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logger
Jun 28, 2008

...and in what manner the Ancyent Marinere came back to his own Country.
Soiled Meat

Sockser posted:

I still have yet to see an adequate explanation on sorting out the Chinese topmen

There are 3 different types of shoes that they wear, one of them is white, two are fully covering the feet, and one is more square cut where the feet go in. You can identify the name of the person to their shoes for the unique ones in the scene 'A Bitter Cold Part 1' by matching their number on their hammock to the shoes and then using the scene 'Murder Part 2' and 'Soldiers of the Sea Part 4' to match the faces to the name. With the ones with matching shoes you can work out who they are by investigating 'The Doom' and finding the hammock somewhere in the chapter that belongs to a Chinese topman since he is the last one of them alive. The missing one will be the final Chinese topman you need to identify.

MockingQuantum posted:

And I know who the two female passengers are that escape on a boat, but is there something that will indicate to me what their fate is? There's three or four places that they reasonably could have sailed to, am I expected to just guess, or does something point me to the right answer?

You can deduce the fate of one of the people taking the lifeboat before you even leave the boat bringing you to the Obra Dinn after getting the book and compass, use that knowledge to find the fates of the others.

logger fucked around with this message at 10:47 on Apr 30, 2020

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Carbolic
Apr 19, 2007

This song is about how America chews the working man up and spits him in the dirt to die
I will say that the hammock numbers felt a bit cheap. You spend most of the game looking for little clues here and there, and then the same type of clue is used to crack open a big chunk of the names. Also it's a little immersion-breaking. Like everyone just has a convenient number on their hammock that matches their number in the crew manifest? That doesn't exactly feel like something you'd see on a real 19th century ship, why can't my game about a magic time-travel compass be more historically accurate?

Mr. Fall Down Terror
Jan 24, 2018

by Fluffdaddy

Carbolic posted:

I will say that the hammock numbers felt a bit cheap. You spend most of the game looking for little clues here and there, and then the same type of clue is used to crack open a big chunk of the names. Also it's a little immersion-breaking. Like everyone just has a convenient number on their hammock that matches their number in the crew manifest? That doesn't exactly feel like something you'd see on a real 19th century ship, why can't my game about a magic time-travel compass be more historically accurate?

that is exactly how they did it back then. hammocks were used to efficiently pack away all the crew you needed, because the hammocks could be stored away during daytime and the sleeping space converted into working space. you were a VIP if you got your own dedicated sleeping/personal space, and you were real big poo poo if you had an actual bed to sleep in and not just a hammock closet. since space was so tight, everyone who slept in a hammock in the common area was assigned a hammock number so that there wouldn't be fights over the best hammock spots

irl the hammock number you were assigned may not correspond to any roster but you'd definitely be told "you hang your hammock on hook 141" or whatever. making the hammock number correspond to the ship's manifest is a little video gamey but it's not unreasonable. overall the game is stunningly accurate for age of sail stuff. for example, if you know what a french naval shirt looks like you can identify the bosun's mate the moment you see him. and here's another subtle little detail - you can confirm someone has died if you are unsure of their identity because post death their hammocks won't get hung up anymore

MockingQuantum posted:

And I know who the two female passengers are that escape on a boat, but is there something that will indicate to me what their fate is? There's three or four places that they reasonably could have sailed to, am I expected to just guess, or does something point me to the right answer?

some of the clues are subtle and easy to miss

in this case, you'll need to look at the book. from where was it mailed to you? who is the author? does this person mention anyone who was with them? when does this person leave the boat, and who are they with?

Doctor Spaceman
Jul 6, 2010

"Everyone's entitled to their point of view, but that's seriously a weird one."
The fact that Midshipmen were teenagers is another useful bit of trivia that lets you work some things out quicker than you otherwise could.

Triskelli
Sep 27, 2011

I AM A SKELETON
WITH VERY HIGH
STANDARDS


luxury handset posted:

for example, if you know what a french naval shirt looks like you can identify the bosun's mate

this pissed me off when I finally figured it out. Of course the dude in black stripes is French. Plus it doesn’t help that he’s torn apart by the squid offscreen while there’s a much more blatant onscreen dude who suffers the same fate

Hempuli
Nov 16, 2011



After watching some Let's Plays I was really happy that I fairly quickly correctly guessed who's Maba. All in all though I really really regret assuming that brute-forcing is a valid strategy and not forcing myself to spend more time not doing that; you can only experience the game once and while I'm sure I wouldn't have been able to get all the names right, being more restrained with guesses would've made the whole experience last longer and be more memorable. :(

Sockser
Jun 28, 2007

This world only remembers the results!




logger posted:

There are 3 different types of shoes that they wear, one of them is white, two are fully covering the feet, and one is more square cut where the feet go in. You can identify the name of the person to their shoes for the unique ones in the scene 'A Bitter Cold Part 1' by matching their number on their hammock to the shoes and then using the scene 'Murder Part 2' and 'Soldiers of the Sea Part 4' to match the faces to the name. With the ones with matching shoes you can work out who they are by investigating 'The Doom' and finding the hammock somewhere in the chapter that belongs to a Chinese topman since he is the last one of them alive. The missing one will be the final Chinese topman you need to identify.


