I'd KILL for a sequel, where we play as a descendant of the Inspector and use the watch to investigate an even larger mystery. I don't know, say, another shipwreck, or a battlefield.
But the game also has some heroic characters. For example Martin Perrot who was the incarnation of Gigachad basically the whole game until he died to the mermaid, trying to save the ship.
It's like the shells are a beacon of greed. If the Formosan nobles didn't have one as treasure on a massive ship voyage then nothing would have happened.
Only thing to add is that the self confession of Hok Sing Lau is likely a mistranslation done by Li Hong to cover his boss while trying to steal the shell.
I remember when I saw Winston Smith's death I thought, "hah, went out like a true American." Speared twice, held in claws that could probably sever his arms, but still got the shot off.
He's a 17th century American black dude, who ended up with a specialist job on a ship, with a white guy working under him. He definitely had an interesting story of his own.
For some reason the sparkle, off in the distance, really haunted me. For 99% of the game I thought it just pointed to North, but realizing it was the mermaid, off in the sea, seeing the Obra Dinn home was a shock.
Also when third mate Martin Perrott asks the mermaid "In return.. the ship... ...the Obra Dinn... ...see it home." they didn't actually lift the curse seeing as the crew continued to die off, but they technically kept up their end of the bargain by delivering the ship itself
Although it accepts the answer "drowned by a beast" for Charles Miner, it's worth noting that the bosun is explicitly told by the 4th mate that he was torn apart rather than drowned.
To be fair, due to the nature of the plot, we're biased towards when Evans failed rather when he suceeds. The helmsman recieved a pretty nasty spear to the leg after Nichols escapes with the Formosan treasure after all.
Here's the thing though, the box you get the book and pocket watch from can be seen in the Surgeon's quarters beneath the bed, so it's entirely possible that he willingly LET some folks die, knowing it would give him more opportunities to test out the magic pocket watch.
Thanks! I originally thought of it when I finished the game and was having trouble piecing it together. I only recently had the time and energy to put together a decent summary. I'm sure it would've taken off it I'd made it closer to when the game released.
tbh its overrated, it gives a basic play by play of exactly the surface level things that you are shown but half the actual plot in this game has to be inferred. It doesnt really emphasise for example the dramatic irony that you experience knowing that the final mutiny is all a result of a lack of communication between the 1st and 3rd mate about the deal made with the mermaids for example and I think the entire last couple chapters are so much flatter without appreciating that.
@@Six_slotted To be fair, you don't get to actually experience any dramatic irony since you only get to know about the deal after you've gone through the rest of the story.
No obnoxius intro, no over exaggerated voice, no ad spam, no stalling for time, good editing, good audio, clear explanation... I think we have ourselves an underrated channel!
Just finished this game, it's so great and this summary is awesome Sharing a super small detail, I'm from Taiwan, which is the Formosa the game is referring to, so I understand the language they speak, our official Language is Mandarin which is the same with China but back in the days we speak Taiwanese, Which is the language they use in the game, it's a dialect similar to Chinese but quite different in many ways, in one of the scene when the mermaid spiked the sea man and the last Formosan on the Obra dinn, the way that Chinese guy ask the Formosan question were two languages mix together, specifically the word "All" is in Chinese and the usage of other indicate that he is not a native speaker of Taiwanese while the Formosans speaks fluent Taiwanese. This kind of attention to details is why I like about this game so much.
It was a fine thing listening to the voices. Russian crew bantering about cheating was refreshingly... alive, so to speak. These people felt like they were real, with lives and interests. Despite us mainly hearing and seeing them in most terrible sircumstances.
@@garr_inc yeah but why was Leo Volkov voice acted by two different actors, Russian and English-speaking, causing him to speak English with no foreign accent at all? tbh this is a bit annoying
I HAVE A THEORY When Duncan McKay (purser), Alexander Booth (seaman) and Nathan Peters (seaman) are abandoning ship in "The Doom" part 1, i think mckay hired booth and peters to get him off the ship to safety. Because if you think about it, a purser is someone who handles money on a boat. And mckay was a coward, so he desperately wanted to get off the ship and go home. So I bet he stole all the ships money and offered booth and peters every last penny if they hauled ass back home. A valid reason is if you look closely at mckay in that scene, he's carrying all the ships documents and papers so it's very possible he had all the ships money as well. It's also pretty obvious lars linde (seaman) wasn't part of the deal. but truth be told I think if nathan didn't have it out for lars after what happened to his brother samuel, they probably would've let him join them on the boat trip home
To add a beautiful bow tie to this game would have been to do like a 20 min cinematic… showing all the chapters in a chronological order … I know this would have cost a ton more budget but it would have been so sick to see the whole thing unfold after spending hours of investigation… regardless of that this game is super underrated and is going into my al time favorites
One thing about the Murder chapter: in the memory, captain Witteral says "You have been found guilty by self-cofession", meaning they must have thought that Hok Seng Lau told them he was the one who killed Nunzio Pasqua. Obviously, we know that isn't true, so why would Lau admit to this? That's the thing, he probably didn't. If we move a little foward in the timeline to "the Calling", we see a Chinese Topman (Li Hong) in the boat together with the other mutineers. In fact, it is Hong who tellls Nichols that the Formosans are talking about monsters, before being the first victim of the mermaids. Why is this man here? It could be that they needed an interpreter for the Formosans, but I think there's more to it. Here's my theory: Li Hong is the one the crew asked to translate for Hok Seng Lau. Lau told him that he was knocked out by someone, possibly even by Nichols. Instead of telling the crew that, however, Hong told them that Lau had confessed to killing Pasqua. Whether he was doing this under orders from Nichols, or if he used this to strike a deal with Nichols later on, I don't know. But it is clear to me that there was more than one schumbag on board the Obra Dinn that day.
One thing I’d disagree with is that I don’t think the Memento Morten is an everyday device or even something normally used by the EIC. Instead, the letter /preface from Henry Evans specifically mentions it, along with the purpose of the book. Also what you provide the EIC at the end is not the book but a separate document. I think the watch is more likely a curio picked up by the surgeon (amongst his other eccentric accoutrement such as the monkey) which explains why he was smart enough to sacrifice his furry companion. His original intent was to find out what happened for himself - and he had done as much as was possible without access to the Obra Dinn itself, being limited to the deaths accessible within the Lazarette. If only the timeline with John Naple’s foot had lined up a little better, he might have had a better go of it, jumping from corpse to corpse via the seaman’s severed leg :D Since he knew what Martin had asked of the mermaid, he likely suspected that the ship would return someday and that he (or someone else) would be able to find out what really happened . This also explains why you, the insurance investigator, are still in possession of the memento mortuary at the end of the events, rather than having it in the possession of the EIC, or your employers (who surely would expect it back).
Makes me wonder _how_ he knew of Martin's favor. After thinking it over a little, I think he either saw them throw the mermaid overboard with a shell and put two and two together, or somehow heard of the Return of the Obra Dinn and managed to mail the inspector the book and watch before he was dispatched... all the way from Morocco.
