the game is generally good about allowing multiple correct answers; the game will accept both "clubbed by beast" and "crushed by rigging" as correct answers for Abigail's death
Yeah, the difficulty is more of a 'Sherlock Holmes did you notice the details' thing. If you have a decent idea of what happened to someone and take a reasonable guess, you'll be fine.
Clubbed by beast and crushed by rigging Shot with cannon by beast or shot with cannon by [person] Crushed by cannon or crushed by beast. Lots of freedom
If I remember right… [minor spoilers] … … For the gentleman who was shot by the cannon, the game accepts as perpetrators both the beast who aimed the cannon and the person who lit the fuse. It also accepts "blasted in an explosion" even though the cannon is obviously more specific.
@@Ardub23 [Slightly larger spoilers] If you list the man who lit the fuse, his estate is fined by the company for the murder of two crewmen. If you instead blame the _beast_ for _redirecting_ the lit cannon, the cannon-lighter being crushed by the beast during the faithful execution of his duties earns him (i.e. his widow, children, parents, whoever) a _reward_ instead. The pay he was due for the journey plus a good bit extra for his bravery and good work, if I recall correctly.
I remember in this game there was one guy I dubbed Gawker because he was in the back of almost every scene gawking and he ended up being the last person I had to identify by name and I was like "You! Gawker you've been the ---- the whole time!"
Little note for Dan and Carrie: Confirming that zooming in on people to "register" them isn't actually a mechanic in the game. Zooming is just for your own ability to identify people then and there. The book already has a register of everyone and their appearances in scenes, so don't worry about it!
It's also worth noting that several of the game's deaths have a bit of wiggle room to them. So for cases like the man crushed by the cannon being wielded by the squid, it would almost certainly mark BOTH 'beast' and 'loose cannon' as correct causes of death. So as long as your marked CoD is functionally accurate, you shouldn't need to stress too much about which one is MORE accurate.
Wanted to double check someone else said so before commenting. Don’t wanna harass them with advice, but this will hopefully help alleviate some stress from having to ping every character each time.
Don't apologize for your reactions to the bodies Carrie! Some of these are indeed quite unpleasant and I think it's only a natural response to it. I think the game is also meaning to present these in a shocking way.
Seconded! The very dramatic music supports that this is meant to be a shock. And the gruesome sound effects. And the very, very visceral voice acting. This one is certainly a challenge if you're not used to these kinds of things.
That's actually the reason I couldn't enjoy playing the game myself and went looking for a let's play. It's easier to stomach these with other people "present".
i was a little grossed out sometimes, but mostly i just felt a deep abiding sadness. the whole time i played the game, my heart went out to those people.
Honestly, It seems Lucas Pope took advantage of the artstyle to display some truly gruesome deaths that, had they been in color, would have been quite horrifying to look at. Like imagine the guy who was ripped in half, his internal organs and flesh held suspended in the moment of his death clear to see in HD. At least in black and white "1 bit" graphics it isn't stomach turning to examine.
Awesome! Also, tip: the “unknown officer”, “unknown topman”, etc. entries are for placeholders. You can say “this guy is an officer, but I don’t know which one yet,” and come back to it later.
@@patafix534 Yeah, in a few cases. The numbered bunks let you definitively identify about 2 people, and it lets you narrow down other stuff. It's not necessary, especially if you're using the mechanics of the game, but it can lead to a few realizations.
I think one of my favorite things about Return of the Obra Dinn is the connection you begin to develop with the passengers and members of the of the crew. I won't spoil anything, but I have individuals that I really liked and cared about and I was sad to see what happened to them. Then there were others who I thought were jerks and kinda though "good riddance" when I found their fates. Not only is this game a great exercise in mystery and deductive reasoning, but I got way more emotionally involved than I expected to.
Regarding the "disappeared:" Some crewmembers don't get the whole compass/death scene treatment, and thus aren't needed to be solved to get the whole story, BUT they are needed for 100% completion. Since you don't get compass scenes, their fates have to be pieced together through what you see happening in other compass scenes.
@@highdefinition450 yeah, It's an automated video quality thing. Might get better framerate in some places, but the pixels go into the single digits. (take this with a grain of salt, I'm not 100% sure)
Fun fact: if you're holding the stopwatch as you're entering a new memory, you can click again to stop the process, and it plays a very fun little musical sting when you do this; it's very sudden and cool!
Non-spoilery tip: You don't have to get the exact cause of death the developer is looking for like old-fashioned point and click games, as long as you're roughly right you'll be marked correct. For example "fell overboard" and "drowned" are both acceptable entries for people who fell into the sea
In between Monday's episode and today's episode, I decided to try this game again with my boyfriend. My first attempt at the game, back when it launched, took about 4.5 hours and I gave up with only 18 fates determined. Our second attempt, we finished all 60 fates in just over 7 hours. Highly recommend having a second person to bounce ideas off of or to catch details that you might miss!
Re: 'gray area' deaths - there are quite a few deaths that have multiple correct answers. For Abigail, marking her as crushed by rigging or crushed by a beast will be considered correct, and whichever one you put it will be confirmed and no longer changeable once you have three fates confirmed.
You spent so long trying to find out who lit the canon so that the family could get fined and the family name tainted, instead of simply blaming it on the beast who took the already lit canon and redirected it somewhere else? What a dick.
Some people liked to unlock all memories first and then start to backtrack to fill the book out, while others liked to try to figure out as much as possible before moving on to the next scenes. The advantage of the first method is it allow you to have a better context for everything, but it can make the latter half a bit daunting as you try to puzzle too many things at once. Trying earlier allow you to filter information better, as if a face is unblurred, it means you can already figure out without the latter hints, meaning the hint pool is more manageable (some identities become easier with latter clues, but many don't).
