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Mraagvpeine posted:I'm watching the video right now and I can understand your confusion about the ship listing 60 people, seeing as how I made that same mistake. You see, the game never mentions this, but apparently the ship set sailed from London, where the artist made that sketch of the majority of the crew and passengers, and made a pit stop at Falmouth where the first tragedy struck. I assumed that the ship left from London without needing to look at any website. But that doesn't mean much. Falmouth is still in England, and the game says "There were 60 people on the ship when it left England." If the ship went from one city in England to another city in England, even if it had to travel through the English Channel, I would hardly say that it had "left England" when there was a distinct non-England destination yet to be embarked toward.
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Feb 5, 2022 23:19
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Maybe Pope should have written, "embarked in England." to clear up that particular thing. But it feels like a minor wording error.
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Feb 6, 2022 06:03
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cant cook creole bream posted:Maybe Pope should have written, "embarked in England." to clear up that particular thing. But it feels like a minor wording error. Yeah, I took it to be "You, the insurance adjuster, must account for the 60 people on this list. We don't give two shits about anyone or anything else, because they're not insured."
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Feb 6, 2022 06:27
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60 people were officially on the ship. Then the ship came back with 0 people on it (and one mermaid off it). Your job is to resolve the discrepancy. It is true that it's not always clear what information is diegetic and what isn't.
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Feb 6, 2022 08:29
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The stowaway is NOT accounted for in the 60 deaths. Much like the crab in the other storage nook is not counted towards the 60 deaths. There is also the (likely, imo) possibility that the crew and the port authority did not know about the stowaway in the barrel, even after the incident. Now, Henry Evans is the source of a circled "you will find a body here" note in the book. So HE knew about it at some point. I would probably say it's possible Henry learned that information during a time where there wasn't a whole lot of manpower to take care of a small problem of a stowaway body, most likely between Soldiers of the Sea and The Doom. Otherwise, there was probably ample time and manpower before then to dump useless things overboard, like the body of a stowaway in a barrel. My circumstantial evidence for this, is that the barrel the stowaway is in, is stored away properly in the hold with the body still in it. Remember, the cargo incident also killed the stowaway, directly or indirectly. If the stowaway was identified in the barrel in port, it is more likely that the ship crew would have removed the barrel and the corpse/person. It is also possible, that the reason the stowaway barrel wasn't inspected was because it wasn't leaking/spilling cargo/provisions, and in an effort to make up for lost time (because one cargo accident death isn't enough to cancel an East India Company shipment) a loose inspection of the damage was employed, and the barrel wasn't damaged enough to warrant scrutiny. Now, a decaying body will certainly cause a stink, after a time. However, I would say the Obra Dinn didn't make it far enough in the intended journey for the stench of one body to stand out against the stench of mass death that was engulfing the ship around the time of The Calling/Unholy Cargo.
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Feb 6, 2022 08:50
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My idea of the betrayal timeline: 1 Kraken attack / Phillips dies at unclear relative order. 2 Captain goes down to attack the mermaids. 3 Abigal dies. 4 Martin runs down and informs the captain. 5 Captain tells Martin to take over the mermaid issue and throw them overboard. 6 Martin gathers some dudes to carry the mermaid, gets stabbed, asks the mermaid to bring the ship home. The kraken leaves at some unclear time during this and we never know which of those actions called off the kraken, which is cool and fits the game's mood. 7 Evans arranges for the literal monkey's paw.