You can deduce the fate of one of the people taking the lifeboat before you even leave the boat bringing you to the Obra Dinn after getting the book and compass, use that knowledge to find the fates of the others.

I know it's the shoes but I've never been able to piece together what the gently caress I was looking at outside of the hammock scene

I definitely think that chunk is the most weakly-designed

xthetenth
Dec 30, 2012

Mario wasn't sure if this Jeb guy was a good influence on Yoshi.

Triskelli posted:

this pissed me off when I finally figured it out. Of course the dude in black stripes is French. Plus it doesn’t help that he’s torn apart by the squid offscreen while there’s a much more blatant onscreen dude who suffers the same fate

Blue, actually

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost

Sockser posted:

I know it's the shoes but I've never been able to piece together what the gently caress I was looking at outside of the hammock scene

I definitely think that chunk is the most weakly-designed

My problem with that part isn't that it's undoable, it's that it's not fun.

Chev
Jul 19, 2010
Switchblade Switcharoo
It's absolutely fun for some people in the same way that, say, identifying the russians based on where they were sitting in that one scene is, or telling people apart based on uniforms or accents or bullet trajectories or a proper reading of the introductory text. The whole game is about wringing out names and deaths from every little bit of context you can find, and discovering how many things can actually be bits of context, socks included. But going into the "it's not fun" debate is absolutely something where people's mileages will vary a lot as different people enjoy different kinds of puzzles. It sure was tons of fun to me, but to be more accurate, it's some of the most fun I'd had since blind playthroughs of The Witness and La-Mulana, approaches that will be anathema and very much not fun to many other people.

Chev fucked around with this message at 23:58 on May 2, 2020

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost
Oh, I mean 95% of the bullshit was fun for me. But that specifically tipped it over and it felt like the pacing slowed to a crawl while I still had a true ending to get to. I wouldn't have minded so much but some of the models are pretty hard to tell apart and at a point I felt I was wrestling more with the game than the puzzle.

Molybdenum
Jun 25, 2007
Melting Point ~2622C
reading the aubrey/maturin book series helps a lot with this game.

i really liked this game, enough that I bought about a dozen copies on steam and gave them away to friends.

oldpainless
Oct 30, 2009

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Really enjoyed going through this game with another person who thinks differently than I. We were able to get everything through our combined efforts. Is there a mod where I can change names so the good ship Fat Dong is captained by Dick Hardcock?

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

luxury handset posted:

irl the hammock number you were assigned may not correspond to any roster but you'd definitely be told "you hang your hammock on hook 141" or whatever.
this is actually exactly how the EIC did things later on in its existence, i learned as a direct result of playing this game. which, in hindsight, makes sense. it was basically a shadowrun megacorp and did its best to reduce everyone to numbers and data without the benefit of nanites and supercomputers. each boat's crew manifest would have exactly the required number of crewmen for optimum efficiency and each one of those numbers needed to correspond to a specific role on the boat. a boat like the obra dinn would be told that you have exactly this many seamen, exactly this many topmen, and exactly this many midshipmen, etc. and no, you couldn't enlist this entirely qualified old salt as a topman in a seaman role, that meant you had to pay him more and you weren't cleared for that budget!!

the main video gamey thing with regard to the crew is that the obra dinn just ~happened~ to have a full complement of passengers aboard when it's not a passenger vessel. all ships had a little space to take a few folks along, but without a full complement of passengers there would've needed to be blank lines or skipped numbers, which would have been confusing. realistically, it was quite rare for a cargo vessel to have a full complement of passengers because passage wasn't cheap and the captains didn't exactly work hard to fill those berths.

SpitztheGreat
Jul 20, 2005
Bought this game the other day from the Steam Summer Sale, and it's been a great change of pace. I'm not particularly good at these games, so I take forever, but I like the challenge. On the first pass over I only got like 15-18 of the crew/passengers. But patiently going back and forth, a little trial and error, I've pieced it together pretty good. I was frustrated trying to figure out the 3rd and 4th mates, and the Gunner's Mate. They're in a lot of scenes, and they have a pretty interconnected story. Finally the Gunner's Mate clicked for me, and it started a nice little run where I was able to rattle off one or two sets of 3. It's one of those games where if you can just get one set of 3 locked in (or even just one person that you're "sure" of) the dominoes can fall. I still have a ton of work to do, I'm at 36 confirmed right now but I'll probably be playing this game for another week or two to get it 100%.

