Return of the Obra Dinn is Awesome

Did you ever play that game where some presents you with a murder scene and you have to ask questions until you figure out the nature of the crime?  Did you hear the one about the guy who is hanged over a puddle in a locked room, or the guy who is found dead in a scuba suit in the forest, or the guy who falls off a building but doesn’t die from fall?  The Obra Dinn is a ship full of puzzles like this.  Sixty people started a voyage on the ship and the ship returned to port totally deserted.  As the investigator tasked with figuring out what happened to absolutely everyone, you have quite a bit of work to do.  Luckily, though, you have the memento mori, a stopwatch that can return you to the moment of death for every victim that you can find.  Your task, then, is to move through the deserted ship, flashing back in time to (often horrifying) moments in time to try to figure out who everyone is, how they died, and who was responsible for each and every death.  It’s an intimidating task, but it is also endlessly addictive.

The retro graphics are really amazing, which is good because you’ll be spending a LOT of time on this ship.

The first thing you’ll notice in the game is the retro-style presentation.  The graphics are loving rendered and finely detailed, but the music is the real star of the show.  I still hear the strings that play when you solve a murder or the rising tones that announce one of the more striking murder scenes.  Some of these scenes are really crazy; the sailors on this ship met some really horrifying monsters on their trip; it’s not surprising that so many died as much as it is that so many survived as long as they did.  See, whenever you find a spot where someone died, you activate the watch and find yourself in a frozen moment in time where you can see the victim’s last second of life.  The simple, black-and-white graphics are kind of a blessing here as you don’t see the details of many of the more colorful deaths that the crew experienced, but every detail you see is important.

The watch is nice but I really should have brought a mop.

Even with your ability to time travel as often as you like, your job is pretty massive.  You start with a list of crew members and their jobs, a map of the ship’s journey, and a few photos of the entire crew.  Using this information and your ability to see these moments of death, you need to identify who everyone is, how they died (if they died), and who (or what) was responsible.  You can speculate about all the deaths at any point of the game, but the game only rewards you once you solve three mysteries.

This was one of my favorite mysteries. How do you assign blame to any one person with the cause of death was firing squad?

The game wisely starts small; your first mysteries are the fates of the last few crew members at the end of the journey.  The characters, frozen in place as they kill on another, hold position as you move around the scene, noting their positions as well as the positions of other people and objects in the room.  Things start easy but complicate quickly.  Rather than scenes of two or three sailors fighting, you’ll find a deck full of characters battling, each of them providing hints about their fates as well as the fates of others.  Plus, you’ll soon realize that each time you time-jump to a specific crime scene, there’s also a lot going on throughout the ship that you’ll also need to note.  Sometimes you’ll jump to a murder on one part of the ship and discover that the events leading to another murder are underway on another deck.  Interestingly, as you start bouncing between scenes from different points in the voyage, sequences that seemed disjointed and isolated soon start to reveal the motivations of the characters whose actions led to the fate of the Obra Dinn.  What seemed like a series of individual, horrifying crime scenes soon becomes a fascinating story of greed, loss, sacrifice, and revenge.

Yeah, with guys like these in the oceans, maybe don’t go sailing, ever?

I wouldn’t say that the game provides a flawless experience.  You spend quite a bit of time wondering about the precise word to describe how sailors died; I puzzled for a while over whether an impaled sailor was “speared” or “spiked.”  Finally, I’m ashamed to admit that there were a couple of times where I locked in two mysteries and simply tried every potential name for my third victim until something clicked.  These times were few and far between, and – if I’d been a better detective – I’m sure I could have figured each mystery out to the end.  Having to make a few guesses isn’t that big of a deal, but it is a little frustrating when the game won’t tell you whether you’re right until you solve three mysteries at a time.  While I did have to put the game down here and there, I did eventually solve the entire thing without hints or solutions from online.  And, yeah, it was worth it.

Admittedly, some of these murders are a little easier to solve than others.

The great moments in the game come from the times when you’re forced to question your assumptions.  There was one victim, for example, who seemed to have clearly been murdered by one character.  However, that solution didn’t work.  I reviewed his crime scene over and over until I realized his initial wound hadn’t been fatal; he’d actually accidentally been killed later by another character entirely.  Another time I guessed that two characters who frequently appeared together must work together and I was correct (though, to my embarrassment, I guessed wrong about which of the two was in charge).  There are so many moments in Obra Dinn that made me feel that I’d missed my calling as a homicide detective.  Lots of games make you feel powerful, but very few titles make you feel as smart as Obra Dinn does.

See, this is why I don’t take cruises.

On the other hand, I’ve noticed that a lot of writers have mentioned that The Return of the Obra Dinn took them 6-8 hours.  My play time was closer to 12-15 hours, so maybe I’m not so much of a Homicide detective as much as a Brooklyn 99 detective.  This game consumed my game playing life for a few days.  I delayed Destiny, I postponed Red Dead, and I abandoned Assassin’s Creed in favor of this game.  I’m sure that there are gamers out there who prefer a more action-oriented experience or may be put off by the lack of replay value, but I can’t remember a time in recent memory when I’ve felt more personally invested in a game.  Not to spoil to much, but at the end of the game, you’re told how much the family of each sailor was paid by the insurance company based on their deaths.  It’s a silly ending, but I was captivated by the fates of all sixty characters, the heroes, the villains, and the valiant crew who were caught in the crossfire.

The BEST PARTS

The Return of the Obra Dinn is a novel, intellligent, moving experience with beautiful graphics and music.  It’s a smart game that makes you feel like a forensic genius at regular intervals.  Again, I’ve played games that let me feel powerful, but I’ve never played a game that made me feel more intelligent.

The WORST PARTS

With any mystery, there is really only one solution.  Replayability may be an issue for some gamers.  Some of these mysteries are complicated, too.  I never felt that anything was unfair, but there are some solutions that are more difficult than others!

OVERALL: BUY IT (especially if you see it discounted!)

There’s a reason this game is on everyone’s top ten list for 2018.  If you like puzzle games and murder mysteries, this is definitely the game for you.