@@dabiga2315 This is pretty simple actually--he would have been able to use the watch at any point after leaving the ship on the monkey's paw in his possession and viewed the events within the lazarette. He would have heard the bargain directly.
You can also see that Evans has the Memento Mortem's case in his possession during the events - it's under the bed in his office as Rajub expires, and then it's on the boat with him during their escape.
Loved this game so damn much. I had the story pretty right in my head but when you put it all together it had me notice a couple things. One) I never realized that Beng was putting the shell INTO the liquid, that’s interesting, I saw the shell in the Pasqua murder but didn’t remember it after, I did notice the three mermaids were short one shell while attacking the rowboats. (I didn’t quite understand Beng and the captains steward died from having only their arm melted, but whatever) Two) I never realized that when Brennan asked “where are they?” And the captain says “at the bottom of the sea”…it’s a clever misdirect. You think at the beginning of the game he’s talking about the crew but in the end it was the shells, cool stuff
not sure it's worth pointing it out anymore but the game accepts the death of It-Beng as being poison, so there's more to it than fire to the chest & shell effect
Because of how game starts I was always assuming that 1st mate is one of the main villains on the ship. At one point it started to not make sense any more (e.g. helping Lanke), but this summary puts it all together - actually William Hoscut was quite a decent dude and even the last episode can be seen in somewhat different light. Thanks for the quality stuff!
I'm not entirely sure and might be wrong on this - but it could be that he doesn't even want the shells from the captain because they're valuable but to return them (like the 3rd mate already had aranged at this point).
@@onecommunistboi yes, there is a place for scenario where captain has lost his mind after Abigail's death (massacre of mermaids, the table in his room was overturned even before Brennan entered the Captains Quarters - you can see it on its side behind the captain as he shoots Hoscut) and become incapable of handling the ship and events around it (letting doctor and ladies to leave the ship, the way how he holds his head in desperation and exhaust as the boat leaves), he could have lied about throwing the shells (they found one in the lazarette after captain supposedly disposed of them). So in an unexpected plot twist Hoscut and Brennan actually are the good guys who just want to get the captain back to senses and get rid of the shells. Apparently that was not the idea of the creator of this game, but I like to pretend that this is true, it makes the storyline better and adds nice plot twist at the end. It would be great if The Bargain chapter would have provided the information that turns everything around and the last chapter of The Bargain would render the first chapters of The End in completely different light. A missed opportunity to make a great game even better, if you ask me.
damn, i was like 'pffft 11 minutes how the hell are they going to condense that tangled knot of murder and intrigue into that?' and then I watched it and you just. did it. no beating around the bush, just the facts as we know them. mad props - i love this game, and while i like that lots of it is up to interpretation, sometimes its nice to have everything laid out. one thing is idk if the watch is like, a normal EIC thing. I think it's something henry evans specifically sends to you. plus you keep it. there's sort of a 'only we know about these spooky supernatural things' vibe. ik some people took the whole 'sending the eic a specific and detailed inventory of causes of death from inspecting an empty ship' bit of it comes across to some people as worldbuilding evidence for normal use of this kind of stuff, but it came across to be as bureaucratic neglect. like 'ugh that boats back again, ok we'll send a guy to see what's up and whatever they say we'll do' but i think it could be both ways.
Thanks, I really wanted to have it laid out as matter of factly as possible without getting tangled up in how the deaths are deduced. I think you're probably right on the watch, but I don't think it's as clearly laid out in the game, or I might have just missed it. Still, glad you liked the video!
I always assumed that the people riding the crab monsters were the two Russian guys that got pulled overboard during The Calling. It looked to me like the crabs were a sort of parasitic creature that took over the dead bodies. Did anyone else think that?
As a quick note the Memento Mortem pocketwatch was given to you by Evans, being in the same box as the book and being mentioned in the preface. Evans also most likely also had the pocketwatch while on the Obra Dinn, since while incomplete, to start making the book he would have needed information he woudn't have otherwise have had access to. So the monkey's death was most likely for him to able to see what happened in the lazarette, not the inspector.
Just revisited this game and decided to search for someone elses take on the timeline (and the motivation of certain characters), and just so happens that this video was made just a few week ago, lucky. Helped clear up a few things, the ending (leading up to captain vs first mate + 2) was a bit hard to piece together, I remember that during my first playthrough I thought that first mate (and two friends that attacked the captain) had planned to mutiny with the other two (present at the bosuns death), but everyone seem to be acting more on instinct at this point, not so much planning as I first thought. great summary!
Thanks! Yeah I played it again recently and thought it would be great to have a single summary of the events as they unfolded without any involvement of how they're solved. Glad you enjoyed it!
4:08 phillip dahl wanted to throw the creatures overboard to stop the curse, and with seaman john in his way (leg found beside the cage where he was guarding it) dahl attacked him.
I was intrigued by the 5 men Nichols brought with him. Galligan was obvious as his steward. The two Russians may have been eager to cover their gambling losses in Bitter Cold 2. Li Hong would have been bought to mistranslate during Hok-Seng Lau's trial to "self confess". O'Hagan is the only one I can't justify bringing along besides Irish kinship to Galligan but that's a stretch. Regarding the mutiny: by the time Davies is being recruited by Wiater (davies is not yet part of the mutiny), Hoscut, Brennan and Walker are already party to the mutiny. The only crew not in on the mutiny were Volkov, who probably wasn't to be trusted given the other Russians were in kahoots with Nichols, and Lanke, who as a midshipman didn't need to be involved in a serious matter and probably would have been told to hide below deck until the fighting stopped - thus Hoscut's concern: Lanke wasn't an enemy. Davies was probably killed by Brennan because he thought Davies opposed the mutiny by killing Wiater. Escape 4 makes it sound like Davies would have joined the mutiny. The captain was probably given a heads up to the mutiny by Hoscut, which is why he let the 5 remaining civilians (including Moss) leave before that final showdown. As Volkov wasn't aware of the upcoming fight for the ship, he was aggressive in preventing the civilians leave on the last boat.
There is one released recently: The case of the golden Idol, it takes several concepts from this game, even thou I think it's shorter and easier to figure out than this one.
I need to remind myself of the title’s but there are a couple of sci-fi ones on a smaller scale. Rather than freeze frames from dead bodies, you get to replay the security cameras as part of your investigation as to what happened to the crew. Edit: I've now looked this up - the game is called Tacoma
@@UnfazedPhoenixyou are a ray of sunshine in these comments. Sure it may take 10 minutes to tell the story, but it takes 10 or more hours to figure it all out with the way the game is played. If you didn't like it, why bother commenting so much on a video about it? You'll just boost your algorithm to show you this content.
@@evanprince3875he pops up a few times in the comments just to stir the pot for no reason! mainly calling people dumb, when those people are making fun of their own wrong conclusions or not noticing details
If the crew had just looked at the rowboats, saw the mermaids, and decided "nope, not dealing with that" and tossed them in the water, the trip could have gone a lot better.