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Feb 6, 2022 15:38
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It always looked to me like Filip taking the shell out was what started Soldiers Of The Sea. If putting it in the mercury was enough to subdue all of the mermaids, it would make sense if taking them out would re-awaken them enough for them to start calling out for aid. What I would guess happened is that Witterel took the shells from the dead bodies of the mermaids he shot and threw them overboard, and that's what called off the Kraken, but he didn't spot that Filip was holding one too. He might also have been the one to order the bargain with the remaining mermaid too - freeing her in return for safe passage home. Which might explain why he didn't explain his intentions to the rest of the crew; he didn't want to worry them with the fact that he'd made a bargain with the unholy creatures that almost sank the ship (which unfortunately left them assuming he was just consigning them all to death, since they didn't know the threat was over). Or, possibly, he did explain that, and that's why everyone ended up mutinying, though in that case I'd have thought it would get mentioned in the End. The mermaid then made good on her end of the bargain and brought the ship back to England, but since no one was actually sailing the thing it took her a couple of years to drift it there on the currents. Then she destroyed it, possibly out of spite. As for recovering the cargo, the EIC probably didn't have any idea what condition any of the ship and its cargo was in, so they just sent the one inspector to scout the place and see if it's in a condition to sail or salvage. Perhaps if it hadn't sank straight after, they'd have come back with a crew to bring it in based on your report. Tenebrais fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Feb 6, 2022 |
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Feb 6, 2022 17:03
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Bootcha posted:There is also the (likely, imo) possibility that the crew and the port authority did not know about the stowaway in the barrel, even after the incident. I'd call it guaranteed rather than just likely. That discussion will be in the next video. Bootcha posted:Now, Henry Evans is the source of a circled "you will find a body here" note in the book. So HE knew about it at some point. But this was part of what I was talking about in this video - we don't know how the book works. Despite Dr. Evans saying that he had produced the outline of the events, it's impossible for him to have organized the last several pages of the book, because he didn't witness those events and didn't have access to any corpses that could have shown him what had happened. For that matter, we don't know how he found out that the Obra Dinn had returned, or was about to return, to know to send the case containing the book and the watch to the Company. We don't know what instructions were included with the case, or who received those instructions, and how that led to our character boarding the Obra Dinn alone. We can be reasonably sure that the inspector didn't know what was in the case beforehand, but did know that it was instrumental to the investigation, whatever it was. We can obviously assume some level of supernatural existence in the story overall, as neither the pocketwatch nor the book conform to reality as we understand it, so once we get to that point, it becomes impossible to make meaningfully conclusive statements about anything. The Obra Dinn equivalent of "A wizard did it" will always prevail. Qrr posted:It is true that it's not always clear what information is diegetic and what isn't. In short, this. I have no idea how the tutorial information is presented to the insurance adjuster, and I doubt it will be particularly practical to concern myself with it. All I wanted to say, in terms of the 60 people thing, is that I don't think we can trust the framework that the game presents to be true in its implications as well as in its facts. The things that are shown to be true are true, but the things that are only implied to be true are suspect. Tenebrais posted:What I would guess happened is that Witterel took the shells from the dead bodies of the mermaids he shot and threw them overboard, and that's what called off the Kraken, but he didn't spot that Filip was holding one too. Possible, but again, that would mean that he threatened to kill all of the mermaids if the attack didn't stop; the attack didn't stop; and he left one mermaid alive despite his threats, to go throw the shells overboard in the mere hope that it would end the attack. The big assumption here is that he was aware that the third mermaid didn't have a shell. It's possible that he counted them and noticed that while they were being brought on board the ship, but how could he be sure which one it was that didn't have the shell? He certainly didn't seem to be following them down while they locked the mermaids up. And surely he would have at least entertained the possibility that the third mermaid had a shell he simply hadn't seen earlier. The idea that he would stop short of killing the third mermaid while the kraken was still attacking the ship simply doesn't make sense to me. He killed the first one pretty much as soon as he'd entered the lazarette, as far as I can tell, just to show them he meant business. If he DID suspect that throwing the shells overboard would stop the attack, it wouldn't matter whether he killed the third mermaid first or not. So I'm quite convinced that the attack ended after he killed the second mermaid, and that if he did indeed throw the two shells he found overboard (which is more likely than I may have led people to think with my arguments in the video), it wasn't to stop an ongoing attack, but rather to prevent any further attacks, perhaps in case the third mermaid managed to escape the cage and get at one of them.
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Feb 6, 2022 18:53
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Nidoking posted:But this was part of what I was talking about in this video - we don't know how the book works. Despite Dr. Evans saying that he had produced the outline of the events, it's impossible for him to have organized the last several pages of the book, because he didn't witness those events and didn't have access to any corpses that could have shown him what had happened. For that matter, we don't know how he found out that the Obra Dinn had returned, or was about to return, to know to send the case containing the book and the watch to the Company. We don't know what instructions were included with the case, or who received those instructions, and how that led to our character boarding the Obra Dinn alone. We can be reasonably sure that the inspector didn't know what was in the case beforehand, but did know that it was instrumental to the investigation, whatever it was. We can obviously assume some level of supernatural existence in the story overall, as neither the pocketwatch nor the book conform to reality as we understand it, so once we get to that point, it becomes impossible to make meaningfully conclusive statements about anything. The Obra Dinn equivalent of "A wizard did it" will always prevail. So, here's where I'll give Henry Evans a bit of credit: The End does not have any circled "You Will Find A Body Here" clues in the book. Which would at least give historical timelines some credit as to "How could Evans know?". Arguably, the only "How did he know?" event is the death of the last midshipman, that body's death page is circled, and by that time Evans and the others were rowing away to freedom. Maybe it's keen hearing, or maybe Evans had something of Paul's to glance through the veil with the watch (this is the assumption that the Momento Mortum watch was Evans'). I would probably call it a pragmatic gameplay conceit, rather than any complex "Who's the real watcher/writer" conspiracy. Also consider there are blank pages for the inspector to fill out for people who went missing and didn't have unique death pages. Evans didn't know every death, but he knew enough to leave a margin for error. As to how Evans knew about the Obra Dinn's return? Well, probably call it narrative convenience, fortunate timing, as I'd guess the box was something the East India Company might have been holding onto for awhile. But you're right that there's a bit of magic going on: It's the glue that holds the conceits together.