We'll rant and we'll roar, like true PlayFriend sailors We'll rant and we'll roar, all through this playthrough Until we strike soundings at the finale of this game From Monday to Friday is 3 Extra Plays
My one bit of advice is that I found it _extremely_ helpful to keep actual notes. The in-game book is good, but it doesn't allow you to take notes such as "This guy of whom I know the face, but not the name, and who also has a brother who died earlier, killed Lars Linde." You can only write the attacker down as "Unknown". Furthermore, there were a couple of times where I found myself writing down a list of events to make sense of who went where, what they were doing, and so on, which helped immensely. Also, in the present time, you can actually open a lot of the doors.
Agree! I played a couple of evenings with friends, we got throught a lot of scenes and solved like 9 fates. I decided to go ahead myself doing a bunch of boring* back and forth and copious taking of notes, and I am now sitting at a respectable 24. And I haven't even started on the hammock tags yet! *boring like repeating 10 times the same dialogue to see if I can recognize voices/place accents/understand who's next to whom or speaking to whoever
I fumbled for how to put this in the first episode without it sounding like a back-handed compliment, but I think I got it now. Dan manning the controls combined with Carrie's powers of observation are a perfect pairing for this game. And leaps like the one she made about maiden name vs. married name are exactly the kind of thing a "typical gamer" might miss, but Carrie nails. This is probably the best co-op they've done.
Just to note, there are multiple "correct" answers for how people die that the game will accept, so don't get too hung up on EXACT causes of death. Usually if your close enough ("Crushed by rigging" / "clubbed by terrible beast" / etc. in this case), will be ball-park enough. If you have three people you think should get locked in but the game doesn't do it, I would guess generally the cause of death wouldn't be the issue (assuming you found a relatively obvious cause of death, and it's not someone you're guessing on).
With a couple of exceptions where the cause of death is either weird or obscured. To pick an example that isn't in the game, if someone takes an arrow to the knee and then falls on a knife, the proper cause of death would be "knifed," even if the arrow would have killed them given time.
@@mbpoblet Only if it's intentional. Which it wasn't in the case I'm thinking of, and which by now I hope other recent players of Obra Dinn will be able to recognize without me spoiling it.
@@timothymclean I know who you're talking about, but in that case there wasn't any indication that the first injury was lethal; the second one was _definitely_ what killed him, intentional or not. (Though if I'm not mistaken specifying the first injury as the cause of death _is_ a valid option in this case; I don't recall if it affects the report at the end, though, but if it does it'd be a way to avoid laying the responsibility on the person who killed him, given that there's no way to specify if a homicide was intentional or not, and this one very obviously isn't).
@@mbpoblet The first injury isn't valid, and the second isn't even apparent unless you notice the-a small detail that might actually be a spoiler now that I mention it. And the first injury is of a type that's clearly been lethal before, so it's reasonable to assume this one would be too.
I'm actually enjoying that you two have zero idea what the different parts of a sailing ship are, and you come up with the most interesting descriptive names for them!
Just a quick spoiler free heads up. In order to get the "true ending" you need to correctly fill out every page in the book besides the The Bargain. Otherwise you get the "not true ending". It is definitely worth it! Also I am absolutely loving the series and you two make an adorable detective couple! Cheers!
To explain: You only see The Bargain if you fill in everything. If you're going for that, don't leave until the game tells you there's nothing more to do on the Obra Dinn.
for anyone who is wondering about the missing body of the other guy at 32:20 the thing that happened was that-since top-hat man was closest, the blast exiting the muzzle of the cannon was very tiny at that point, so it only vapourized the top of his body. the guy behind top-hat man was further away from the cannon mouth which means his entire body was caught in the RAPIDLY expanding cone of the explosion. there is no real corpse left behind because the man trying to save the first guy (top-hat man) was rendered down to mist. the only thing that *might* have been left would've probably been anything below the shins.
Just to confirm, the game accepts multiple causes of death as correct. Obviously you still need to sleuth out the correct names for everyone, but don't worry too much about exactly what caused someone's death when it's ambiguous. I believe which of the acceptable answers you choose changes a very minor bit of text at the very end of the game in some cases, but don't let that interfere with your job as an insurance claims officer :)
Dan! Don't run away from a revealed corpse to explore "what else I have available right now!" Always, follow trails, so that an entry gets added to the book, because that records the corpse. Otherwise, it becomes very hard to track which corpses you've explored and which you haven't, when the spaces get filled up.
You can always see which you've explored because they're filled out in the book. And the deck map shows a line connecting all the events so you can re-trace steps on one screen.
Here's something to think about with the cannon deaths. (Might be considered lightly spoilery, but this is an unintuitive thing that a lot of people get hung up on) The pocketwatch shows you the *exact* moment of a person's death. If the book lists two people as dying in the same moment, what might that suggest about the causes of those deaths?
Spoiler: While the "shot by cannon" cause of death is accepted, I don't believe it. It is extremely unlikely he was shot in a way that pushed him overboard. You can however hear a scream before the cannon is shot and i believe the tentacle behind him grabbed him before the cannon was shot. That would mean he should be counted as a disappearance, and that's exactly what should have happened since we don't have a body to determine the cause of death. I mean if we're seeing the exact moment someone dies, that means he died at the same time as the guy whose head got blow off, even though he was technically shot after, AND enough time had passed for his body to go out of the boat. These two people should not be on the same page, they didn't die at the same time, we can't see his body, so we don't know exactly how he died. This would have been so much cooler to just solve the first guys case quick and easy, see the second guy in the next scene and wonder why they weren't there before (after), and then seeing him in the disappearances, so you go back to that scene and hear him scream while he's flung out the window. Instead, everyone just gets confused when they see two people died but only one body. That, the tattoo guy and the fourth mate and bosun's mate not being marked as identifiable sooner are the only problems I see with this game.
not a spoiler i think, but the lil watch's hands indicate chapter and body, so a sorta time of death kinda thing. the hour hand is chapter, minute hand is part/order of deaths in chapter. might help track things a bit if not obvious.