Straightforward, pieced together in the perfect chronological order the game spends its entirety winding roads around. This was perfect, thank you. The little touches of detail like adding the blurb about Evans tossing the monkey into the Lazarette and the shell being put into the liquid portion of the chest during the Calling, those really tie up the details that make the imagination go a bit wild during gameplay. There is also Voose's video on every single clue/hint that is sneakily hidden in the game to help you deduce who people are. Combine it with this video, and the curse voyage of this doomed ship really comes together. Fascinating stuff.
Thanks! I really wanted a chronological summary after playing the game, but couldn't find one, so felt like I should make one. I still need to look more closely into all the clues in the game.
@@billtgvids Well, it was clearly a lot of work and it's appreciated. Regarding the clues, there's been a few more videos that really help lay stuff out (Voose made a 2nd part, and there's a guy who speedruns the game who walks through every deduction to show where it can be parsed). I definitely played like most people did: deduced about 70% of the answers, guessed at 20%, and left 10% to process of elimination. It's really crazy to see just how varied everyone's playthroughs can be, struggling with some clues I assumed to be dead simple, or me learning I was the one idiot on the planet who didn't figure out something super obvious. I was really proud to have deduced the socks and shoes of the Topmen in the hammocks myself, seems that wasn't a super common realization. However, most people seemed to suss out Maba from his spiral tattoos, but I absolutely stink with ancient markings and traditions and stuff. For the longest time, I heard Klestil say that line about "where is my Frenchman", hearing everyone say he was torn apart, and assuming Maba was the Bosun's mate. I saw the actual mate with the striped shirt several times too, and I just didn't know about that stuff. I had to see more of them hanging out together and coming out of the Bosun's room to piece it together.
Ohhhh I never understood how the Obradinn made it back to England without crew. But this makes some sense that the Mermaid did it. It also explains why we see the glint in the distance from the ship
Pretty nice video, took me 10 hours to finish the game but i couldn't really piece everything together what happened, im glad a video like this exists. Just a thing i want to add, i believe the time watch was owned by the surgeon, instead of being a standard item given by the company, thats how he knew about it, when you firstly open the box containing the book thats where the watch is, in the end it also says you mailed the book but kept the watch.
For the record, I don't actually think the captain killed himself because he was "overcome with grief" but instead he was stranded all alone on a ship that requires multiple people to pilot and he'd just been stabbed so he probably would have died a slow and painful death, so instead he opted to end his life quickly rather than suffer.
What an absolutely fantastic synopsis. I did 100% the game but was quite confused about some elements of the story. This cleared everything up beautifully.
Just fully-finished the game, and I needed something like this just to make sure I understood everything correctly. The video was exactly what it needed to be and more! Loved the editing
This is such a great video! A perfect factual summary of the events as they played out- exactly the sort of thing I wanted to see after finishing the game. Great editing too. One thing I noticed/guessed that wasn't included is the Formosan guard's "self-confession". I think it's likely that one of the Chinese crewmates that joined Nichol's plot to steal the chest falsely interpreted Hok Seng Lau's testimony and told that captain that the man was confessing to the murder. The captain didn't question his crewman's translation and sentenced Lau to death, allowing the second mate to get away with it. At least until the events of 'The Calling' of course. We don't know for certain of course, but Lee was able to speak a little Formosan and translate for the remaining guard at the beginning of "Unholy Captives", so it's not unreasonable to think that at least one of the other Chinese crewman had some knowledge of the language as well.
I just finished this masterpiece. At the end you can choose "poison" instead of "burn" as the cause of the captain's assistant death. Good detail. Incredible video, btw. Inmense editing job.
At the end of the game I kinda knew most of this stuff, but didn’t want to thumb through the entire book just to get the whole big picture summary. Thanks, man!
Love this. I've noticed that some of these can be solved multiple ways. It seems spiked/speared can be used interchangeably. I wrote that one of my guys was crushed by a cannon, you wrote beast and the game accepted both. When it came to being blasted by the cannon, either putting the beast or Akbar as the entity responsible for the death works. Interesting enough, Charle Hershtik, the midshipman, can be written down as burned to death or spiked (I wrote down spiked and the game accepted it.)
Yeah, I regret not being able to spend more time exploring all the possible combinations for each person as it alters the story in some way for a few of the deaths.
I also read somewhere that you can find a way to blame the Captain for everyone's death. There's a fate that everyone on the ship has that poses the Captain as responsible because he is the captain and he's responsible for his crew. The whole thing of "captain goes down with the ship" It's funny because you can basically fine his estate for like thousands of extra pounds.
Incredible video. Just finished the game and wanted to watch a summary to get events in order in my head and I couldn't have asked for anything better than this. Concise, yet containing every important detail to the story. Thanks for this!
Earned a sub with this. Immediately to the point. Explained it clearly with absolutely no filler. Great job! You need to do more of these for other games!
Thanks! I've thought about doing one for Subnautica and Outer Wilds, but haven't gotten around to it. Maybe this year. Open to suggestion for other non-linear stories that would benefit from such a summary.
I just finished the game including the bargain chapter and I absolutely LOVE the writing in the game and how the bargain chapter is such a good ending.
Excellent video, really nice to get a sequential view of the events. I'm sure someone has already mentioned this but Davey James (7:46) is actually 4th Mate John Davies' Steward, not Perrot's. It is a little strange that he's with Perrot and not Davies, but seeing as Roderick is already dead and Davies didn't really need any help at the moment, I guess it makes sense.
Unfortunate situation, if Davey stayed with his mate then maybe chapter 9 would be less deadly, and if 4th mate survives events of chapter 10 would most likely never happen
Thanks for noticing! When I was putting this video together I realized that literally everybody he treats ends up dying and wanted to draw some attention to it.
The ending of the story contains a literal curled up monkey's paw. I wish there was more relevance to this in the wider story. Given the attention to detail throughout Obra Dinn, the paw doesn't seem like it is included idly, yet it seems to be a misfit. What wishes did the doctor make? What unintended consequences occurred which then resulted in the tragedy of the Obra Dinn? I doubt that will ever be cleared up.
I guess you could apply it to the shells loosely as a cautionary tale. Everyone seemed to want to have them, but having them generally made everything worse. It's definitely a stretch though.
The curled paw is for the wish of the third mate. He wishes the obra dinn be returned safely and the mermaid delivered. He didnt specify that the crew should be alive or on it however
Not sure why this doesn’t have more views! Also, in that second floor where the guy gets stabbed for shouting of a mutiny, how did you know that the gunshot to the head was unintentional?
I'm not actually sure. I wrote it that way in the script when I first put it together, but I noticed just before putting out the video that it was kind of ambiguous. Same thing with the midshipman getting burned: apparently there's a number of death cards possible.
@@billtgvids weren't the two of them discussing to take over the boat seconds before this incident? So then it would make sense he didn,t want to shoot him right?
@@onome9305 Could be, but that's before Wiater stabs Lanke, so maybe Davies had a change of heart after that, but I think it's more likely that Davies didn't intend to kill Wiater, especially considering they were just plotting a mutiny together.
@@billtgvids that's exactly what i thought when i first saw the scene play out. really enjoyed this video btw. videos like this are why i watch yt, subscribed!