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Feb 7, 2022 01:36
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Bootcha posted:As to how Evans knew about the Obra Dinn's return? Well, probably call it narrative convenience, fortunate timing, as I'd guess the box was something the East India Company might have been holding onto for awhile. But you're right that there's a bit of magic going on: It's the glue that holds the conceits together. Magic might be the key, here. Assuming Evans was already familiar with the watch, he's already balls-deep in occult nonsense. We can say for sure he used it to see the events of the Bargain, and he might well know better than we do that the mermaid will honour a deal like that. Certainly she seems bound to do that, seeing as she exactly followed the letter of the request, bringing the empty ship back to port then wrecking it straight after. Perhaps Henry knew enough to be sure that's what would happen.
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Feb 7, 2022 02:25
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Sorry it took me a while to reply; thinking about how a Return of the Obra Dinn movie would play out sent me down a very deep rabbit hole. Here are my thoughts, a rambling mix of theories and an imagined movie version of the story. As was mentioned, it is very likely the Formosans took a seashell from the mermaids. Why did they steal a shell? No clue, but my guess is the Emperor of China ordered them to find anything that would give them an advantage over the Westerners encroaching on China. When the last Formosan, Chioh Tan, was warning everyone about the shell and how it should be protected, it sounded like there was a purpose, that he wanted the ship to continue it's voyage to Formosa and to bring the shell there. Of course that never happened and while China would eventually fight the Western powers, it'd be a few decades until the Opium Wars, but I digress. Anyway, a shell gets stolen and the mermaids want it back. In my imagined movie version, the mermaids track it down to the Obra Dinn in Falmouth and find it along with the Formosans. They use magic from the other shells to cause the first incident to happen and in plain view of a Formosan guard, warning them to RETURN THE SHELL OR SUFFER THEIR CURSE. After the incident spooks the guard, we would then see the Formosans use their shell to cast some kind of protective spell on the ship, using a harness to gentle lower the shell into the liquid which would contrast with later when it gets shoved in there, and maybe the spell prevented the illness in chapter 2 from spreading. Chapters 3 and 4 are relatively straightforward, though I imagined Edward Nichols in the movie to be a racist prick on top of all his other unlikable aspects just to make sure the audience really hates him. For chapter 5 I imagine that after Chioh Tan's death, Captain Witteral immediately takes possession of the first shell they find and locks it in his quarters while the second one slips by, at least until the new deaths reveal it and he takes that one too. Without the shells and locked up, the mermaids are powerless. That is until Fillip Dahl finds the third shell in the chest and takes it out in close enough proximity for the mermaids to use their magic once again. They call for a storm, crab raiders, and a kraken. I think the Captain would try fighting against the kraken first, but once it's apparent that it's useless would then try tossing the shells into the water in an attempt to appease the beast. With that failing too, he would then go down to the lazarette to let the mermaids go, only to find them with the third shell and realize that they called the kraken and then most of chapter 8 plays out. Captain Witteral is about to kill the third mermaid when Martin comes in and informs the Captain that his wife tragically died. Losing the will to continue, Witteral leaves to mourn his wife while Martin pleads with the mermaid to send the kraken away, and she obliges. Once the last mermaid is freed with her shell, she decides to let go of grudges since enough blood has been spilled on both sides. With the main plot out of the way, let's now focus on a smaller but still significant character, Henry Evans. I believe he has possession of the Memento Mortem since the beginning, but uses it sparingly because he doesn't want anyone else to find out. In my movie version, Evans uses the watch to discover who killed Nunzio Pasqua and warns Captain Witteral of Nichols' treachery, but is too late to prevent the abduction of the royal Formosans. During chapter 5, Evans is probably very curious about what happened during chapter 4, but is unable to use his watch with people everywhere. Eventually an opportunity arrives with the recently deceased John Naples as Evans could use his detached leg to trace back the corpses and see what had happened, but the monkey carried off the leg. After failing to get the monkey to return the leg, he feels that it's now impossible to learn the truth. After the dangerous events of chapter 6, Evans warns the Captain to toss those shells and mermaids, but he refuses, though he promises that if another disaster occurs, he will promptly do that. Evans fears that by then it'll be too late. After the kraken attack, Evans speaks with the mourning Witteral. He learns that the Captain tossed the shells overboard, wishing he had listened to Evans earlier, but won't go into detail about what happened in the lazarette. Eventually he convinces the Captain to let him and a few others escape on the last boat remaining. Then the end of chapter 8 and chapter 9 happen. This next part is pure movie invention. So Evans et al are traveling to the nearest landmass. In the middle of the night when everyone else is asleep, Evans decides to use the Memento Mortem to see the events of chapter 8. Afterwards he is surprised by the mermaid, eyes transfixed on the pocket watch. Evans speaks to the mermaid, making a request. When she returns the Obra Dinn to England, she should wait until someone with the same pocket watch comes to observe the events on the ship; afterwards she may do whatever she wants. She agrees and as a sign of good faith guides them to Africa. Unfortunately, because the Captain tossed the other two shells overboard, she has nothing to lock-on to and spends a couple of years searching for the ship. And that's pretty much all the thoughts I had, aside from maybe a subplot of the three Midshipmen trying to court Jane Bird and failing, a possible romance between her and Davey James forming, and other miscellaneous stuff. I spent way too much time thinking on this subject. 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Feb 9, 2022 06:58