A potential time saver, you don't need to find the people present, they are automatically highlighted in the photo on the relevant page. Like a few others, saw ep. 1, bought and completed the game already and highly enjoyed. So excited to see how you discover and uncover the story.
Just because they are highlighted doesn't mean it's not important to find them. That guy falling overboard is highlighted in the book, yet if you don't find him, you don't know what happened to him. It helps to be thorough when looking at a memory. You think you've seen everything, then you realize there are actually two more people in that me memory you never saw, so you know you have to look a bit more.
You really do though. While not really applicable in chapters such as The End, The Doom, and The Escape, you’ll otherwise find many of the people just generally being in places or doing stuff you’d expect someone of their role on the ship to do.
25:41 for some fates where you can call the death numerous things, the game will accept those as correct. Abigail is one of those, which the game accepts "Crushed by Rigging", "Crushed by a Terrible Beast", and "Clubbed by a Terrible Beast"
32:51 You do know he died at about the same time as "hat guy", so he might have been obliterated by the canon, or blown out the window (or grabbed by the kraken), -or maybe blown into the bosunmate's room- [EDIT: no, just saw that there's no hole, looks like the cannonball, with possibly him in tow, went out the side of the ship], or, given that a cannonball presumably went through him and those tend to cause some damage, maybe any combination thereof...
When a death is open for interpretation, usually all interpretations are correct. For Abigail, clubbed by beast and crushed by rigging, both were correct
A tip: it’s helpful to focus on finding out someone’s identity as soon as they’re face becomes unblurry, because it means the key piece of information is probably in the flashback you just saw, and it also means that you minimize the number of other flashbacks you look through for clues.
I am fascinated by this game, but I feel like I wouldn't have the patience to piece every detail together, so I'm happy to watch you two puzzle this out.
I did not notice the numbers in the manifest are used to determine the sailors' sleeping locations until my second playthrough, so the fact that you noticed it in your first playthrough is amazing. I keep randomly guessing until the game confirmed it lol.
Beast would've worked too when picking Abigail's fate. If a fate seems like you could enter two different options, the game will usually register either one as correct.
There are absolutely people who you will have to identify by guesses and process of elimination. One corpse I managed to identify by looking at his shoes.
One thing that’s good to know is that the game often accepts multiple causes of death, so don’t be afraid to try what seems logical to you. For example, both “crushed by rigging” and “clubbed by a beast” are acceptable for Abigail’s death.
Considering that the guy who was "shot by a terrible beast" was hit point blank... I'm surprised there's so much of him left. Also, Carrie, you're having a normal reaction to this kinda stuff. It's much more up my alley to have people bits lying around like this, so I don't even blink at it.
Carrie, you're not doing anything to apologize for. It's been nice to see you so often, so to speak. I'm very much looking forward to more mystery with you guys.
Just a quick correction. You are not a detective. You are a claims adjuster. Someone in your last comment section was very sad, because they are working in that profession and are happy to see it represented in a game. ;)
I was so frustrated and curious about how the mystery went that I picked up the game and binged the entire thing between yesterday and today! Super fun, glad you two are playing it. I didn't even look up any hints (except for the last 3 people before the secret chapter but shhhhh)
Tip: Don't just go from one new scene to the next, take a bit of time to look at the unblurred faces and muse on them, see how many of those you can figure out before you move on. Particularly before you go to new chapters.
0:35: I'd like to remind everyone that Return of the Obra Dinn poses serious risk of harshing your vibe. 15:20: Sometimes the doorway is vertical regardless of the pitching deck, and I like that. It makes the door seem more otherworldly. But occasionally it tilts with the entire ship, and that bugs me. 20:30: That's fair. Death is also unpleasant. 36:36: I am both curious about and utterly terrified of learning what they did for those sound effects. Seems like a crappy job. 2:20: ...no, it's a Carrie pun. Not in the least because _all_ beasts in this game are terrible. (Except the cow.) 10:50: For a certain definition of _life_ boat. (Spoiler alert: Everyone who was thrown into the water where a kraken was thrashing its myriad limbs and probably some kind of beastly maw is presumed dead.) 13:25: Relatable. 19:35: Yeah. Oh. 26:50: It's one thing to sleep through a crewmate dying of disease or something, quite another to sleep through them getting shot by a kraken. 31:30: _stares at window_ 33:30: Yes it is. 42:20: Well, by someone whose brother _was_ onboard. The _ropes!_ Random tips: 7:05: You should be able to identify two of the identities of two of those people, but it might not be obvious which is which. You need to pay close attention to little details in their respective titles and adornments. 9:20: Both work. So does "clubbed by a terrible beast," which is wonderful. 17:00: Exactly. 23:10: "Shot with a cannon by a terrible beast" is a valid response. You can also put the name of the guy who lit the fuse, but why would you want to do that if you could say _the kraken_ shot someone? 28:35: Eh...sort of? You associated the wrong photo with the corpse, though, which is bad. 39:10: Carrie is right; the zoom feature won't let you identify anyone whose faces are covered. It's possible to identify them by possessions lying around the hammock or bits sticking out, though. 47:05: "Fell overboard" is also accepted. And encouraged by some people.
I think the ones where the door follows the ship's orientation are the ones where it's set in a _real_ door, which would of course move with the ship...
@@mbpoblet Generally, yeah. But I like it more when it feels like something out of place in this time and space. I guess that's down to taste. (Less subjectively, I think it would be better if the door was either _always_ set into the architecture in the scene, if present, or if it _always_ felt out of place/otherworldly.)
NON-SPOILER (just helping explain a bit about the interface that's not perfectly explained): It seems like you're under the impression that you have to be looking at a corpse in "now" to identify it and what happened. You can do these at any time (in memories or in now). The game will warn you if it thinks your premature, but you can whenever you want. You can do this from the death page. You were looking for one of the cannon-victims but you don't need to see them to mark what happened. Also, like others have said, you can mark people as "unknown officer" "unknown passenger" etc, to help yourself keep notes. The deck map will be filled out with events as you discover them with arrows connectinf them. It's links to the events like a table of contents. Also, the watch's time refers to the chapter and scene which can be helpful in orienting yourself.
