How Return of the Obra Dinn Works | GMTK Most Innovative 2018

Every year, I like to close things off by
talking about the most interesting game I

played in the last 12 months.

It might be not the best game, but it’s
definitely the most innovative, the most daring,

and the game that’s most unlike anything
I’ve played before.

For 2018 I could have picked titles like Into
the Breach, Florence, and Minit - but who

am I kidding?

I had to go with Lucas Pope’s incredible
detective game, Return of the Obra Dinn.

So here’s how the game works.

You’re an insurance agent in 1807 and you’re
on a merchant ship where all 60 of its crew

members have died or disappeared.

Your job is to figure out their fates.

To do this, you have a magic pocket watch
- and if you open it when standing next to

a corpse... this happens.

You get a bit of dialogue...

UNKNOWN VOICE: “Captain! Open the door…”

And then you get a static scene from the very
moment that person died.

The game then asks you two questions.

Who is this person?

And how did they die?

How this chap died is pretty obvious.

He got shot.

And I think we can safely assume that he was
shot by the captain.

In Return of the Obra Dinn, figuring out how
people died is rarely a huge challenge.

The tricky part is figuring out who they are.

And right now, we just don’t know.

So we move on, and find another skeleton.

This time, it’s the captain’s.

And before blowing his brains out, he says...

CAPTAIN: “Abigail. Your brother. I shot him dead."

Well, that’s more like it!

We’ve got something to go on now.

So, what do we know about Abigail?

Well, she was the captain’s wife - hence
the surname.

But she also kept her maiden name, which she
would share with her brother… who must be

William Hoscut!

And so if the Captain shot Abigail’s brother,
this must be William Hoscut.

Okay that’s about as much I want to spoil the
game.

If you haven’t played Obra Dinn yet and
you think it looks cool - please shut this

video off and go grab the game.

Otherwise, let’s move on.

So this is Return of the Obra Dinn in a nutshell.

The game has about 50 of these death vignettes,
and the game is essentially about cross-referencing

information, as one person’s identity can
often only be found by looking for clues in

another person’s vignette - turning these
scenes into a massive matrix of data.

But it’s not as easy as that, of course.

The information you find is merely a clue
and you must perform some clever deductive

reasoning on it to find the real answer.

Take the three midshipsmen, for example.

In this vignette, an unknown man says…

UNKOWN VOICE: “Tell Pete’s mother, I...

I tried my best… to pull him back... to
save him."

In a previous vignette, this same man is seen
holding the rope when another bloke is blown up.

So that unlucky sod is probably the only Pete
on the crew - Peter Milroy.

In another vignette, a man says

UNKNOWN VOICE: “Never been on a farm, Charlie?"

UNKNOWN VOICE: “Mind your shoes now"

referring to this chap, who’s currently puking on his shoes.

There are two Charles on the crew - but this
one’s wearing the same midshipsman’s uniform

as Peter, making him most likely to be Charles
Hershtik.

And so with Peter and Charles named, through
the process of elimination we can name the

third and final midshipsman, Thomas Lanke.

As you can see, we used a number of different
factors to deduce their identities - dialogue,

uniforms, the timeline of events, and process
of elimination.

But Lucas uses pretty much every possible
method of concealing information.

Including accents, their location on the map,
relationships, names, these numbers on these

hammocks, and props - like Omid Gul’s sword
or Emily Jackson’s wedding ring.

When you think you have sorted out someone’s
identity and fate, Obra Dinn is very clever about how

it asks you for your answer.

In my video about detective games, I talked
about how these titles often give away the

solution by giving the player a question and
some answers to pick from.

In a lot of these games, the question and
answers can prompt the player, or put them

onto a line of thinking they weren’t previously
on, or just let the player guess the answer.

Obra Dinn does have multiple choices, but
sidesteps these issues in three smart ways.

One, is that there’s only ever two questions.

And they’re the same for everyone on board.

Who are they, and what is their fate?