Watched this after finishing the game. Only realised now that there are alternative answers to some of the fates (I answered 'eaten by beast' instead of 'drowned by beast').
Excellent video for the most part. I always felt that the Memento Mortem was also from Henry Evans though, in addition to the book, partly because the Chief Inspector kept it after filing his report.
His or _her_ report! The Chief Inspector has multiple voices from which one is chosen at the start of the game. I'm not sure how many, but I know when I started a second save to get the secret achievement, it was a woman's voice instead of a man's like it was the first time I played. So there's at least two different voices.
I put Abraham Akbar as the shooter of the cannon that killed Wolff and Shirley. Then I felt bad when the insurance report had him as a criminal who murdered 2 people at the end when really he was KIA while dutifully fighting the monster :(. Wish I'd put the beast as who fired the cannon like you did, but i didn't even think of it.
I also put him as the shooter of the cannon. My logic was that the gunner shouts "Belay spark!" meaning "don't light the cannon", but Abraham Akbar did light it causing the cannon to fire.
Looking back at this all, I'm surprised the escape worked out as it did - the doctor's gun shot in the cargo hold should have caused another confrontation.
Haha, yeah. I considered putting a quick spoiler warning at the start, but figured someone who was looking up 'plot summary' probably knew what they were getting themselves in to.
This was a great overview of the events of the game, I was a little lost myself on some of the plot points but you helped me put it all together. Thanks!
I had to leave a comment for no reason other than to say thank you!! I had a general idea of the narrative after completing the game, but it needed a little piecing together which I don't have the brains for.
I like this video because it helps to understand the story because when you play the game its not in order.+I liked how Henry Brennan killed everyone in the crew
It's left kind of ambiguous, but I believe what happened was that after the crab(and rider) was lit on fire it still continued to wander around and attack the crew, so Charles Hershtik(the one who threw the lamp) leaps onto it so that he could hold it still while the other crew members stab the beast.
Ok so you said "the mermaids have summoned a kraken" so matter of factly that it made me chuckle. Great summary tho now I understand what the hell happened.
Thank a lot for creating this amazing video! I had finished the game a couple of months ago, and just remembered that I understood the how, but not the why. I really hope that in the future more games like this one will be made.
I imagine the captain didn’t actually stop the kraken - I think he was murdering the helpless mermaids when the third mate intervened and demanded they throw the last living mermaid overboard with her shell and that is what made the kraken leave. I see the captain as incompetent for having the innocent Formosan man executed (and everyone seems really happy about it, which makes a lot of the crew seem pretty awful), then taking the mermaids prisoner, and locking up his steward that tried to stop them. The captain shares a lot of the blame for how everything went down.
Interesting side note, the book doesn't require an exact death to see it as true, only an approximation that is reasonable. I know I wrote that a little weird so let me explain. See in the video, the crewmembers on the dissapeared page for "The Doom" most of the people are labeled as drowned. However in my playthrough I labeled some of them (for example the helmsman and bosun mate) as torn apart. So in a case like that, I guess the journal will except either as true.
It's also forgiving when they did from the mystical items like It Beng Sia or Filip Dahl. I did poisoning and it accepted, and I read electrocuted is also acceptable for them.
Regarding Wiater, I have no idea what this first name is, because it doesn't sound Polish, but the surname would be pronounced "Vyater" - the Polish language uses "W" for "V" and a crossed "L" for "W"
I'd KILL for a sequel, where we play as a descendant of the Inspector and use the watch to investigate an even larger mystery. I don't know, say, another shipwreck, or a battlefield.
I would love to play that
you forgot the cow
In short, it was basically Edward Nichols’ fault for practically 90% of the events that transpired
Who cowered in the fetal position while his escape crew tried to fight off the mermaids. Scumbag
But the game also has some heroic characters. For example Martin Perrot who was the incarnation of Gigachad basically the whole game until he died to the mermaid, trying to save the ship.
@@ShiftySheriff2 Not to mention the Carpenter aswell, atleast taking one of the crab-riders with him.
Edward is what we would call a "fucking muppet"
It's like the shells are a beacon of greed. If the Formosan nobles didn't have one as treasure on a massive ship voyage then nothing would have happened.
Only thing to add is that the self confession of Hok Sing Lau is likely a mistranslation done by Li Hong to cover his boss while trying to steal the shell.
Yeah, I definitely glossed over this, but you're right that it's clear in the game that Li Hong isn't doing a faithful translation.
Hm
you forgot to mention how nichols cowers in the rowboat to avoid the mermaids, that's how he survived
I remember when I saw Winston Smith's death I thought, "hah, went out like a true American." Speared twice, held in claws that could probably sever his arms, but still got the shot off.
He is definitely the standout badass of the crew
He's a 17th century American black dude, who ended up with a specialist job on a ship, with a white guy working under him. He definitely had an interesting story of his own.
@billtgvids so much so the book literally calls it out
I love the cheeky pun that it's a literal monkey's paw that allows you to see what happened in the Lazarette
For some reason the sparkle, off in the distance, really haunted me. For 99% of the game I thought it just pointed to North, but realizing it was the mermaid, off in the sea, seeing the Obra Dinn home was a shock.
Also when third mate Martin Perrott asks the mermaid "In return.. the ship... ...the Obra Dinn... ...see it home." they didn't actually lift the curse seeing as the crew continued to die off, but they technically kept up their end of the bargain by delivering the ship itself
@@fqwgads None of those deaths after The Bargain came about due to a curse, but due to mistrust, misunderstanding, or greed.
I was seriously missing a "watch in order" function after the game's finale.
Was thinking about the exact same thing
Although it accepts the answer "drowned by a beast" for Charles Miner, it's worth noting that the bosun is explicitly told by the 4th mate that he was torn apart rather than drowned.
I like to think that the people explaining it to alfred had no idea what exactly happened in the chaos and they jusst gave him the most basic answer
I noticed that too. I selected "torn apart" and got it right. Until this video, I didn't know that some of the fates would accept different answers.
At first, I thought that the tatoo guy is Charles Miner....that guy's identity is pretty much hard to deduce.
Putting that he fell overboard also worked for me
@@valeriansage which tattoo guy, the one with all the swirls or the one with the girl on his arm?
10:59 The little "dun!" discovery tune here had me wheezing. fucking hilarious little touch, thanks for that!
wait that's hilarious actually I didn't notice this at first. thanks for pointing it out!
Man, Henry Evans just COULD NOT get a win during this cruise. Three people died despite the doctor trying to help them.
To be fair, due to the nature of the plot, we're biased towards when Evans failed rather when he suceeds. The helmsman recieved a pretty nasty spear to the leg after Nichols escapes with the Formosan treasure after all.
Here's the thing though, the box you get the book and pocket watch from can be seen in the Surgeon's quarters beneath the bed, so it's entirely possible that he willingly LET some folks die, knowing it would give him more opportunities to test out the magic pocket watch.
@@Leron... If he were that smart he would have viewed the Italian's murder, and prevented the whole mess from happening.
Well, it's 10nt century, a lot of the stuff was fatal tbqh
Well, he lived so... I'd say that's a win.