I love Stan Rodgers!! Me and my college buddies back in the day used to sing "Barrett's Privateers" all the time. For context, by back in the day I mean like.. 2013 lol
Honestly Love how you both picked up on how the smallest of details will be critical Later on, I haven't watched your playthrough of the game fully yet, but judging by later video titles its very interesting to see how you picked up on the detail early on.
11:58 *long suffering sign* Now I'm going to have to go listen to White Squall. And who knows how long the Stan Rogers rabbit hole will last before I return to finish this video! [Thanks for reminding me that was a thing, even if you didn't recall the name. ;) ]
So a few White Squalls (and many tears as I sang along at full volume, poor lads... "So I hadn't the heart to tell him that he should be on a line" ... *sobs*), then The Mary Ellen Carter, The Idiot, Northwest Passage, Barrett's Privateers, The Flowers of Bermuda and back to White Squall. Honestly, you're lucky I didn't get detoured into Stompin' Tom's Bluenose! XD Looking forward to the next reminder you give of great tunes with Canadian content! :D
30:05 requires you to to trust your own deductions and not require clear visual evidence of what happened. It's the game taking the training peddles off. The guy is right in front of a cannon that you know fires a few seconds later, killing the other guy next to him. What do you think happened to him then? He is not in the subsequent scene and is never seen again as this is where he died. The game doesn't ask you to find any bodies, it just asks how they died and who they were.
33:30 - It looks kinda like there might be a hole in the wall behind top-hat man, maybe the missing guy got launched through that? Edit: But then, there's no matching hole outside, like Carrie says... So... I got nothing.
It's ok Carrie, I would DEFINITELY react in the same way. While the fuzzy graphics and low grade colors HELP, living on a ship like this in these times was NOT easy, and these deaths were BRUTAL 😳😬🤭🚢🦑
I can think of half a dozen identities you're expected to figure out partly or entirely from manifest numbers off the top of my head. So...yeah, probably a lot less guesswork.
With Octopods being one of the most alien things on the planet, I would be terrified to ever encounter one the size of a kraken. Mainly because I'm pretty sure Squids are the only things that get large enough to menace whales, and they - blessedly - aren't nearly as intelligent as Octopi tend to be.
One quick note: After you see every memory/death scene, the guy manning the boat will yell about a storm coming in. This is just to let you know that there's nothing new to be seen, so don't leave the boat until you feel you're done. Also, White Squall.
![Haunted by That Man [Hollowtones/RTVS Fan Edit]](/img/n.gif)
This game taught me why "loose cannon" is a phrase
Newton can be a bitch if you're not careful...
"Nestle crunch!"
I was just thinking the same thing, how cool!
2:13 “edward nichols the terrible beast” foreshadowing👀
"Shot by squid" is definitely not something I expected to ever hear.
futurama had that
the game is generally good about allowing multiple correct answers; the game will accept both "clubbed by beast" and "crushed by rigging" as correct answers for Abigail's death
Yeah, the difficulty is more of a 'Sherlock Holmes did you notice the details' thing. If you have a decent idea of what happened to someone and take a reasonable guess, you'll be fine.
Absolutely. I definitely put down Abigail as clubbed by beast and the game accepted it.
Clubbed by beast and crushed by rigging
Shot with cannon by beast or shot with cannon by [person]
Crushed by cannon or crushed by beast.
Lots of freedom
If I remember right… [minor spoilers]
…
…
For the gentleman who was shot by the cannon, the game accepts as perpetrators both the beast who aimed the cannon and the person who lit the fuse. It also accepts "blasted in an explosion" even though the cannon is obviously more specific.
@@Ardub23 [Slightly larger spoilers]
If you list the man who lit the fuse, his estate is fined by the company for the murder of two crewmen. If you instead blame the _beast_ for _redirecting_ the lit cannon, the cannon-lighter being crushed by the beast during the faithful execution of his duties earns him (i.e. his widow, children, parents, whoever) a _reward_ instead. The pay he was due for the journey plus a good bit extra for his bravery and good work, if I recall correctly.
Note that you can open doors in the present as long as their keyholes don't have an X on them.
I remember in this game there was one guy I dubbed Gawker because he was in the back of almost every scene gawking and he ended up being the last person I had to identify by name and I was like "You! Gawker you've been the ---- the whole time!"
Little note for Dan and Carrie: Confirming that zooming in on people to "register" them isn't actually a mechanic in the game. Zooming is just for your own ability to identify people then and there. The book already has a register of everyone and their appearances in scenes, so don't worry about it!
It's also worth noting that several of the game's deaths have a bit of wiggle room to them. So for cases like the man crushed by the cannon being wielded by the squid, it would almost certainly mark BOTH 'beast' and 'loose cannon' as correct causes of death. So as long as your marked CoD is functionally accurate, you shouldn't need to stress too much about which one is MORE accurate.
I was watching this video like "Guys! It's not a pokedex! Just solve clues!"
Wanted to double check someone else said so before commenting. Don’t wanna harass them with advice, but this will hopefully help alleviate some stress from having to ping every character each time.
Don't apologize for your reactions to the bodies Carrie! Some of these are indeed quite unpleasant and I think it's only a natural response to it. I think the game is also meaning to present these in a shocking way.
Seconded! The very dramatic music supports that this is meant to be a shock. And the gruesome sound effects. And the very, very visceral voice acting. This one is certainly a challenge if you're not used to these kinds of things.
I mean, the game is rated M. So don’t expect any less please.
But it is pretty gross.