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New video! Not much left for us to do. Some additional bits and pieces we've picked up on, and then, the credits. Thanks for coming along on this ride with us! LET'S PLAY RETURN OF THE OBRA DINN: THE END
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Feb 12, 2022 19:04
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The stowaway from Loose Cargo needn't be a human. The pocket watch works just as well on giant enemy crabs, cow skulls and chunks of dead monkey. It could've just been a rat inside the barrel, which is a lot more plausible for going undetected than a human because there's a whole lot less corpse to be noticeably stinky.
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Feb 12, 2022 22:09
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Asehujiko posted:The stowaway from Loose Cargo needn't be a human. The pocket watch works just as well on giant enemy crabs, cow skulls and chunks of dead monkey. It could've just been a rat inside the barrel, which is a lot more plausible for going undetected than a human because there's a whole lot less corpse to be noticeably stinky. However, there's very clearly nervous breathing audible in Loose Cargo 2, which is supposed to be from the POV of the stowaway, and which I'm pretty sure is supposed to imply the stowaway is human. Also, I feel like there's an idea that the rope accident happens because there's more weight in the barrel than expected, though I might just be putting things together where there's nothing to be put together.
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Feb 12, 2022 22:16
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I decided to hold off on responding to the movie discussion until the finale was posted, because my response obviously depends on some of the information I discussed in the video. But I love that the story is open enough that multiple explanations make sense. In my version, Soloman Syed and Renfred Rajub get curious about the Formosan chest while they're loading it on the ship and decide to open the top when they think no one's looking, just to see what's inside. When they see that it's full of liquid, they shut it again, but not before getting what will turn out to be a fatal dose of mercury vapor inhalation. Aleksei Toporov sees the glow from inside the chest, but not what it's from. Some time after the two deaths by mercury poisoning, Toporov talks to his buddy Nikishin about what he saw, and Nichols overhears them. (In my headcanon, Nichols either speaks enough Russian to recognize what they're talking about or catches a word or two that sound close enough to the English to figure out what's going on.) He sneaks down to the hold, intending to swipe something small from the chest that he thinks won't be missed, and perhaps planning to pull something out of one of the cargo hammocks to make it look like it fell on Hok-Seng Lau's head, or maybe he waited for a rough night at sea so it would be reasonable to think he'd stumbled hard enough to bang his head fatally. But when Nunzio Pasqua caught him in the act, he realized he wasn't going to be able to hide any stolen goods if there was a murder investigation. Finding that Lau was still alive, he made contact with Li Hong, the one among the Chinese topmen who would be most likely to go along with the plan in exchange for a share of the undisclosed treasure, and convinced him to fake a confession. I assume that Hoscut was in charge of confining Lau for the trial, and Nichols was tasked with rounding up a translator, so he could ensure that no other Chinese speakers could interfere. Once everyone believed that the murderer had been executed, Nichols knew that the only way he'd be able to get anything out of the chest would be to take it off the ship with him. He knew the two Russian seamen knew about the treasure, and he probably asked his steward if there were any other seamen they could trust. Galligan probably recruited O'Hagan through some past connection to round out the team. How they came to be kidnapping the two Formosans rather than just killing them, I can't imagine, but they may have wanted to make it look like it was the Formosans who left with the chest and Nichols gathered a party to chase after them. That, or they figured out enough of what was going on to confront him, and he had his goons tie them up, ultimately deciding that it would be easier to toss them into the boats rather than try to kill them before leaving. (Given how many people ended up on deck during the kidnapping, the former plan wouldn't have worked out anyway.) I rather thought the theory about John Naples's leg was going to be that Dr. Evans told the monkey to hide it somewhere, anticipating that it might be important later. Clearly, by the time he'd collected the monkey's paw, he'd already decided that he was going to send the Memento Mortem to someone. He may have come to that decision much earlier, such as at the first sight of the mermaids. I rather thought "Where's the rest of his leg?" was a counter to that, but it may just have been for show at that point. But I definitely agree that a movie version of the story would need a lot more character development. Romance subplots seem required at that point, but really, a movie just demands more character focus due to following the story as it happens rather than as stilted flashbacks. I figure I've about covered the rest between the videos and this writeup.