This video is hugely underrated. After finishing the game this was the exact thing I was looking for to help me tie it at all together, good job mate
Thanks! I originally thought of it when I finished the game and was having trouble piecing it together. I only recently had the time and energy to put together a decent summary. I'm sure it would've taken off it I'd made it closer to when the game released.
tbh its overrated, it gives a basic play by play of exactly the surface level things that you are shown but half the actual plot in this game has to be inferred. It doesnt really emphasise for example the dramatic irony that you experience knowing that the final mutiny is all a result of a lack of communication between the 1st and 3rd mate about the deal made with the mermaids for example and I think the entire last couple chapters are so much flatter without appreciating that.
@@Six_slotted Fair point, but it helps put some things in perspective.
This video saved so much time. The story is really that short lol.
@@Six_slotted To be fair, you don't get to actually experience any dramatic irony since you only get to know about the deal after you've gone through the rest of the story.
No obnoxius intro, no over exaggerated voice, no ad spam, no stalling for time, good editing, good audio, clear explanation...
I think we have ourselves an underrated channel!
Thanks! I tried to make sure it was only the necessary parts to get across the explanation. Glad it's appreciated!
@@billtgvids honestly, this felt like a breathe of fresh air. Hope you have an amazing day 🖑
Just finished this game, it's so great and this summary is awesome
Sharing a super small detail, I'm from Taiwan, which is the Formosa the game is referring to, so I understand the language they speak, our official Language is Mandarin which is the same with China but back in the days we speak Taiwanese, Which is the language they use in the game, it's a dialect similar to Chinese but quite different in many ways, in one of the scene when the mermaid spiked the sea man and the last Formosan on the Obra dinn, the way that Chinese guy ask the Formosan question were two languages mix together, specifically the word "All" is in Chinese and the usage of other indicate that he is not a native speaker of Taiwanese while the Formosans speaks fluent Taiwanese.
This kind of attention to details is why I like about this game so much.
That's such an impressive detail.
Reading this made me a bit teary, mate.
Wow, just incredible attention to detail.
It was a fine thing listening to the voices. Russian crew bantering about cheating was refreshingly... alive, so to speak. These people felt like they were real, with lives and interests. Despite us mainly hearing and seeing them in most terrible sircumstances.
@@garr_inc yeah but why was Leo Volkov voice acted by two different actors, Russian and English-speaking, causing him to speak English with no foreign accent at all? tbh this is a bit annoying
There be a special place at the bottom of the sea for people like Sir Nichols
I HAVE A THEORY
When Duncan McKay (purser), Alexander Booth (seaman) and Nathan Peters (seaman) are abandoning ship in "The Doom" part 1, i think mckay hired booth and peters to get him off the ship to safety.
Because if you think about it, a purser is someone who handles money on a boat. And mckay was a coward, so he desperately wanted to get off the ship and go home. So I bet he stole all the ships money and offered booth and peters every last penny if they hauled ass back home. A valid reason is if you look closely at mckay in that scene, he's carrying all the ships documents and papers so it's very possible he had all the ships money as well.
It's also pretty obvious lars linde (seaman) wasn't part of the deal. but truth be told I think if nathan didn't have it out for lars after what happened to his brother samuel, they probably would've let him join them on the boat trip home
Really possible, you can also see him in the purser's storeroom in Soliders of the Sea, taking money during the chaos
Nice interpretation! I like it!
To add a beautiful bow tie to this game would have been to do like a 20 min cinematic… showing all the chapters in a chronological order … I know this would have cost a ton more budget but it would have been so sick to see the whole thing unfold after spending hours of investigation… regardless of that this game is super underrated and is going into my al time favorites
One thing about the Murder chapter: in the memory, captain Witteral says "You have been found guilty by self-cofession", meaning they must have thought that Hok Seng Lau told them he was the one who killed Nunzio Pasqua. Obviously, we know that isn't true, so why would Lau admit to this? That's the thing, he probably didn't.
If we move a little foward in the timeline to "the Calling", we see a Chinese Topman (Li Hong) in the boat together with the other mutineers. In fact, it is Hong who tellls Nichols that the Formosans are talking about monsters, before being the first victim of the mermaids. Why is this man here? It could be that they needed an interpreter for the Formosans, but I think there's more to it.
Here's my theory: Li Hong is the one the crew asked to translate for Hok Seng Lau. Lau told him that he was knocked out by someone, possibly even by Nichols. Instead of telling the crew that, however, Hong told them that Lau had confessed to killing Pasqua. Whether he was doing this under orders from Nichols, or if he used this to strike a deal with Nichols later on, I don't know. But it is clear to me that there was more than one schumbag on board the Obra Dinn that day.
One thing I’d disagree with is that I don’t think the Memento Morten is an everyday device or even something normally used by the EIC. Instead, the letter /preface from Henry Evans specifically mentions it, along with the purpose of the book.
Also what you provide the EIC at the end is not the book but a separate document. I think the watch is more likely a curio picked up by the surgeon (amongst his other eccentric accoutrement such as the monkey) which explains why he was smart enough to sacrifice his furry companion. His original intent was to find out what happened for himself - and he had done as much as was possible without access to the Obra Dinn itself, being limited to the deaths accessible within the Lazarette. If only the timeline with John Naple’s foot had lined up a little better, he might have had a better go of it, jumping from corpse to corpse via the seaman’s severed leg :D
Since he knew what Martin had asked of the mermaid, he likely suspected that the ship would return someday and that he (or someone else) would be able to find out what really happened .
This also explains why you, the insurance investigator, are still in possession of the memento mortuary at the end of the events, rather than having it in the possession of the EIC, or your employers (who surely would expect it back).
That makes a lot of sense, good call!
Makes me wonder _how_ he knew of Martin's favor.
After thinking it over a little, I think he either saw them throw the mermaid overboard with a shell and put two and two together, or somehow heard of the Return of the Obra Dinn and managed to mail the inspector the book and watch before he was dispatched... all the way from Morocco.
@@dabiga2315 This is pretty simple actually--he would have been able to use the watch at any point after leaving the ship on the monkey's paw in his possession and viewed the events within the lazarette. He would have heard the bargain directly.
You can also see that Evans has the Memento Mortem's case in his possession during the events - it's under the bed in his office as Rajub expires, and then it's on the boat with him during their escape.
I was mad at killing the monkey though, completely unnecessary in my opinion
Excellent choice using the discovery orchestra hits. Made the entire thing click for me. Kudos.
Thanks, I came up with it while editing and it made me laugh, so I reworked the whole thing to include it. Glad you enjoyed it!
Loved this game so damn much. I had the story pretty right in my head but when you put it all together it had me notice a couple things. One) I never realized that Beng was putting the shell INTO the liquid, that’s interesting, I saw the shell in the Pasqua murder but didn’t remember it after, I did notice the three mermaids were short one shell while attacking the rowboats. (I didn’t quite understand Beng and the captains steward died from having only their arm melted, but whatever) Two) I never realized that when Brennan asked “where are they?” And the captain says “at the bottom of the sea”…it’s a clever misdirect. You think at the beginning of the game he’s talking about the crew but in the end it was the shells, cool stuff
not sure it's worth pointing it out anymore but the game accepts the death of It-Beng as being poison, so there's more to it than fire to the chest & shell effect
Because of how game starts I was always assuming that 1st mate is one of the main villains on the ship. At one point it started to not make sense any more (e.g. helping Lanke), but this summary puts it all together - actually William Hoscut was quite a decent dude and even the last episode can be seen in somewhat different light. Thanks for the quality stuff!