That's actually the reason I couldn't enjoy playing the game myself and went looking for a let's play. It's easier to stomach these with other people "present".
i was a little grossed out sometimes, but mostly i just felt a deep abiding sadness. the whole time i played the game, my heart went out to those people.
Honestly, It seems Lucas Pope took advantage of the artstyle to display some truly gruesome deaths that, had they been in color, would have been quite horrifying to look at. Like imagine the guy who was ripped in half, his internal organs and flesh held suspended in the moment of his death clear to see in HD. At least in black and white "1 bit" graphics it isn't stomach turning to examine.
Awesome!
Also, tip: the “unknown officer”, “unknown topman”, etc. entries are for placeholders. You can say “this guy is an officer, but I don’t know which one yet,” and come back to it later.
Yeah! this is such an important feature that I kicked myself for not understanding it earlier. It is a great way to make notes for certain characters.
Her realizing the hammocks are numbered when it took me forever? Man, they are very clever. It’s a small detail in a game with lots of small details.
I actually finished 100% and NEVER noticed that. Do the numbers help identifying anyone?
@@patafix534 Yeah, in a few cases. The numbered bunks let you definitively identify about 2 people, and it lets you narrow down other stuff. It's not necessary, especially if you're using the mechanics of the game, but it can lead to a few realizations.
@@Nana-ye6wp can I trust adiacent hammocks to have consecutive numbers even when I can't see them? Yes/no? :)
I think one of my favorite things about Return of the Obra Dinn is the connection you begin to develop with the passengers and members of the of the crew. I won't spoil anything, but I have individuals that I really liked and cared about and I was sad to see what happened to them. Then there were others who I thought were jerks and kinda though "good riddance" when I found their fates. Not only is this game a great exercise in mystery and deductive reasoning, but I got way more emotionally involved than I expected to.
"Something bad happened" is a great way to describe the plot of this game.
Regarding the "disappeared:" Some crewmembers don't get the whole compass/death scene treatment, and thus aren't needed to be solved to get the whole story, BUT they are needed for 100% completion. Since you don't get compass scenes, their fates have to be pieced together through what you see happening in other compass scenes.
Technically you need 100% completion to get the whole story
That’s a pocketwatch.
That's because narratively they didn't "die" in another scene or their body wasn't on the ship at the time of death.
everytime someone plays obra dinn on a gameplay series, youtube's compression algorithm has a stroke
It's an algorithm?
@@highdefinition450 yeah, It's an automated video quality thing. Might get better framerate in some places, but the pixels go into the single digits. (take this with a grain of salt, I'm not 100% sure)
42:40 Carrie literally making a scape-goat.
I mean, a _literal_ scapegoat in the original sense would require sacrificing another goat and driving the scapegoat into the wilderness. But yeah.
Fun fact: if you're holding the stopwatch as you're entering a new memory, you can click again to stop the process, and it plays a very fun little musical sting when you do this; it's very sudden and cool!
Though due to the instant entry on subsequent visits, this only works the first time you enter a death.
Non-spoilery tip: You don't have to get the exact cause of death the developer is looking for like old-fashioned point and click games, as long as you're roughly right you'll be marked correct. For example "fell overboard" and "drowned" are both acceptable entries for people who fell into the sea
I like that in a lot of cases here, "drowned" and "eaten by kraken" are also equivalent answers
EXCEPT FOR FOREIGN ENEMY FOR THE MERMAIDS AND CRAB MONSTERS!!!! Seriously though this was frustrating and caused me a lot of grief.
@@charteon9092 well, foreign enemy means a non-english ship I’m pretty sure
@@danieltube6344 probably but I would say that mermaids are a foreign enemy.
@@charteon9092 beast makes more sense imo but I see what you mean
2:21
...Carrie, I love you, but you’re definitely stretching for this pun.
Stretching in two directions at once!
brings a tear to my eye
In between Monday's episode and today's episode, I decided to try this game again with my boyfriend. My first attempt at the game, back when it launched, took about 4.5 hours and I gave up with only 18 fates determined. Our second attempt, we finished all 60 fates in just over 7 hours. Highly recommend having a second person to bounce ideas off of or to catch details that you might miss!
By the sound of things Dan, the crew voices are region accurate, so listen closely as it thins out the possible identities.
Re: 'gray area' deaths - there are quite a few deaths that have multiple correct answers. For Abigail, marking her as crushed by rigging or crushed by a beast will be considered correct, and whichever one you put it will be confirmed and no longer changeable once you have three fates confirmed.
I was wondering about that with their beast shoots cannon answer. I know I spent way too much time in my play through figuring out who lit the cannon.
You spent so long trying to find out who lit the canon so that the family could get fined and the family name tainted, instead of simply blaming it on the beast who took the already lit canon and redirected it somewhere else?
What a dick.
Some people liked to unlock all memories first and then start to backtrack to fill the book out, while others liked to try to figure out as much as possible before moving on to the next scenes. The advantage of the first method is it allow you to have a better context for everything, but it can make the latter half a bit daunting as you try to puzzle too many things at once. Trying earlier allow you to filter information better, as if a face is unblurred, it means you can already figure out without the latter hints, meaning the hint pool is more manageable (some identities become easier with latter clues, but many don't).
We'll rant and we'll roar, like true PlayFriend sailors
We'll rant and we'll roar, all through this playthrough
Until we strike soundings at the finale of this game
From Monday to Friday is 3 Extra Plays
This is a /criminally/ underrated comment-- it's so. good. :D
My one bit of advice is that I found it _extremely_ helpful to keep actual notes. The in-game book is good, but it doesn't allow you to take notes such as "This guy of whom I know the face, but not the name, and who also has a brother who died earlier, killed Lars Linde." You can only write the attacker down as "Unknown".
Furthermore, there were a couple of times where I found myself writing down a list of events to make sense of who went where, what they were doing, and so on, which helped immensely.
Also, in the present time, you can actually open a lot of the doors.