Party Boat
Nov 1, 2007

where did that other dog come from

who is he


I'm really jealous of anyone experiencing this game for the first time. Take your time with it and enjoy it!

Carbolic
Apr 19, 2007

This song is about how America chews the working man up and spits him in the dirt to die

Party Boat posted:

I'm really jealous of anyone experiencing this game for the first time. Take your time with it and enjoy it!

Someone gotta invent Eternal Sunshine of the Obra Dinn Mind.

breadshaped
Apr 1, 2010


Soiled Meat
Really enjoyed this little game. I was in a bit of a rut before I figured out the numbered hammocks and then that you can identify some crew members from their shoes, felt really good :beerpal:

I did a tiny bit of randomly assigning names of people until I got a hit though when it came to groups of people I knew they belonged to but not necessarily the specific person.

Vichan
Oct 1, 2014

I'LL PUNISH YOU ACCORDING TO YOUR CRIME
I can't get this game out of my head and the fact that there aren't really any games quite like it keeps making me sad. :(

breadshaped
Apr 1, 2010


Soiled Meat

Vichan posted:

I can't get this game out of my head and the fact that there aren't really any games quite like it keeps making me sad. :(

Lucas Pope is Lucas Pope for a reason!

xiw
Sep 25, 2011

i wake up at night
night action madness nightmares
maybe i am scum

Cpig Haiku contest 2020 winner
https://twitter.com/dukope/status/1317635107432267776?s=19

Hogama
Sep 3, 2011
https://twitter.com/dukope/status/1366548236756914177

Benagain
Oct 10, 2007

Can you see that I am serious?
Fun Shoe
Just beat the game, love it, yadda yadda, spoiler question about the captain's steward

So during Unholy Captives part...2 I think, you can see the captain's steward angrily storming away while the rest of the crew goes to check out the sweet mermaid. Which to me means he maybe has seen this poo poo before and that's why he tried to break into the lazarette? But he seemed fairly chill about being imprisoned with them, which was weird.

also my wife caught this first, almost every time somebody mentions a shell around the mermaids they kill somebody. It's really noticeable in unholy captives, 'shell' is almost always the last word before someone gets spiked

tokenbrownguy
Apr 1, 2010

Just picked this up. Got a couple hours in and -- spoilers for just after the first bit of medical stuff slash the Soldier's chapter:

The loving Squid was awesome in the classical sense of the word, but I just found the guy in the cubby space outside the ?orlop deck? at the start of the Soldier's Chapter. I'm all, "what's this dude spying on, oh huh someone had boarded, or maybe it was the mutineers, let's just take a look-WHAT THE CHRIST."

tokenbrownguy fucked around with this message at 09:23 on May 10, 2021

Hempuli
Nov 16, 2011



tokenbrownguy posted:

Just picked this up. Got a couple hours in and -- spoilers for just after the first bit of medical stuff slash the Soldier's chapter:

The loving Squid was awesome in the classical sense of the word, but I just found the guy in the cubby space outside the ?orlop deck? at the start of the Soldier's Chapter. I'm all, "what's this dude spying on, oh huh someone had boarded, or maybe it was the mutineers, let's just take a look-WHAT THE CHRIST."

The game has a couple of those kinds of moments and I really wish I could experience them again :allears:

Vichan
Oct 1, 2014

I'LL PUNISH YOU ACCORDING TO YOUR CRIME

tokenbrownguy posted:

Just picked this up. Got a couple hours in and -- spoilers for just after the first bit of medical stuff slash the Soldier's chapter:

The loving Squid was awesome in the classical sense of the word, but I just found the guy in the cubby space outside the ?orlop deck? at the start of the Soldier's Chapter. I'm all, "what's this dude spying on, oh huh someone had boarded, or maybe it was the mutineers, let's just take a look-WHAT THE CHRIST."

The sound design really shines through in that chapter.

tokenbrownguy
Apr 1, 2010

Hempuli posted:

The game has a couple of those kinds of moments and I really wish I could experience them again :allears:

I regret needing sleep.

Vichan posted:

The sound design really shines through in that chapter.

THE DRUMS.

oldpainless
Oct 30, 2009

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RAID💥: SHADOW LEGENDS 👥 - It's for your phone📲TM™ #ad📢

I’m rarely someone who really notices or remembers music in games but Obra Dinn is an exception. The game would be noticeably less an experience without such good music.

tokenbrownguy
Apr 1, 2010

Hah, speaking of, I was wrong:

THE BELLS. Also gently caress this cursed ship. Poor bastards.

tokenbrownguy
Apr 1, 2010

I don't trust this goat.

Hempuli
Nov 16, 2011



tokenbrownguy posted:

Hah, speaking of, I was wrong:

THE BELLS. Also gently caress this cursed ship. Poor bastards.

Are you currently still on your first playthrough?

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tokenbrownguy
Apr 1, 2010

Yep.

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