I'm not entirely sure and might be wrong on this - but it could be that he doesn't even want the shells from the captain because they're valuable but to return them (like the 3rd mate already had aranged at this point).
@@onecommunistboi yes, there is a place for scenario where captain has lost his mind after Abigail's death (massacre of mermaids, the table in his room was overturned even before Brennan entered the Captains Quarters - you can see it on its side behind the captain as he shoots Hoscut) and become incapable of handling the ship and events around it (letting doctor and ladies to leave the ship, the way how he holds his head in desperation and exhaust as the boat leaves), he could have lied about throwing the shells (they found one in the lazarette after captain supposedly disposed of them). So in an unexpected plot twist Hoscut and Brennan actually are the good guys who just want to get the captain back to senses and get rid of the shells. Apparently that was not the idea of the creator of this game, but I like to pretend that this is true, it makes the storyline better and adds nice plot twist at the end. It would be great if The Bargain chapter would have provided the information that turns everything around and the last chapter of The Bargain would render the first chapters of The End in completely different light. A missed opportunity to make a great game even better, if you ask me.
damn, i was like 'pffft 11 minutes how the hell are they going to condense that tangled knot of murder and intrigue into that?' and then I watched it and you just. did it. no beating around the bush, just the facts as we know them. mad props - i love this game, and while i like that lots of it is up to interpretation, sometimes its nice to have everything laid out. one thing is idk if the watch is like, a normal EIC thing. I think it's something henry evans specifically sends to you. plus you keep it. there's sort of a 'only we know about these spooky supernatural things' vibe. ik some people took the whole 'sending the eic a specific and detailed inventory of causes of death from inspecting an empty ship' bit of it comes across to some people as worldbuilding evidence for normal use of this kind of stuff, but it came across to be as bureaucratic neglect. like 'ugh that boats back again, ok we'll send a guy to see what's up and whatever they say we'll do' but i think it could be both ways.
Thanks, I really wanted to have it laid out as matter of factly as possible without getting tangled up in how the deaths are deduced. I think you're probably right on the watch, but I don't think it's as clearly laid out in the game, or I might have just missed it. Still, glad you liked the video!
I always assumed that the people riding the crab monsters were the two Russian guys that got pulled overboard during The Calling. It looked to me like the crabs were a sort of parasitic creature that took over the dead bodies.
Did anyone else think that?
Wow. That never occurred to me at all. That would be an insane twist, having to fight off former crewmates that died come back as demonic creatures.
This game has a lot of things like that. I made that assumption and many others that made things really hard for me lol.
I thought I’d was the 2 guys that died from the “some lung disease”
No. Lol. It's very specifically mermaids. How would two random Russian guys turn into ocean dwelling crab riders?
@ScottConnan why? They very make it very clear it's mermaids..
As a quick note the Memento Mortem pocketwatch was given to you by Evans, being in the same box as the book and being mentioned in the preface. Evans also most likely also had the pocketwatch while on the Obra Dinn, since while incomplete, to start making the book he would have needed information he woudn't have otherwise have had access to. So the monkey's death was most likely for him to able to see what happened in the lazarette, not the inspector.
Great point!
Just revisited this game and decided to search for someone elses take on the timeline (and the motivation of certain characters), and just so happens that this video was made just a few week ago, lucky. Helped clear up a few things, the ending (leading up to captain vs first mate + 2) was a bit hard to piece together, I remember that during my first playthrough I thought that first mate (and two friends that attacked the captain) had planned to mutiny with the other two (present at the bosuns death), but everyone seem to be acting more on instinct at this point, not so much planning as I first thought. great summary!
Thanks! Yeah I played it again recently and thought it would be great to have a single summary of the events as they unfolded without any involvement of how they're solved. Glad you enjoyed it!
I watched this video right after I finished the game! Good work man, it helped me piece together some of the stuff I didn’t understand.
Glad it helped!
4:08 phillip dahl wanted to throw the creatures overboard to stop the curse, and with seaman john in his way (leg found beside the cage where he was guarding it) dahl attacked him.
I was intrigued by the 5 men Nichols brought with him. Galligan was obvious as his steward. The two Russians may have been eager to cover their gambling losses in Bitter Cold 2. Li Hong would have been bought to mistranslate during Hok-Seng Lau's trial to "self confess". O'Hagan is the only one I can't justify bringing along besides Irish kinship to Galligan but that's a stretch.
Regarding the mutiny: by the time Davies is being recruited by Wiater (davies is not yet part of the mutiny), Hoscut, Brennan and Walker are already party to the mutiny. The only crew not in on the mutiny were Volkov, who probably wasn't to be trusted given the other Russians were in kahoots with Nichols, and Lanke, who as a midshipman didn't need to be involved in a serious matter and probably would have been told to hide below deck until the fighting stopped - thus Hoscut's concern: Lanke wasn't an enemy.
Davies was probably killed by Brennan because he thought Davies opposed the mutiny by killing Wiater. Escape 4 makes it sound like Davies would have joined the mutiny.
The captain was probably given a heads up to the mutiny by Hoscut, which is why he let the 5 remaining civilians (including Moss) leave before that final showdown. As Volkov wasn't aware of the upcoming fight for the ship, he was aggressive in preventing the civilians leave on the last boat.
There needs to be more games like Return of the Obra Dinn.
There is one released recently: The case of the golden Idol, it takes several concepts from this game, even thou I think it's shorter and easier to figure out than this one.
I need to remind myself of the title’s but there are a couple of sci-fi ones on a smaller scale. Rather than freeze frames from dead bodies, you get to replay the security cameras as part of your investigation as to what happened to the crew.
Edit: I've now looked this up - the game is called Tacoma
There are. They're just less convoluted and time consuming for a story that can be condensed into 10 minutes.
@@UnfazedPhoenixyou are a ray of sunshine in these comments. Sure it may take 10 minutes to tell the story, but it takes 10 or more hours to figure it all out with the way the game is played.
If you didn't like it, why bother commenting so much on a video about it? You'll just boost your algorithm to show you this content.
@@evanprince3875he pops up a few times in the comments just to stir the pot for no reason! mainly calling people dumb, when those people are making fun of their own wrong conclusions or not noticing details
If the crew had just looked at the rowboats, saw the mermaids, and decided "nope, not dealing with that" and tossed them in the water, the trip could have gone a lot better.
Straightforward, pieced together in the perfect chronological order the game spends its entirety winding roads around. This was perfect, thank you.
The little touches of detail like adding the blurb about Evans tossing the monkey into the Lazarette and the shell being put into the liquid portion of the chest during the Calling, those really tie up the details that make the imagination go a bit wild during gameplay.