Agree! I played a couple of evenings with friends, we got throught a lot of scenes and solved like 9 fates. I decided to go ahead myself doing a bunch of boring* back and forth and copious taking of notes, and I am now sitting at a respectable 24. And I haven't even started on the hammock tags yet!
*boring like repeating 10 times the same dialogue to see if I can recognize voices/place accents/understand who's next to whom or speaking to whoever
I fumbled for how to put this in the first episode without it sounding like a back-handed compliment, but I think I got it now. Dan manning the controls combined with Carrie's powers of observation are a perfect pairing for this game. And leaps like the one she made about maiden name vs. married name are exactly the kind of thing a "typical gamer" might miss, but Carrie nails. This is probably the best co-op they've done.
Just to note, there are multiple "correct" answers for how people die that the game will accept, so don't get too hung up on EXACT causes of death. Usually if your close enough ("Crushed by rigging" / "clubbed by terrible beast" / etc. in this case), will be ball-park enough. If you have three people you think should get locked in but the game doesn't do it, I would guess generally the cause of death wouldn't be the issue (assuming you found a relatively obvious cause of death, and it's not someone you're guessing on).
With a couple of exceptions where the cause of death is either weird or obscured. To pick an example that isn't in the game, if someone takes an arrow to the knee and then falls on a knife, the proper cause of death would be "knifed," even if the arrow would have killed them given time.
@@timothymclean Well, yeah; if you shoot someone with terminal cancer in the head you're still going to jail for murder. 🤷♂️
@@mbpoblet Only if it's intentional. Which it wasn't in the case I'm thinking of, and which by now I hope other recent players of Obra Dinn will be able to recognize without me spoiling it.
@@timothymclean I know who you're talking about, but in that case there wasn't any indication that the first injury was lethal; the second one was _definitely_ what killed him, intentional or not.
(Though if I'm not mistaken specifying the first injury as the cause of death _is_ a valid option in this case; I don't recall if it affects the report at the end, though, but if it does it'd be a way to avoid laying the responsibility on the person who killed him, given that there's no way to specify if a homicide was intentional or not, and this one very obviously isn't).
@@mbpoblet The first injury isn't valid, and the second isn't even apparent unless you notice the-a small detail that might actually be a spoiler now that I mention it. And the first injury is of a type that's clearly been lethal before, so it's reasonable to assume this one would be too.
I'm actually enjoying that you two have zero idea what the different parts of a sailing ship are, and you come up with the most interesting descriptive names for them!
Just a quick spoiler free heads up. In order to get the "true ending" you need to correctly fill out every page in the book besides the The Bargain. Otherwise you get the "not true ending". It is definitely worth it! Also I am absolutely loving the series and you two make an adorable detective couple! Cheers!
To explain: You only see The Bargain if you fill in everything. If you're going for that, don't leave until the game tells you there's nothing more to do on the Obra Dinn.
for anyone who is wondering about the missing body of the other guy at 32:20
the thing that happened was that-since top-hat man was closest, the blast exiting the muzzle of the cannon was very tiny at that point, so it only vapourized the top of his body. the guy behind top-hat man was further away from the cannon mouth which means his entire body was caught in the RAPIDLY expanding cone of the explosion. there is no real corpse left behind because the man trying to save the first guy (top-hat man) was rendered down to mist. the only thing that *might* have been left would've probably been anything below the shins.
Just to confirm, the game accepts multiple causes of death as correct. Obviously you still need to sleuth out the correct names for everyone, but don't worry too much about exactly what caused someone's death when it's ambiguous. I believe which of the acceptable answers you choose changes a very minor bit of text at the very end of the game in some cases, but don't let that interfere with your job as an insurance claims officer :)
For anyone wondering, the referenced song about wearing a line is White Squall by Stan Rodgers
Saw the first episode, bought it and finished it today. Bloody amazing, and really difficult, but in a good way.
38:10 the look of concern on that one sailors face is hilarious considering he didn’t know about the tentacles yet
To be fair, I'd also be concerned if I heard someone making those noises in the bathroom.
Dan! Don't run away from a revealed corpse to explore "what else I have available right now!" Always, follow trails, so that an entry gets added to the book, because that records the corpse. Otherwise, it becomes very hard to track which corpses you've explored and which you haven't, when the spaces get filled up.
You can always see which you've explored because they're filled out in the book. And the deck map shows a line connecting all the events so you can re-trace steps on one screen.
This is a weirdly great combination of the vibe of Sunless Seas and the aesthetic of old school Oregon Trail. Love it.
Here's something to think about with the cannon deaths. (Might be considered lightly spoilery, but this is an unintuitive thing that a lot of people get hung up on)
The pocketwatch shows you the *exact* moment of a person's death. If the book lists two people as dying in the same moment, what might that suggest about the causes of those deaths?
Plus, we saw him standing behind the person who got shot by the cannon immediatly before the cannon was fired.
Spoiler:
While the "shot by cannon" cause of death is accepted, I don't believe it. It is extremely unlikely he was shot in a way that pushed him overboard. You can however hear a scream before the cannon is shot and i believe the tentacle behind him grabbed him before the cannon was shot. That would mean he should be counted as a disappearance, and that's exactly what should have happened since we don't have a body to determine the cause of death. I mean if we're seeing the exact moment someone dies, that means he died at the same time as the guy whose head got blow off, even though he was technically shot after, AND enough time had passed for his body to go out of the boat. These two people should not be on the same page, they didn't die at the same time, we can't see his body, so we don't know exactly how he died.
This would have been so much cooler to just solve the first guys case quick and easy, see the second guy in the next scene and wonder why they weren't there before (after), and then seeing him in the disappearances, so you go back to that scene and hear him scream while he's flung out the window. Instead, everyone just gets confused when they see two people died but only one body. That, the tattoo guy and the fourth mate and bosun's mate not being marked as identifiable sooner are the only problems I see with this game.
not a spoiler i think, but the lil watch's hands indicate chapter and body, so a sorta time of death kinda thing. the hour hand is chapter, minute hand is part/order of deaths in chapter. might help track things a bit if not obvious.
