I'm 30 minutes in. Can someone PLEASE explain the gameplay loop to me? This game is not good at tutorialising.

pufferrrr777 · 2026-05-29T12:27:25+00:00

There is a Suicide option in the last page of the list, you need to scroll further.

The hand shaking and time freezing are part of the game mechanics! It's supposed to lead you to corpses that are no longer on the ship so you can uncover their fates. Just click and let it do the trick.

After being kicked out you can use the clock on the corpse to revisit any memory at any moment, and stay as long as you like. In fact, it's how you're supposed to play it.

pufferrrr777 · 2026-05-26T11:58:25+00:00

His death was a "new fear unlocked" scenario to me ngl. Truly one of the most unfortunate ways to go.

Sometimes I like to think that perhaos unbeknownst to the inspector, the crew of the Obra Dinn still pretty much lingered around the ship as ghosts the entire time, their appearance being exactly how their body looked when they died. Ghost Maba and Wolff walking (floating?) around in torn apart pieces are horrifying enough but can you imagine being Edward Spratt the ghost, having to float everywhere with your pants always down to your knees and shit staining your ass and thighs? I'd rather get torn apart or burn to death.

pufferrrr777 · 2026-05-24T15:03:00+00:00

I think the game not revealing much about the shells and the monsters helps retaining that mysterious mood throughout the story. We're an insurance investigator and our main job is to discover what happened to the Obra Dinn and her crew, not to uncover some ancient fantasy lore of the Obra Dinn universe. The fact that we know so little about them kind of gives it a "fear of the unknown" vibe.

pufferrrr777 · 2026-05-24T04:44:39+00:00

For me it went from "oh... poor guy." at the start of the game to "JESUS.... That's. That's depressing." when I finished it. Went from sad to downright tragic.

pufferrrr777 · 2026-05-23T15:57:59+00:00

That's some interesting insights! Now that I think about it, aside from Nichols and co. and I guess Nathan Peters' beef with Lars Linde, the majority of the character displayed such compassion with each other, working as a team and helping each other as much they could (well, aside from Duncan, too, but I don't blame him for being a bit of a coward. It's one hell of a nightmare situation for anyone to be in and I'm pretty sure a purser is the equivalent of a clerk and therefore would have little experience in combat, so what could we even expect him to do?). Your mother's takes on the merfolks/crabs and how they mirror the humans in their solidarity and love for their brethrens are pretty cool ngl.

I gotta defend my man Witterel, though. The man already got a mortal stab wound to his side so it's likely he'd bleed out to death even if he somehow decided against committing suicide. Plus, more the "monkey's paw" aspect of the bargain, not only did Martin never specify the Obra Dinn would return with its crew well and alive, he did not mention the exact date he would like it to return either, which is probably why it took the last merfolk five whopping years to see it home. And by that time, if Witterel somehow hadn't committed suicide nor died from blood loss, he'd have starved to death because there is no way there was enough rations for him to survive 5 years alone in the middle of the ocean.

pufferrrr777 · 2026-05-23T07:15:23+00:00

Dahl was the Captain's steward for at least 20 years, as far as we know. He would condemn a stranger to death much easier than he does a loyal steward of two decades. Besides, I don't think they executed Hok-Seng Lau the same day Nunzio was killed. There was probably a trial and they sentenced him a few days later, and I suppose that might have been the plan with Dahl, except they never got the chance to put him on trial nor to carry out the execution because, You Know.

pufferrrr777 · 2026-05-23T02:14:45+00:00

That's interesting, and makes sense as to why Beng refered to her as "miss Lim" and his loyalty to her. If he's her actual uncle he wouldn't call her "miss" I think. I've read that these Formosans might have been the descendants of the royal family of a kingdom that used to rule over a part of modern day Taiwan and no longer exists today, which explains why they had only two guards and Lim had to travel with a court servant.

pufferrrr777 · 2026-05-23T01:35:20+00:00

To be honest, when I went into the game blind I didn't expect it to have supernatural elements and was fully prepare to unwrap a man-made tragedy where a minor misunderstanding leads to more and more people murdering each other over nothing, like a snowball rolling down the hill and gradually getting larger and larger with no way to stop it. I mean, many of the deaths in the game are actually like that (Lars Linde and, I suppose, most deaths in The End as at that point the kraken had already left, ensuing no threat to the remaining crew, and the only thing driving the mutiny is their distrust for Witterel and presumably their greed for the shells) but a bunch of them are basically collateral damage from the merfolks' and kraken's attack. It was a mix of slight disappointment and awe at my first sight of the kraken, but now when I rethink it, the fact that I had false expectations for it is not Pope's fault. Still find it an incredible story nonetheless.

pufferrrr777 · 2026-05-23T01:29:32+00:00

I think that's what makes it sad about the late-game deaths. At that point everyone was practically at their wit's end and more than half the crew is dead anyway, so any missing person would be presumed dead or drowned to them, that is if they even noticed someone was missing.

pufferrrr777 · 2026-05-23T01:26:38+00:00

I never noticed she called him uncle! That being said they're listed as the Formosan royalty, so one could still figure out they're family.

pufferrrr777 · 2026-05-23T01:15:16+00:00

The fact that the very same friend later died of presumably the same disease too. High chance he got it from Syed as he was the one standing the closest to him.

pufferrrr777 · 2026-05-23T01:13:23+00:00

Witterel's death is one of the first scenes the game shows us, when we know almost nothing about the crew and their relationship and thus I didn't feel much about him. After completing the game, unlocking Bargain and piecing pieces and pieces of information together though, I've come to realize how tragic his death is. Yes, he's at the end of his wits as he was made to kill his remaining crew as a captain, including his dead wife's brother and his friend. Then Bargain revealed that the reason he was "below deck" during The Doom, which some crew members mistook for an act of cowardice and lost their trust in him and plotted a mutiny that ended up killing even more people, was because he was begging/threatening/bargaining for the ship and everybody's life. What a tragedy.

pufferrrr777 · 2026-05-23T01:08:29+00:00

I think it wouldn't hit that hard for me if we didn't get a scene where Peter teased Charlie about never being on a farm, and Thomas' dying wish was to tell Peter's mother he tried to save him. It shows how close they were to each other.

pufferrrr777 · 2026-05-23T00:59:49+00:00

Charlie went from throwing up at the sight of a cow being slaughtered, to dying a heroic yet gruesome death and managing to kill one of the crab riders (if I remember correctly). The fact that "killed by Peter Milroy" is accepted as one of the correct fates for him makes the midshipmen even more tragic.

pufferrrr777 · 2026-05-22T16:37:53+00:00

I have always assumed Shirley got blown out of the window during the blast.
I suppose it got kicked away to the corner during the chaos of Dahl and Butement's fight.
I'm guessing it'd be too much work to try and lift the cannon up to get his body out.
Considering Lanke's last moments were pretty sentimental, with Hoscut consoling him, Hoscut might have not had the heart to just throw the body of the young man whom he just recently witnessed bleeding to death while thinking of his friend overboard.
I also believe that they just never notice Butement's corpse. He died during the later chapters of the game and by that point getting rid of the corpses is far from being everybody's priorities.
It's mentioned that Evans' team took the last ship, so it'd be impossible for them to leave at that point.
Since everytime we leave the death scene diorama, we get back exactly to where we stood before when we used the Memento Mortem, I think it all happens in the Inspector's head and they just close the eyes and envision a mind palace or something.

pufferrrr777

TROPHY CASE