You never have to explain your reasoning or
answer follow-up questions.

Two, is that you have a huge number of answers
to pick from.

Who are they has 60 possible answers.

And how did they die has a huge list - like
shot, stabbed, electrocuted, exploded, and

so on.

Sometimes with additional info like who shot
them, or what crushed them.

That’s way too many to guess, and too many to
prompt you with a possible answer.

And three, is that the game won’t immediately
tell you if you were right or wrong.

It will only do so when you get three answers
right.

This does takes away from that immediate satisfaction
of getting a correct answer, but it’s there

to make it very difficult to brute force your
way through the game by just guessing fates

until you get it right.

If you are struggling, Lucas also thought
carefully about how much the game should help

you with figuring things out.

So, the crew’s faces are blurred out until
the game knows you have enough information

to figure things out.

These triangles tell you the difficulty level
of any particular fate.

There are no road blocks - you can just keep
playing without identifying anyone.

And even finish the game with unfinished answers.

Plus, the game accepts multiple answers in
certain ambiguous situations, and sometimes

has multiple sources for a person’s identity
or fate.

So we have a game where 60 people disappeared
in unique and interesting ways.

And they gave cryptic clues about each other’s
identities at the exact moment of their death.

And now you have to use a fantasy pocket watch
to go back to the moment each person died.

To fill in a book that magically knows when
you get three answers right.

I don’t think you would be off the mark
if you described this whole system as contrived.

Which actually reminds me of another game
I highlighted in my end of year wrap-up: the

search engine detective game, Her Story.

So in this game, a detective has apparently
cut up a woman’s testimony into about 800

unlabelled video clips.

They’ve removed the actual questions that
the detectives asked her.

And when you search for clips, you can only
see the first five results.

This is a bad computer system.

Whoever made this should be fired.

It’s silly, and like Obra Dinn: it’s contrived.

But here’s the thing.

Many detective games try to capture reality.

Or at least, a fictional version of that reality.

Games like LA Noire and the Sherlock games
aim for realism, and try to make game mechanics

out of actual crime fighting processes like
talking to witnesses and making deductions.

But this must always come with limitations.

For example, you can’t have a system where
you can ask a witness any question you like.

Artificial intelligence isn’t quite there
yet.

So the game picks a few questions for you.

And it picks who you can talk to.

And where you can go.

And what items you can pick up.

And it turns complex logical reasoning into
a simple multiple choice question.

In these games, real world processes naturally
get automated and made abstract - but in ways

that take power away from the player, often
leading to that feeling, I’ve described,

of being more like Watson than Sherlock.

On the contrary, the worlds of Obra Dinn and
Her Story are not trying to be realistic.

Instead, they have stories, gameplay systems,
and means of interaction that exist purely

for the purposes of allowing for deductive
reasoning - without taking power from the

player’s hands.

So neither game has to worry about letting
the player ask questions of a witness because

either the testimony has already been recorded
years ago, or everyone’s already dead.

And you can’t travel anywhere you like when
you’re stuck in front of a computer, or

trapped on a boat

Plus, your interaction with the games is limited
to typing in search commands or picking identities

from a drop-down.

And the narratives of the two games are not
novels or movie scripts that have been turned

into games, but ones purely designed to fit
the systems of the game.

Which wasn’t always easy, with Obra Dinn
designer Lucas Pope telling RPS “people

have to be dying left and right, and you need
a reason for people to be dying constantly.

And that's sort of unusual, people don't generally
die all the time.

Getting that working with the story in a way
that the player can understand took a long time".

But it worked. Obra Dinn is an incredible experience.

It’s the sort of game that you’ll play
with a pad full of notes, making timelines

and jotting down details, looking for clues
and hints - until something clicks and you

enter your answer.

Over and over again it offers those sorts
of eureka moments that detective games promise

- but so often fail to deliver.

Making it the best detective game ever made,
and - despite what I said at the start of

the show - it is the best game of 2018.