As a little tip, it’s well worth your time to go do some learning in the glossary section of the book.
A potential time saver, you don't need to find the people present, they are automatically highlighted in the photo on the relevant page.
Like a few others, saw ep. 1, bought and completed the game already and highly enjoyed. So excited to see how you discover and uncover the story.
Just because they are highlighted doesn't mean it's not important to find them. That guy falling overboard is highlighted in the book, yet if you don't find him, you don't know what happened to him. It helps to be thorough when looking at a memory. You think you've seen everything, then you realize there are actually two more people in that me memory you never saw, so you know you have to look a bit more.
You really do though. While not really applicable in chapters such as The End, The Doom, and The Escape, you’ll otherwise find many of the people just generally being in places or doing stuff you’d expect someone of their role on the ship to do.
I love how they nickname everyone that they don’t know the name of.
25:41 for some fates where you can call the death numerous things, the game will accept those as correct. Abigail is one of those, which the game accepts "Crushed by Rigging", "Crushed by a Terrible Beast", and "Clubbed by a Terrible Beast"
So since this series is all wrapped up I have to say this is the fastest I’ve seen anybody spot the hammock tags. Very impressive!
32:51 You do know he died at about the same time as "hat guy", so he might have been obliterated by the canon, or blown out the window (or grabbed by the kraken), -or maybe blown into the bosunmate's room- [EDIT: no, just saw that there's no hole, looks like the cannonball, with possibly him in tow, went out the side of the ship], or, given that a cannonball presumably went through him and those tend to cause some damage, maybe any combination thereof...
I'd bet he's the blood splat on the wall behind hat guy.
How is it possible that these two are making investigation of horrible deaths adorably wholesome?
When a death is open for interpretation, usually all interpretations are correct.
For Abigail, clubbed by beast and crushed by rigging, both were correct
A tip: it’s helpful to focus on finding out someone’s identity as soon as they’re face becomes unblurry, because it means the key piece of information is probably in the flashback you just saw, and it also means that you minimize the number of other flashbacks you look through for clues.
I am fascinated by this game, but I feel like I wouldn't have the patience to piece every detail together, so I'm happy to watch you two puzzle this out.
Spoiler warning
2:10 Carrie having a premonition of the future
I did not notice the numbers in the manifest are used to determine the sailors' sleeping locations until my second playthrough, so the fact that you noticed it in your first playthrough is amazing. I keep randomly guessing until the game confirmed it lol.
Someone should keep a list of all of the hilarious nicknames our dynamic detective duo are giving these unfortunate souls
Dang, that's a good idea.
28:10 “Seems like the squid’s the loose cannon around here.” YEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH
18:28 "It really was a mess back here" I lol'd at the unintentional pun
Beast would've worked too when picking Abigail's fate. If a fate seems like you could enter two different options, the game will usually register either one as correct.
There are absolutely people who you will have to identify by guesses and process of elimination. One corpse I managed to identify by looking at his shoes.
One thing that’s good to know is that the game often accepts multiple causes of death, so don’t be afraid to try what seems logical to you. For example, both “crushed by rigging” and “clubbed by a beast” are acceptable for Abigail’s death.
Considering that the guy who was "shot by a terrible beast" was hit point blank... I'm surprised there's so much of him left.
Also, Carrie, you're having a normal reaction to this kinda stuff. It's much more up my alley to have people bits lying around like this, so I don't even blink at it.
Thanks for playing. I finally see where my last entry was actually killed in the memories.
Hat dude and knife man sound like good friends
2:08 "Edward Nichols: The Terrible Beast!"
... well, you're not wrong
I'm impressed they noticed the hammock numbering long before the scene where it's actually important
SQUIDBERT! You must start following the rules like the rest of us!
Another scene like that and you're off the case.
Carrie, you're not doing anything to apologize for. It's been nice to see you so often, so to speak. I'm very much looking forward to more mystery with you guys.
Just a quick correction. You are not a detective. You are a claims adjuster. Someone in your last comment section was very sad, because they are working in that profession and are happy to see it represented in a game. ;)
sfx: *sound of shit being squeezed out of a man like he's a toothpaste tube*
The Stan Rogers song about the Great Lakes and how they can rapidly become so dangerously violent is "White Squall"
I was so frustrated and curious about how the mystery went that I picked up the game and binged the entire thing between yesterday and today! Super fun, glad you two are playing it.
I didn't even look up any hints (except for the last 3 people before the secret chapter but shhhhh)
Tip: Don't just go from one new scene to the next, take a bit of time to look at the unblurred faces and muse on them, see how many of those you can figure out before you move on. Particularly before you go to new chapters.
0:35: I'd like to remind everyone that Return of the Obra Dinn poses serious risk of harshing your vibe.
15:20: Sometimes the doorway is vertical regardless of the pitching deck, and I like that. It makes the door seem more otherworldly. But occasionally it tilts with the entire ship, and that bugs me.
20:30: That's fair. Death is also unpleasant.
36:36: I am both curious about and utterly terrified of learning what they did for those sound effects. Seems like a crappy job.
2:20: ...no, it's a Carrie pun. Not in the least because _all_ beasts in this game are terrible. (Except the cow.)
10:50: For a certain definition of _life_ boat. (Spoiler alert: Everyone who was thrown into the water where a kraken was thrashing its myriad limbs and probably some kind of beastly maw is presumed dead.)
13:25: Relatable.
19:35: Yeah. Oh.
26:50: It's one thing to sleep through a crewmate dying of disease or something, quite another to sleep through them getting shot by a kraken.
31:30: _stares at window_
33:30: Yes it is.
42:20: Well, by someone whose brother _was_ onboard. The _ropes!_
Random tips:
7:05: You should be able to identify two of the identities of two of those people, but it might not be obvious which is which. You need to pay close attention to little details in their respective titles and adornments.
