the stewards in the recap. That is from Oversimplified's Henry VIII video.
Perhaps the most thorough video on this game. Excellent stuff.
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!
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
One of the best videos I've seen on UA-cam and absolutely required viewing for anyone who loved Obra Dinn. Thanks for making this!
Really loved this video! It made me appreciate one of my favorite games even more
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.
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!
Dude this video is excellent, I hope your next video is as good as this one.
I know this game really well, actively seek out fresh eyes to play it so I can watch them figure it out, and have never seen as plausible theory as "the goat goes to Barbados" (or "Hoscut's occupying the John while Spratt goes Splat".) Bravo.
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.
Could be that "the calling" is called the calling because all Evan's knew of it was Nichols "calling" out to the ship
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.
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.
Got a theory now. So happy to get this. I'm a real story person, and have been struggling with how this game puts puzzle solving above allowing players to access a full and satisfying story. My main gripe was --Why would the Formosans ever even HAVE these shells that are so dangerous to people, nevermind carry them near their vicious rightful owners in secret? The idea that the shells and the liquid are a protective weapon for keeping the mermaids and their allies from attacking seafarers and causing shipwrecking storm for any number of mermaid motivations mysterious to humans help make sense of everything. Satisfyingly logical. The only question is why the freed mermaid would fulfill the captain's dieing wish to return the ship and then even keep watch over it to see that she fulfilled her promise. She and her people have known nothing but violent control from humans and typically responded in kind. Why? Perhaps the mermaids have a connection to the pocket watch and magical book. Perhaps they wish humanity to understand that this conflict was primarily caused by a power play over them by humans. Perhaps the return of the shells is seen as a valuable offering of peace, and at least this one mermaid wants to operate in good faith accordingly. Am I making sense. Is this the tragedy at sea that deescalated the cold war with the magical sea monster community?
This is a *great* video. Thanks a bunch! I hope you keep making more like this. Peggle was great too.
Dipping back into history, and this is just really loose suggestion is that the Kingdom of Tungning allowed Formosan royalty to start trying to recover pillaged assets (pillaged by the Dutch) this shell and "quicksilver" chest was one such treasure that was likely obtained by older ancestors of the Formosan royalty after their own run in with mermaids. The negotiations for the recovery of this treasure was likely brokered by the EIC or the Formosan Royalty purchased it back through auction and likely had the treasure (and themselves) transported back, by ship which was the most expedient form of transportation. It was a calculated risk for expediency that if everything went right, the Formosans would have been able to ward off the sea monsters, but things went wrong and this weapon becoming the sword that killed them instead of the sword that protected them (and the rest of the ship) .
2:12 so what you're saying is: the goat may have lived!
That recap starting at 12:05 is wonderful.
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.
Lovely video, thank you for puttin in the effort to put it together ! :)
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.
A possible explanation for why the Formosans were traveling with the shell at all: They didn't bring it with them on the whole round trip, they acquired it in England to bring back to Formosa. Based on the chest/weapon, I think the most likely sequence is that the shell was taken from the mermaid by someone in England, the Formosans heard news of the shell and recognized what it truly was, then they traveled to England to buy it from whoever was holding onto it and brought the chest for transport back.
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
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
I always thought that the watch tracked when the persons death was unavoidable
Henry could tell you how the pocket watch works, but it's Nunzio.
Nunzio business.
"Didn't bring a gun or knife to a 'gun and knife' fight had me in stitches
another thought: the map of the voyage route was likely copied by Evans from the ship's navigation records plus a bit of dead reckoning from Evans himself. That or he himself was navigating for himself in his spare time.
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.
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.
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
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).
Very well made video, I enjoyed it a lot! ❤
Here's my theory based on yours: the watch functions like those passive recorders that you can hit a button and save the last minute of gameplay. An individual fully dies, and that triggers a, say, 30 second timer, and then the last 2 minutes or so are stored in the watch. This function has a large area of effect, and can capture deaths from those in proximity to the watch for up to three days or so regardless of distance to the watch, explaining the last three deaths being captured.
Henry Evans, upon reaching morocco, spent his time going through this raw footage with his learned knowledge of its operation and that of the book, and knowing he was not in good health, decided to make it as easy as possible for the inspector to operate. He relives every memory with his knowledge of the occult by starting with the monkey's paw as an anchor to the ship, and offsets the time shown in each freezeframe to better capture important dialogue preceeding it and ensure a single unbroken line of investigation is possible given access to the most likely bodies to be found by the inspector. Much like editing clips from raw video. This also allowed fine tuning of the position and area thus shown. Perhaps it was also a flair for the dramatic, given luring the inspector in with a very normal mutiny scene and knowing he'd likely then find abigail and get the paranormal fright of a lifetime, enough to ensure the inspector's curiousity and drive to finish the book. Or something like that, i took a ton of creative liberty writing this to explain the plotholes that came up earlier.
"poor life choices" ... I mean, I can't disagree....
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!
I assumed a lot of the mutiny and confusion over the shells was just the pure greed of some of the crew, basic Pirates and booty type of stuff.
This was such an amazing video, I can’t exclaim that enough. Who would’ve thought the goat wouldn’t like fish 🤦♀️
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
This is a great analysis, bravo!
My personal theory on the other two shells: the shells' value is directly tied to their glow. with the third shell in the chest now being the most valuable and the other two being rendered inert, they were kept with the mermaids and tossed in the lazarette while the third remained secure in its chest.
After the live mermaid is thrown out, the other two are also dumped by the captain, seeing no value in them as the most lustrous one is gone.
thank you for this detailed video!!
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.
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
Great video. The goat theory is canon as far as I'm concerned.
15:00 I’m pretty sure in the next part chronologically you can see an foot that’s unaccounted for
Maybe I'm slow, but I only just realized that the 60 fates (arranged like spokes around the skull in the book) represent seconds or minutes on a watch
Great video. It is necessary to have.
I have some trouble understanding you because i am Croat.
Awesome video! You've earned my sub
The goat!
the idea that the pocket watch has to be nearby during a death to show it cant be right, because in the ending, its explicitly tated that use continue to use the watch on other ventures, and if the watch has to be nearby during a death, it would be completely useless in any case that didnt happen a rocks throw away from your house.
Thoroughly enjoyed this video
I bought this game and found it interesting but couldn't play it because it literally kind of hurts to look at. Guess this video is as good a way as any to experience it :)