There is also Voose's video on every single clue/hint that is sneakily hidden in the game to help you deduce who people are. Combine it with this video, and the curse voyage of this doomed ship really comes together. Fascinating stuff.
Thanks! I really wanted a chronological summary after playing the game, but couldn't find one, so felt like I should make one. I still need to look more closely into all the clues in the game.
@@billtgvids Well, it was clearly a lot of work and it's appreciated.
Regarding the clues, there's been a few more videos that really help lay stuff out (Voose made a 2nd part, and there's a guy who speedruns the game who walks through every deduction to show where it can be parsed).
I definitely played like most people did: deduced about 70% of the answers, guessed at 20%, and left 10% to process of elimination. It's really crazy to see just how varied everyone's playthroughs can be, struggling with some clues I assumed to be dead simple, or me learning I was the one idiot on the planet who didn't figure out something super obvious.
I was really proud to have deduced the socks and shoes of the Topmen in the hammocks myself, seems that wasn't a super common realization. However, most people seemed to suss out Maba from his spiral tattoos, but I absolutely stink with ancient markings and traditions and stuff. For the longest time, I heard Klestil say that line about "where is my Frenchman", hearing everyone say he was torn apart, and assuming Maba was the Bosun's mate. I saw the actual mate with the striped shirt several times too, and I just didn't know about that stuff. I had to see more of them hanging out together and coming out of the Bosun's room to piece it together.
Ohhhh I never understood how the Obradinn made it back to England without crew. But this makes some sense that the Mermaid did it. It also explains why we see the glint in the distance from the ship
Pretty nice video, took me 10 hours to finish the game but i couldn't really piece everything together what happened, im glad a video like this exists. Just a thing i want to add, i believe the time watch was owned by the surgeon, instead of being a standard item given by the company, thats how he knew about it, when you firstly open the box containing the book thats where the watch is, in the end it also says you mailed the book but kept the watch.
It’s been on my back log for awhile and just recently got into and beat it. Great job and making a concise and entertaining timeline!
Great video! Thanks for putting this together
For the record, I don't actually think the captain killed himself because he was "overcome with grief" but instead he was stranded all alone on a ship that requires multiple people to pilot and he'd just been stabbed so he probably would have died a slow and painful death, so instead he opted to end his life quickly rather than suffer.
It’s sad, really-captain witterel taking control of the only thing he has left: not his ship or his crew but his own death
You can see him breaking down earlier, after the last boat escaped.
What an absolutely fantastic synopsis. I did 100% the game but was quite confused about some elements of the story. This cleared everything up beautifully.
Just fully-finished the game, and I needed something like this just to make sure I understood everything correctly. The video was exactly what it needed to be and more! Loved the editing
This is such a great video! A perfect factual summary of the events as they played out- exactly the sort of thing I wanted to see after finishing the game. Great editing too.
One thing I noticed/guessed that wasn't included is the Formosan guard's "self-confession". I think it's likely that one of the Chinese crewmates that joined Nichol's plot to steal the chest falsely interpreted Hok Seng Lau's testimony and told that captain that the man was confessing to the murder.
The captain didn't question his crewman's translation and sentenced Lau to death, allowing the second mate to get away with it. At least until the events of 'The Calling' of course.
We don't know for certain of course, but Lee was able to speak a little Formosan and translate for the remaining guard at the beginning of "Unholy Captives", so it's not unreasonable to think that at least one of the other Chinese crewman had some knowledge of the language as well.
Yeah, I had meant to expand on this point, but it got pushed aside while writing it. I think it was almost certainly a purposeful mistranslation.
That was my thought as well!
Excellent work! So THAT's what the monkey was for!
Haha, thanks!
Excellent summary. I didn't realize that the game accepts different answers for the crew's fates, really neat stuff.
*Huge series of intricate and correlated events*
Also, this guy was just struck by lightning in the middle of the ship.
Great explanation. There were so many plot points I didn't pick up on. My English teacher would be ashamed.
I just finished this masterpiece. At the end you can choose "poison" instead of "burn" as the cause of the captain's assistant death. Good detail.
Incredible video, btw. Inmense editing job.
Yeah, editing was the real work load here.
At the end of the game I kinda knew most of this stuff, but didn’t want to thumb through the entire book just to get the whole big picture summary. Thanks, man!
Love this. I've noticed that some of these can be solved multiple ways. It seems spiked/speared can be used interchangeably. I wrote that one of my guys was crushed by a cannon, you wrote beast and the game accepted both. When it came to being blasted by the cannon, either putting the beast or Akbar as the entity responsible for the death works. Interesting enough, Charle Hershtik, the midshipman, can be written down as burned to death or spiked (I wrote down spiked and the game accepted it.)
Yeah, I regret not being able to spend more time exploring all the possible combinations for each person as it alters the story in some way for a few of the deaths.
I also read somewhere that you can find a way to blame the Captain for everyone's death. There's a fate that everyone on the ship has that poses the Captain as responsible because he is the captain and he's responsible for his crew. The whole thing of "captain goes down with the ship" It's funny because you can basically fine his estate for like thousands of extra pounds.
Thank you for not making it an hour long video.
I failed to piece together whole story, so content of this video was unexpected and pleasant surprice. Thank you!
5:45 - the Carpenter was hard as nails.
Both of them were
Incredible video. Just finished the game and wanted to watch a summary to get events in order in my head and I couldn't have asked for anything better than this. Concise, yet containing every important detail to the story. Thanks for this!
Glad it helped!
Earned a sub with this. Immediately to the point. Explained it clearly with absolutely no filler. Great job! You need to do more of these for other games!
Thanks! I've thought about doing one for Subnautica and Outer Wilds, but haven't gotten around to it. Maybe this year. Open to suggestion for other non-linear stories that would benefit from such a summary.
I just finished the game including the bargain chapter and I absolutely LOVE the writing in the game and how the bargain chapter is such a good ending.
This man is underappreciated for sure. Thanks dude
Much appreciated!
Excellent video, really nice to get a sequential view of the events. I'm sure someone has already mentioned this but Davey James (7:46) is actually 4th Mate John Davies' Steward, not Perrot's. It is a little strange that he's with Perrot and not Davies, but seeing as Roderick is already dead and Davies didn't really need any help at the moment, I guess it makes sense.
Unfortunate situation, if Davey stayed with his mate then maybe chapter 9 would be less deadly, and if 4th mate survives events of chapter 10 would most likely never happen
This really puts into context just how bad Dr. Henry Evans is at saving anyone's life.
Thanks for noticing! When I was putting this video together I realized that literally everybody he treats ends up dying and wanted to draw some attention to it.
I love this
Thanks!
The ending of the story contains a literal curled up monkey's paw. I wish there was more relevance to this in the wider story. Given the attention to detail throughout Obra Dinn, the paw doesn't seem like it is included idly, yet it seems to be a misfit. What wishes did the doctor make? What unintended consequences occurred which then resulted in the tragedy of the Obra Dinn? I doubt that will ever be cleared up.
I guess you could apply it to the shells loosely as a cautionary tale. Everyone seemed to want to have them, but having them generally made everything worse. It's definitely a stretch though.