9:20: Both work. So does "clubbed by a terrible beast," which is wonderful.
17:00: Exactly.
23:10: "Shot with a cannon by a terrible beast" is a valid response. You can also put the name of the guy who lit the fuse, but why would you want to do that if you could say _the kraken_ shot someone?
28:35: Eh...sort of? You associated the wrong photo with the corpse, though, which is bad.
39:10: Carrie is right; the zoom feature won't let you identify anyone whose faces are covered. It's possible to identify them by possessions lying around the hammock or bits sticking out, though.
47:05: "Fell overboard" is also accepted. And encouraged by some people.
I think the ones where the door follows the ship's orientation are the ones where it's set in a _real_ door, which would of course move with the ship...
@@mbpoblet Generally, yeah. But I like it more when it feels like something out of place in this time and space. I guess that's down to taste. (Less subjectively, I think it would be better if the door was either _always_ set into the architecture in the scene, if present, or if it _always_ felt out of place/otherworldly.)
15:53 lots of lines, UA-cam is screaming.
15:55 mostly black, UA-cam gives you crisp sharp lines. XD
2 years later, I have added squoktopus to my regular vocabulary at this point.
33:30 You can't see anything there, but there is a loud crunching noise in the sound cue.
"Edward Nichols: a terrible beast."
I mean, yeah, correct, true.
It's very fun watching you guys play this since you quickly make connections. (Like the fancy hats)
The book's glossary is worth referencing when trying to identify people. I used it a few times during my play through.
You're a loose cannon, Kraken, but dammit you get the job done
"seems like the squid's the loose cannon around here" - :D :D :D
I'm glad I started watching this. It went from Antichamber to Otherland in the course of two episodes.
NON-SPOILER (just helping explain a bit about the interface that's not perfectly explained):
It seems like you're under the impression that you have to be looking at a corpse in "now" to identify it and what happened. You can do these at any time (in memories or in now). The game will warn you if it thinks your premature, but you can whenever you want. You can do this from the death page. You were looking for one of the cannon-victims but you don't need to see them to mark what happened.
Also, like others have said, you can mark people as "unknown officer" "unknown passenger" etc, to help yourself keep notes.
The deck map will be filled out with events as you discover them with arrows connectinf them. It's links to the events like a table of contents.
Also, the watch's time refers to the chapter and scene which can be helpful in orienting yourself.
Really cool detail is that the watch indicates what chapter and part a body is for using its hands when you go back to it!
I love Stan Rodgers!! Me and my college buddies back in the day used to sing "Barrett's Privateers" all the time.
For context, by back in the day I mean like.. 2013 lol
Here to acknowledge the “tear”-ible pun. Brilliant
33:10 Maybe he got blasted with the cannonball through the wall into the next room?
So stange to see carry during the week! Its sutch a treat!
"The boat.....THAT ROCKED!" - Pirate radio
I just love the word squoctopus so very much
“Edward Nichols, the terrible beast.” Well, she’s not wrong?
Honestly Love how you both picked up on how the smallest of details will be critical Later on, I haven't watched your playthrough of the game fully yet, but judging by later video titles its very interesting to see how you picked up on the detail early on.
11:58 *long suffering sign* Now I'm going to have to go listen to White Squall. And who knows how long the Stan Rogers rabbit hole will last before I return to finish this video!
[Thanks for reminding me that was a thing, even if you didn't recall the name. ;) ]
So a few White Squalls (and many tears as I sang along at full volume, poor lads... "So I hadn't the heart to tell him that he should be on a line" ... *sobs*), then The Mary Ellen Carter, The Idiot, Northwest Passage, Barrett's Privateers, The Flowers of Bermuda and back to White Squall.
Honestly, you're lucky I didn't get detoured into Stompin' Tom's Bluenose! XD
Looking forward to the next reminder you give of great tunes with Canadian content! :D
30:05 requires you to to trust your own deductions and not require clear visual evidence of what happened. It's the game taking the training peddles off.
The guy is right in front of a cannon that you know fires a few seconds later, killing the other guy next to him. What do you think happened to him then? He is not in the subsequent scene and is never seen again as this is where he died.
The game doesn't ask you to find any bodies, it just asks how they died and who they were.
Impressive how they noticed the three people in the row boat were the ones to get tossed overboard.
33:30 - It looks kinda like there might be a hole in the wall behind top-hat man, maybe the missing guy got launched through that? Edit: But then, there's no matching hole outside, like Carrie says... So... I got nothing.
It's ok Carrie, I would DEFINITELY react in the same way. While the fuzzy graphics and low grade colors HELP, living on a ship like this in these times was NOT easy, and these deaths were BRUTAL 😳😬🤭🚢🦑
You can open some doors on the ship, just not in the memories.
Pink mist: when someone gets shot or blown up so hard they literally turn into spray and stop being arms and legs and stuff.
Oh wow, good eye. I didn’t notice the hammock tags in my play through. Probably would have made some of the more obscure IDs a lot easier.
I can think of half a dozen identities you're expected to figure out partly or entirely from manifest numbers off the top of my head. So...yeah, probably a lot less guesswork.
You're a loose cannon, Squoctopus, but you're a damned good cop!
All I’m going to say that mix and matching names for the people of same nationality and position is a valid strategy.
With Octopods being one of the most alien things on the planet, I would be terrified to ever encounter one the size of a kraken. Mainly because I'm pretty sure Squids are the only things that get large enough to menace whales, and they - blessedly - aren't nearly as intelligent as Octopi tend to be.
One quick note: After you see every memory/death scene, the guy manning the boat will yell about a storm coming in. This is just to let you know that there's nothing new to be seen, so don't leave the boat until you feel you're done.
Also, White Squall.
Carrie: "We're missing a body."
Me, quietly: "-ody ody ody"