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Feb 12, 2022 22:43
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Thank you for the LP and another look at this game. I hadn't thought about this stuff at all last time.
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Feb 13, 2022 00:58
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Thank you both for an incredibly deep look into the game! I admit I had to start looking things up towards the end, at which point I realised that shoes, socks etc played a massive part - I'd like to think I did a good job of deducing things up until then! This LP got me back into the deduction genre again - not that there's a whole lot to choose from! Last couple of weeks I've been playing some of Tim Sheinman's games - Family, Rivals, Echo Beach. Same sort of approach of using context clues to pierce together people's identities, but not in the immersive way that Obra Dinn does it. Does anyone have any other suggestions for things similar to Obra Dinn? Played Outer Wilds already which scratched the same sort of itch in a slightly different way (apart from the bloody platforming sections). [edit - had a comment about firearms but need to go back to listen to the discussion about that again!] Pseudohog fucked around with this message at 05:22 on Feb 13, 2022 |
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Feb 13, 2022 05:16
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This was a theoretically fun LP. I could tell you enjoyed editing these video and were having a good time in general. Unlike all the other LPs of this game, it was really subdued and matter of factly.
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Feb 13, 2022 07:48
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I like how there's other artifacts on the inspector's shelf. Presumably those are just shout-outs to other games, but I do kind of like the idea that they deal with this kind of thing on a regular basis.Pseudohog posted:Does anyone have any other suggestions for things similar to Obra Dinn? Played Outer Wilds already which scratched the same sort of itch in a slightly different way (apart from the bloody platforming sections). I haven't played it myself, but I have heard Her Story mentioned in this area. If you're willing to abstract the concept a little, there's also games like The Witness and the Myst franchise.
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Feb 13, 2022 08:23
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fractalairduct posted:I like how there's other artifacts on the inspector's shelf. Presumably those are just shout-outs to other games, but I do kind of like the idea that they deal with this kind of thing on a regular basis.
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Feb 13, 2022 10:20
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fractalairduct posted:I like how there's other artifacts on the inspector's shelf. Presumably those are just shout-outs to other games, but I do kind of like the idea that they deal with this kind of thing on a regular basis. Turns out I own Her Story already, bought it ages ago but not played it yet. Will have to rectify that!
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Feb 13, 2022 12:47
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You could also try the Painscreek Killings. That's what I did after Obra Dinn.
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Feb 13, 2022 13:39
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fractalairduct posted:I like how there's other artifacts on the inspector's shelf. Presumably those are just shout-outs to other games, but I do kind of like the idea that they deal with this kind of thing on a regular basis. Fun fact: If you leave the ship without completing the book, there are significantly fewer artifacts on the shelf, and the tea will have run out. (Instead of "Tea's in the kitchen if you need more," it's "Tea's gone, so you might as well go to bed.") A less thorough inspector is also considerably less busy.
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Feb 13, 2022 15:08
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Nidoking posted:Fun fact: If you leave the ship without completing the book, there are significantly fewer artifacts on the shelf, and the tea will have run out. (Instead of "Tea's in the kitchen if you need more," it's "Tea's gone, so you might as well go to bed.") A less thorough inspector is also considerably less busy. It also contains a nice little musical riff.
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Feb 14, 2022 02:40
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