The curled paw is for the wish of the third mate. He wishes the obra dinn be returned safely and the mermaid delivered. He didnt specify that the crew should be alive or on it however
The fact that only three people are alive at the end of the game is terrifying
Such an underrated chanel
This is one of my favourite games and this video helped me understand it even more! Great video
Glad I could help!
I’ll admit, I couldn’t follow the story or make heads or tails of what was going on throughout most of it, so this video is a godsend 😂
Not sure why this doesn’t have more views!
Also, in that second floor where the guy gets stabbed for shouting of a mutiny, how did you know that the gunshot to the head was unintentional?
I'm not actually sure. I wrote it that way in the script when I first put it together, but I noticed just before putting out the video that it was kind of ambiguous. Same thing with the midshipman getting burned: apparently there's a number of death cards possible.
@@billtgvids weren't the two of them discussing to take over the boat seconds before this incident? So then it would make sense he didn,t want to shoot him right?
@@onome9305 Could be, but that's before Wiater stabs Lanke, so maybe Davies had a change of heart after that, but I think it's more likely that Davies didn't intend to kill Wiater, especially considering they were just plotting a mutiny together.
@@billtgvids that's exactly what i thought when i first saw the scene play out. really enjoyed this video btw. videos like this are why i watch yt, subscribed!
@@onome9305 Thanks!
Thank you so much! I just finished the game and needed a summary of the events. You nailed it! Cheers!
Watched this after finishing the game. Only realised now that there are alternative answers to some of the fates (I answered 'eaten by beast' instead of 'drowned by beast').
Excellent video for the most part. I always felt that the Memento Mortem was also from Henry Evans though, in addition to the book, partly because the Chief Inspector kept it after filing his report.
His or _her_ report! The Chief Inspector has multiple voices from which one is chosen at the start of the game. I'm not sure how many, but I know when I started a second save to get the secret achievement, it was a woman's voice instead of a man's like it was the first time I played. So there's at least two different voices.
I put Abraham Akbar as the shooter of the cannon that killed Wolff and Shirley. Then I felt bad when the insurance report had him as a criminal who murdered 2 people at the end when really he was KIA while dutifully fighting the monster :(. Wish I'd put the beast as who fired the cannon like you did, but i didn't even think of it.
I also put him as the shooter of the cannon. My logic was that the gunner shouts "Belay spark!" meaning "don't light the cannon", but Abraham Akbar did light it causing the cannon to fire.
I just said they both died in an explosion and the game counted it as correct
I, too, did Abraham dirty. Felt bad about it when I read the report. Brilliant game.
Thanks for the easy play-by explanation of what happened. Perfect game imo.
In the words of a wise Samuel L. Jackson: "This is some serious gourmet shit"
Looking back at this all, I'm surprised the escape worked out as it did - the doctor's gun shot in the cargo hold should have caused another confrontation.
Just finished the game and you did a great job on this. Hopefully someone didn’t stumble upon this before playing Obra Dinn lol good job on this vid
Haha, yeah. I considered putting a quick spoiler warning at the start, but figured someone who was looking up 'plot summary' probably knew what they were getting themselves in to.
Great video, made me realise how much of the story went over my head as I played it...
This was a great overview of the events of the game, I was a little lost myself on some of the plot points but you helped me put it all together. Thanks!
I can't believe you forgot the large cow that was butchered for it's meat. In all seriousness, great vid.
Thanks so much for this, I needed this to piece it all together after my playthrough :)
very compact video! exactly what i need
Thanks! Glad it was helpful!
It's nice to have the story together and concise like this. Cleared up a few things I didn't pick up from the game. Thank you.
Thanks so much for this. I was so confused even after finishing the game, this helped out :D
I had to leave a comment for no reason other than to say thank you!!
I had a general idea of the narrative after completing the game, but it needed a little piecing together which I don't have the brains for.
I like this video because it helps to understand the story because when you play the game its not in order.+I liked how Henry Brennan killed everyone in the crew
I still have no idea how the guy who threw the lamp onto the Crab Rider managed to get on fire himself?
It's left kind of ambiguous, but I believe what happened was that after the crab(and rider) was lit on fire it still continued to wander around and attack the crew, so Charles Hershtik(the one who threw the lamp) leaps onto it so that he could hold it still while the other crew members stab the beast.
Very good video, exactly what I was looking for
jesus you deserve much more attention!
I agree Jesus does need more attention and he loves you
@@jimjohnson6944 Also agreed!
(as a non religious person but i have nothing against him anyways)
JESUS CAPITAL J “!!,!,!,!!,!,!,!,!,!
@@amberlewis012 cool
Ok so you said "the mermaids have summoned a kraken" so matter of factly that it made me chuckle. Great summary tho now I understand what the hell happened.
Thank a lot for creating this amazing video! I had finished the game a couple of months ago, and just remembered that I understood the how, but not the why. I really hope that in the future more games like this one will be made.
Great vid! Now I know how the captain killed all those people with an axe, it all makes sense now... 🧐
Nice summary, came here after advice from a chat member from the stream of Noir Vesper, a vtuber from Hololive who just finished it today.
Cool, thanks!
Ngl Nathan Peter's was my favorite character. He fought the crab riders valiantly only to turn around and kill someone and die trying to escape
I imagine the captain didn’t actually stop the kraken - I think he was murdering the helpless mermaids when the third mate intervened and demanded they throw the last living mermaid overboard with her shell and that is what made the kraken leave.
I see the captain as incompetent for having the innocent Formosan man executed (and everyone seems really happy about it, which makes a lot of the crew seem pretty awful), then taking the mermaids prisoner, and locking up his steward that tried to stop them. The captain shares a lot of the blame for how everything went down.
What about his monologue in chapter 8,where while he kills mermaids he says about kraken?
"Hok-Seng-Lau has been been found guilty by self-confession"
It's funny how the cutaways come off as comedic
Beautiful work, man! Thank you for your video, it increased my joy from this awesome game
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it!
Interesting side note, the book doesn't require an exact death to see it as true, only an approximation that is reasonable. I know I wrote that a little weird so let me explain. See in the video, the crewmembers on the dissapeared page for "The Doom" most of the people are labeled as drowned. However in my playthrough I labeled some of them (for example the helmsman and bosun mate) as torn apart. So in a case like that, I guess the journal will except either as true.
It's all up to your imagination what the Kraken does with its victims.
It's also forgiving when they did from the mystical items like It Beng Sia or Filip Dahl. I did poisoning and it accepted, and I read electrocuted is also acceptable for them.
THANK YOU SO MUCH
You're welcome!
Thank you for this.
So, Captain did it...
8:07 didnt the doctor himself send you the watch, with the journal?
Yeah, I missed this and a few people have pointed it out as well. Good catch!
God this is such a good game
Regarding Wiater, I have no idea what this first name is, because it doesn't sound Polish, but the surname would be pronounced "Vyater" - the Polish language uses "W" for "V" and a crossed "L" for "W"
Thanks for the heads up!
Amazing video, i love it, thanks for the impressive summary !